Circus Place is below Rampart street, with St. Claude on the rear, and St. Ann and St. Peter streets on its sides. This is the square once known as Congo Park; and is the place where the negroes, in olden times, were accustomed to meet to while away the cares of servitude. Many an old inhabitant can remember when he beheld these thoughtless beings dancing "Old Virginia never tire," or some other favorite air, with such a hearty gusto, upon the green sward, that the very ground trembled beneath their feet. Though the loud laugh, and the unsophisticated break-down, and double-shuffle of these primitive days have ceased, the spot yet remains, with all its reminiscences, as original as ever, with its capabilities of improvement still unimpaired.
Lafayette Square is decidedly the handsomest in the city. It is in the second municipality, and has St. Charles and Camp streets in front and rear, and several public buildings in its immediate neighborhood. It has a handsome and substantial iron railing around it, based upon well laid blocks of granite; is well laid off in regular walks, and is ornamented with beautiful and rare shrubbery, set out with geometrical accuracy on a raised surface, calculated to make it dry and pleasant.
Annunciation Square, in the same municipality, is the largest, and, consequently, may some day become the most elegant in the city. Orange and Race streets are on its front and rear—and facing are some very tasteful private residences.
Tivoli Circle, as its name would imply, is a circular piece of land laid off as a public ground in Nyade, at the head of St. Charles street, and is intended to be ornamented.
THE OLDEN TIME
Antiquity! the olden time! the hoary, venerable past! there is something sacred and soul subduing in the very sound of the words. Like the dying echo of the last tones of the departed, it is full of hallowed memories, and cherished associations, that haunt the inner chambers of the imagination, and linger with a mournful tenderness about the better feelings of the heart.
But what have we to do with Antiquity! They of the old World, who were grey with time and tottering with decay when, but yesterday, they saw us spring into being, laugh at our sometime boast of Antiquity; and well they may, for it is hardly as well substantiated as that of the simple boy who conceived himself the oldest person in the world, because he could not remember when he was born. Yet even we, in the New World, we, of its second or third generation, whose fathers were present at its birth and baptism, even we begin to talk gravely of the olden time, and to sigh and look sad over the melancholy grandeur of the past!