SOUTH ADIERICAN ARCHITECTURE.
After what has been said about the churches of Mexico, little need be added respecting those of South America, which are similar in their general style, but on the whole inferior.
Rio Janeiro has a great profusion of churches, mostly in the "Jesuit" style, and many of them striking from their size and almost barbaric magnificence. La Candelaria, a work of the seventeenth century, is con spicuous from its high towers, and Nossa Senhora da Gloria from its. position upon a high bill a little south of the city. There is a cathe dral, and San Francisco de Paula is another of the large churches.
Bahia has some fine buildings, among them the Exchange and the Church of Nossa Senhora, a richly-decorated structure with a facade of stone brought from Europe. The college of the Jesuits, with its con tiguous church, which is also the cathedral, is one of the most remark able buildings in Brazil.
Buenos Cathedral of Buenos Ayres covers nearly a whole square; it is crowned by a large and lofty dome and has a modern por tico of twelve Corinthian columns. Other large and handsome churches. of this city are San Domingo, San Merced, San Francisco, and the Recoleta.
Lima and other coast-towns of Peru, though they contain many edi fices of considerable size, are not built monumentally. The Plaza Mayor at Lima has on its north side the large but gloomy-looking government palace; on its eastern side, the cathedral and archiepiscopal residence, the first a handsome building of considerable extent; on the west side, the town-hall, or ayuntanziento; while the south side is occupied by some good private houses. The churches of Lima are numerous, and the spires and domes of the city give it an imposing appearance from a distance.
Cuzco.—In the interior of Peru, within the historic cradle of the Incas, the buildings of the Spanish conquerors are erected of enduring porphyritic trachyte or felspathic granite. The Church of La Merced (" Mercy ") at Cuzco dates from 1537, and can scarcely be called a fine building, so impure are its details and so heavy is its tower. The cloisters of the convent are fine and spacious.
The Church of the Jesuits at Cuzco is mostly noticeable for the baroque facade intercalated between two plain towers, the upper storeys of which have great eye-like openings. It has no side-aisles, while the Mercy Church has a nave and aisles, and the cathedral three chief and two collateral naves. The cathedral, like the Jesuit Church, belongs to a late period; it is devoid of architectural beauty, presenting nothing but two series of semicircular-headed and ill-proportioned openings divided by two series of equally ill-proportioned pilasters. The domes are very low, and add nothing to the effect.
Cathedral of Arequipa, an imposing though architec turally barbarous edifice, was built to replace the one burned in 1849, and thus belongs to the present age. It is about zoo feet square, has a central pediment flanked by two towers, and is buttressed by eight massive Ionic columns which mount to the cornice and end above the pinnacles. The wings are a most inartistic mass of Corinthian columns bearing, Atlas-like, a heavy and blank attic.
The Cathedral of Santiago, Chili, situated in the Plaza de la Indepen dencia, is the oldest church in the city. In 1647 it was destroyed by an earthquake, and was reconstructed subsequent to 1748. It is 351 feet long by 92 feet wide, but has no very distinguishing features. Among other ecclesiastical structures may be mentioned the Church of San Agustin, which dates from t595; the churches of San Francisco, La Merced, and Santo Domingo, dating from the eighteenth century. On Dec. 8, 1863, the Jesuit Church of the Compaiiia was destroyed by fire, in which there perished about two thousand worshippers, mostly women and children.
houses throughout tropical America seldom rise into architectural importance. Wood, loam, and plaster are the chief materials in the coast-towns of Peru, where the houses have usually but one floor, and the roofs are made of linen cloth or cane, rain falling but seldom along the west coast of South America. In Valparaiso the houses have storeys above the ground-floor, are not flat-roofed, and have painted' piazzas; but in Santiago, the capital of Chili, one floor is usual, on ac count of earthquakes; yet the houses are often large, and the rooms—as, indeed, is more or less the case in all countries inhabited by people of Spanish affiliation—are set around one or more patios, or courts. Adobe, or sun-dried brick, is the material most largely used in house-construction throughout Spanish America, but in Rio Janeiro the houses are generally built of stone, whitewashed or rough-cast, with red-tiled roofs and pro jecting eaves and without chimneys. The latter are useless in the climate of Rio, but are a welcome addition to the dwellings of Buenos Ayres, which country is humid and chilly. Vet until lately the residences of this now great and increasing city were of one or at most of two storeys, and without fire-places. Recently houses of three or four storeys have been erected, provided with grates and chimneys, and English coal is used. In Caracas (Venezuela) the private houses are well built, often of brick or stone, and usually, in Spanish fashion, present bare walls to the streets, the apartments surrounding interior patios.