The N. J. Horticultural Society have resolved to hold their next Annual Exhibition at Jersey City, on the 24th, 25th and 26th days of September, and have issued a liberal list of

A few words on our progress in building.

The "Genius of Architecture," said Thomas Jefferson, some fifty years ago, "has abed its malediction upon America." Jefferson, though the boldest of democrats, had a secret respect and admiration for the magnificent results of aristocratic institutions in the arts, and had so refined his taste in France, as to be shocked, past endurance, on his return home, with the raw and crude attempts at building in the republic.

No one, however, can accuse the Americans with apathy or want of interest in architecture, at the present moment. Within ten years past, the attention of great numbers has been turned to the improvement and embellishment of public and private edifices; many foreign architects have settled in the Union, numerous works - especially upon domestic architecture - have been issued from the press, and the whole community, in town and country, seem at the present moment to be afflicted with the building mania. The upper part of New-York, especially, has the air of some city of fine houses in all styles, rising from the earth as if by enchantment, while in the suburbs of Boston, rural cottages are springing up on all sides, as if the " Genius of Architecture" bad sown, broadcast, the seeds of ornee cottages, and was in a fair way of having a fine harvest in that quarter.

There are many persons who are as discontented with this new hot-bed growth of architectural beauty, as Jefferson was with the earlier and ranker growth of deformity in his day. Some denounce " fancy houses,"' - as they call everything but a solid square block - altogether. Others have become weary of " Gothic," (without perhaps, ever having really seen one good specimen of the style,) and suggest whether there be not something barbarous in & lancet window to & modern parlor; while the

There is still another class of our countrymen who put on a hypercritical air, and sit in judgment on the progress and development of the building taste in this country. They disdain everything foreign. They will have no Gothic mansions, Italian villas, or Swiss cottages. Nothing will go down with them but an entirely new "order," as they call it, and they berate all architectural writers, (we have come in for our share,) for presenting certain more or less meritorious modifications of such foreign styles. What they demand, with their brows lowered and their hands clenched, is an "American style of architecture!" As if an architecture sprung up like the after-growth in our forests, the natural and immediate consequence of clearing the soil. As if a people not even indigenous to the country, but wholly European colonists, or their descendants, a people who have neither a new language nor religion, who wear the fashions of Paris, and who in their highest education, hang upon the skirts of Greece and Rome, were likely to invent, (as if it were a new plough,) an original and altogether novel and satisfactory style of architecture.

A little learning we have been rightly told, is one of the articles to be labelled "dangerous." Our hypercritical friends prove the truth of the saying, by expecting what never did, and never will happen. An original style in architecture or any other of the arts, has never yet been invented or composed outright; but all have been modifications of previously existing modes of building. Late discoverers have proved that Grecian Architecture was only perfected in Greece - the models of their temples were found in older Egypt. * The Romans composed their finest structures out of the very ruins of pub-He edifices brought from Greece, and the round arch had its rise from working with these fragments instead of masses of stone. The Gothic arch, the origin of which has been claimed as an invention of comparatively modern art, Mr. Ruskin has proved to be of purely Arabic origin, in use in Asia long before Gothic architecture was known, and gradually introduced into Europe by architects from the East. And whoever studies Oriental art, will see the elements of Arabic architecture, the ground-work of the style, abounding in the ruins of Indian temples of the oldest date known on the globe.

It is thus, by a little research, that we find there has never been such a novelty as the invention of a positively new style in building. What are now known, as the Grecian, Gothic, Roman and other styles, are only those local modifications of the styles of the older countries, from which the newer colony borrowed them, as the climate, habits of the people, and genius of the architects, acting upon each other through a long series of years, gradually developed into such styles.. It is, therefore, at absurd for the critics to ask for the American style of architecture, as it was for the English friends of a Yankee of our acquaintance to request him, (after they were on quite familiar terms,) to do them the favor to put on his savage dress and talk a little American! This country is, indeed, too distinct in its institutions, and too vast in its territorial and social destinies, not to shape out for itself a great national type in character, manners and art;but the development of the finer and more intellectual traits of character are slower in a nation, than they axe in a man, and only time can develope them healthily in either case.

In the mean time, we are in the midst of what may be called the experimental stage of architectural taste. With the passion for novelty, and the feeling of independence that belong to this country, our people seem determined to try everything, A proprietor on the lower part of the Hudson, is building a stone castle, with all the towers clustered together, after the fashion of the old robber strong-holds on the Rhine. We trust he has no intention of levying toll on the railroad that runs six trains a day under his frowning battlements, or exacting booty from the river craft of all sizes forever floating by. A noted New-Yorker has erected a villa near Bridgeport, which looks like the minareted and domed residence of a Persian Shah - though its orientalism is rather put out of countenance by the prim and puritanical dwellings of the plain citizens within rifle shot of it. A citizen of fortune dies, and leaves a large sum to erect a "large plain building" for a school to educate orphan boys - which the building committee consider to mean a superb marble temple, like that of Jupiter Olympius; a foreigner liberally bequeaths his fortune to the foundation of an institution "for the diffusion of knowledge among men" - and the regents erect a college in the style of a Norman monastery - with a relish of the dark ages in it, the better to contrast with its avowed purpose of diffusing light.