Even without seeing these private treasures the visitor to Charleston
will see enough to convince him that Charleston is indeed
"unique"--though not in the sense implied in the story--that it is the
most intimately beautiful city upon the American continent.
To call Charleston "unique," and immediately thereafter to liken it to
other places may seem paradoxical. These likenesses are, however,
evanescent. It is not that Charleston is actually like other places, but
that here in a church building, there in an old tile roof, wrought iron
gate, or narrow cobbled street, the visitor will find himself delicately
reminded of Old World towns and cities. Mr. Howells, for example, found
on the East Battery a faint suggestion of Venetian palaces, and in the
doorway and gates of the Smyth house, in Legare Street, I was struck,
also, with a Venetian suggestion so strange and subtle that I could not
quite account for it. At night some of the old narrow streets, between
Meeting Street and Bay, made me think of streets in the old part of
Paris, on the left bank of the Seine; or again I would stop before an
ancient brick house which was Flemish, or which--in the case of houses
diagonally opposite St. Philip's Church--exampled the rude architecture
of an old French village, stucco walls colored and chipped, red tile
roof and all.
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