It was generally remarked of L'Enfant that he was not only a child in name, but in education; as, from the names he gave the streets, he appeared to know little else than A, B, C, and one, two, three. It appears, however, by a letter of the commissioners, that they gave these names to the streets at the same time with that to the city; for convenience a good arrangement, since the streets could more easily be found by a stranger under such designations.

The mall upon which the Smithsonian institute and its gardens have been located, was originally designed as the leading avenue from the capitol to the president's house, terminating by a bridge across the river, and meeting a monument which was to have been erected to Washington-an equestrian statue, with a baton in the right hand of the hero pointing to heaven.

The representatives' chamber is a fine semicircular apartment, with columns of a dark-bluish siliceous pudding-stone, hard and highly polished. It is lighted from above. The gallery is open during the debates, as well as the senate-chamber, which is a much smaller apartment.

The library of congress is in another part of the building; and the great hall contains seven national pictures (each of them twelve feet by eighteen): the Declaration of Independence, Surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga, Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, and Washington resigning his Commission, painted for government by Colonel Trumbull; Baptism of Pocahontas, by Chapman; Embarkation of the Pilgrims, by Weir; and the Landing of Columbus, by Vanderlyn.

A fine view is enjoyed from the top of the capitol. You look along Pennsylvania avenue westward to the presi Washington-who took so strong an dent's house, with Georgetown and the interest in the construction of the capi- Potomac beyond; the general postoffice, tol as to solicit a loan himself, in a letter &c., on the right; the navyyard toward to the governor of Maryland-did not the southeast; Greenleaf's point nearly live to witness its completion. He died south; and southwest the bridge over 14th February, 1799. In November, the Potomac, with the road to Alexan1800, congress met there for the first dria and Mount Vernon. The canal time. begins south of the president's house, At present the attractions of the capi-and terminates at the east branch. tal are on the increase. The private The capitol presents a noble appeararchitecture is improving; the growth ance; its height, the ascending terraces, of the city is advancing with the enlarge- the monument and its fountain, the grand ment of the nation; the museums, con- balustrade of freestone which protects taining the collections of the exploring the offices below, and the distinct object expedition, are open; the patent office, which it forms, standing alone on its with its models of inventions, inviting lofty site, combine to make up the imthe attention, every year adding to the as-pression of grandeur, in which its archisociations of the capital; and the bright tectural defects are lost or forgotten. schemes of scholars and men of science hanging upon the prospects of the Smithsonian institute, its library and its gardens-these confirm the hopes of Washington, and justify the name borrowed from that illustrious founder of the city. The Capitol presents specimens of various styles of architecture. On entering the south wing, several columns | are seen, where carvings of Indian-cornstalks are substituted for flutings and filletings; while the capitals are made of the ears of corn half stripped, and disposed so as in some degree to resemble the Corinthian or composite order.

The waste lands which lie at the foot of Capitol hill are appropriated for a future botanical garden.

There are many very favorable points of view for the capitol, standing, as it does, higher than the general level of the country. There are views from the distant eminences, which are particularly fine, in which the broad bosom of the Potomac forms the background. The effect of the building is also remarkably imposing when the snow is on the ground, and the whole structure, rising from a field of snow, with its dazzling whiteness, looks like some admirable

creation of the frost. All architecture, however, is very much improved by the presence of a multitude of people, and the capitol looks its best on the day of inauguration. The following description was written after viewing that ceremony :

Paul Veronese would have delighted to draw.

"I was in the crowd thronging the opposite side of the court, and lost sight of the principal actors in this imposing drama till they returned from the senatechamber. A temporary platform had been laid and railed in on the broad stair which supports the portico, and all preparation made for one of the most important and most meaning and solemn ceremonies on earth. . . . In comparing the impressive simplicity of this consummation of the wishes of a mighty people, with the ceremonial and hollow show which embarrasses a corresponding event in other lands, it was impossible not to feel that the moral sublime was here— that a transaction so important, and of such extended and weighty import, could borrow nothing from drapery or decoration.

The sun shone out of heaven without a cloud on the inaugural morning. The air was cold but clear, and the broad avenues of Washington, for once, seemed not too large for the thronging population-the crowds who had been pouring in from every direction for several days before, and ransacking the town for but a shelter from the night... The sun shone alike on the friends and opponents of the new administration; and, as far as one might observe in a walk to the capitol, all were made cheerful alike by its brightness. . . In a whole day, passed in a crowd composed of all classes and parties, I heard no remark "The crowd of diplomatists and senthat the president would have been un-ators in the rear of the columns made willing to hear.

way; and the ex-president, with the new president, advanced with their heads uncovered; the former bowed to the people, and, still uncovered in the cold air, took his seat beneath the portico. The new president then read his address to the people.

"I was at the capitol a half-hour before the procession arrived, and had leisure to study a scene for which I was unprepared. The noble staircase of the east front of the building leaps over three arches, under one of which carriages pass to the basement door; and as you "When the address was closed, the approach from the gate, the eye cuts chief-justice advanced and administered the ascent at right angles, and the sky, the oath. As the book touched the lips | broken by a small spire at a short dis- of the new president, there arose a gentance, is visible beneath. Broad stairs eral shout, an expression of feeling comoccur at equal distances, with corres- mon enough in other countries, but drawn ponding projections, and from the upper with difficulty from an American assemplatform rise the outer columns of the blage. The friends of the president portico, with ranges of columns three then closed around him, the ex-presideep extending back to the pilasters. Ident and others gave him the hand of had often admired this front, with its congratulation, and the ceremony was many graceful columns and its superb flight of stairs, as one of the finest things I had seen in the world. The assem- dence of the chief-magistrate of the bled crowd on the steps and at the base United States resembles the country-seat of the capitol, heightened inconceivably of an English nobleman, in its architecthe grandeur of the design. They were piled up like the people on the temples of Babylon, in one of Martin's sublime pictures. Boys climbed about the bases of the columns; single figures stood on the posts of the surrounding railings in the boldest relief against the sky; and the whole scene was exactly what

over."

The President's House.-The resi

ture and size; but it is to be regretted that the parallel ceases when we come to the grounds. By itself it is a commodious and creditable building, serving its purpose without too much state for a republican country, yet likely, as long as the country exists without primogeniture and rank, to be sufficiently su