air, and an agglomeration of saliva, ending
with an impertinent clerk and two crescents of lazy waiters, who shy
whisks, and are ambitious to run superfluous errands, for the warrant to
rob you. Of people, you see squads; of residents, none. The public
edifices have not picked their company, neither have the public
functionaries. There is a quantity of vulgar statuary lying around,
horses standing on their tails, and impossible Washingtons imbedded in
arm-chairs; but the noble facade of the treasury always suggests to me
Couture's great picture of the Decadence, where, under a pure colonnade,
some tipplers are carousing. If we are to have statues at the Capital,
let us make them with uplifted hands, and shame upon their grave,
contemplative faces.

Shall we ever make Washington the representative Capital of the country?

Certainly all efforts to improve the site worthy of the seat of gigantic
legislation have hitherto failed. The sword and the malaria have
attacked it. Every year sees the President driven from his Mansion by
pestilential vapors, and the sanitary condition of the city is
extraordinarily bad. The carcasses of slain horses at Giesboro send
their effluvia straight into Washington on the wind, and the "Island,"
or that part of the city between the river and the canal, is dangerous
almost all the year.

Moreover, the entire river front of the city seems to be untenable,
except for negroes; the Washington monument stands on the yielding plain
in the rear of the Chief Magistrate's, a stunted ruin, finding no
foundation; and much of the great Capital reserve near by, would be a
dead weight, if any effort were made to dispose it of, as building lots.
The small portion of Washington lying upon Capitol Hill, is the most
salubrious and covetable; but it is a lonesome journey by night around
the Capitol grounds to the city. The finest residences lie north of the
President's house, but the number of these grows apace, and the quantity
of capital invested in private real estate, remains almost stationary.

We recall but two or three citizens of Washington who have spent their
money on the spot where they have made it. Corcoran was the most
generous; he erected a museum of art, and Government has made it a
Commissary depot! But how few of the illustrious Senators, Chief
Justices, Generals, etc., who draw their sustenance from the Capital,
care a penny to decorate it? Compare the home of Governor Sprague on 6th
Stre