the approbation of Congress when laid before them at
the next session. The city was laid out upon a plot containing eight
square miles.

The first session of the second Congress commenced at Philadelphia on
the twenty-fourth of October, in conformity to an act of the last
session of the first Congress. Washington had spent a greater portion of
the summer in the federal city, in close attention to public duties; but
for six weeks previous to the assembling of the national legislature he
remained in the seclusion of Mount Vernon. It was not for him a season
of repose. Every mail brought him numerous letters, most of them on
public business. Many of them gave him themes for deep and solemn
meditation; for national affairs at home and abroad were assuming forms
and attitudes that occasioned him much anxiety.

The French revolution, in which his friend Lafayette was engaged as a
chief actor, was exhibiting a most alarming and disappointing aspect to
the friends of genuine liberty; and the dreams of the marquis, that his
country was speedily to be redeemed from disorder and corrupt rule, were
disturbed by dismal visions of reality. "Whatever expectations I had
conceived of a speedy termination to our revolutionary troubles," he
wrote to Washington as early as the previous March, "I still am tossed
about in the ocean of factions and commotions of every kind; for it is
my fate to be attacked on each side with equal animosity; on the one by
the aristocratic, slavish, parliamentary, clerical--in a word, by all
the enemies to my free and levelling doctrine--and on the other by the
Orleans factions, anti-royal, licentious, and pillaging parties of every
kind: so that my personal escape from amidst so many hostile bands is
rather dubious, although our great and good revolution is, thank Heaven,
not only insured in France, but on the point of visiting other parts of
the world, provided the restoration of public order is soon obtained in
this country, where the good people have been better taught how to
overthrow despotism than they can understand how to submit to the laws.
To you, my dear general, the patriarch and generalissimo of universal
liberty, I shall render exact accounts of the conduct of your deputy and
aid in that great cause."

In May he wrote: "I wish it were in my power to give you an assurance
that our troubles are at an end, and our constitution totally
established. But, although dark clouds are still before us, we