use are several
handsome dwellings, which are chiefly occupied by the foreign
ministers. The houses in the other parts of the city are
scattered, but without ever losing sight of the regularity of the
original plan; and to a person who has been travelling much
through the country, and marked the immense quantity of new
manufactories, new canals, new railroads, new towns, and new
cities, which are springing, as it were, from the earth in every
part of it, the appearance of the metropolis rising gradually
into life and splendour, is a spectacle of high historic
interest.

Commerce had already produced large and handsome cities in
America before she had attained to an individual political
existence, and Washington may be scorned as a metropolis, where
such cities as Philadelphia and New York exist; but I considered
it as the growing metropolis of the growing population of the
Union, and it already possesses features noble enough to sustain
its dignity as such.

The residence of the foreign legations and their families gives a
tone to the society of this city which distinguishes it greatly
from all others. It is also, for a great part of the year, the
residence of the senators and representatives, who must be
presumed to be the _elite_ of the entire body of citizens, both
in respect to talent and education. This cannot fail to make
Washington a more agreeable abode than any other city in the
Union.

The total absence of all sights, sounds, or smells of commerce,
adds greatly to the charm. Instead of drays you see handsome
carriages; and instead of the busy bustling hustle of men,
shuffling on to a sale of "dry goods" or "prime broad stuffs,"
you see very well-dressed personages lounging leisurely up and
down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mr. Pishey Thompson, the English bookseller, with his pretty
collection of all sorts of pretty literature, fresh from London,
and Mr. Somebody, the jeweller, with his brilliant shop full of
trinkets, are the principal points of attraction and business.
What a contrast to all other American cities! The members, who
pass several months every year in this lounging easy way, with no
labour but a little talking, and with the _douceur_ of eight
dollars a day to pay them for it, must feel the change sadly when
their term of public service is over.

There is another circumstance which renders the evening parties
at Washington extremely unlike those of other places in the
Union; this is the