The National Hotel disease was from some local cause, probably an obstruction in the sewer, and has never reappeared.

The monthly published records of deaths show that the mortality here is no greater than in other places, and negatives the notion of there being any disease peculiar to the spot.

CONCLUSION OF HISTORY.

We have traced the history of the place up to the present time, not however touching upon the capture by the British or other details, which have no bearing upon the objects proposed in establishing a Federal city and the extent to which they have been realised. All our remarks, too, are to be understood as applying to the place in time of peace, and not to the present extraordinary state of things when the city is crowded with a population three or "four times as great as usual, making it uncomfortable and expensive as a place of residence. Heretofore the value of land has been controlled to a great degree by the wants of those connected with the ordinary operations of Government, and the majority of clerks have been able to lease, and even own property within a reasonable distance of the places of business to far greater advantage than they could in the

same sections of New York, Philadelphia or Baltimore.

Much remains to be done by Government. Residences should be provided for the Secretaries, and the original plan for furnishing lots to foreign Governments should be carried into execution. Other needed public improvements have been glanced at in previous pages. All these will probably be accomplished in course of time.

If it was good policy to build a city expressly for a Seat of Government, it is policy to do it well; if it was not good policy, it is now too. late to undo what we have done.

The history of all nations shows that the political Capital has exercised no small amount of influence, even when not invested with any great power or splendor. As the seat of all the prominent events in the nation's political history, the place where all its public men have figured, and the site of its principal monuments, it becomes a kind of rallying point for patriotism, where new interests are every year concentrated. What Englishman does not feel a double attachment to London for its Westminster Abbey and Hall! And such, too, is the feeling with which the Frenchman regards Notre Dame, the Tuileries, and the hundred other edifices rich in mementos of the past, at Paris.

Americans have heretofore evinced but little of that patriotic sentiment which hallows particular spots, Mount Vernon being almost the only exception. Probably the city founded by Washington would have shared this interest with his birthplace to a larger extent, had it been more attractive in appearance. Everything about it has been too unfinished to have any of the rust of antiquity. Although covered with dust, it was not the dust of time which gilds over the decay and neglect so long visible at Washington's home. The city was far more attractive to the Southerners than to those from the North, and the former did not leave it without a pang, and some expectation, as intimated by Iverson in the Senate, that when Maryland and Virginia should have seceded, they would again occupy those marble halls, in a climate more genial at all seasons than that of Montgomery. We have, in our opening chapter, given some reasons for the opinion that one consequence of the Rebellion will be an increase of interest in the place on the part of the people generally. Until this war we have had nothing corresponding to the sentiment of loyalty which is so intense in aristocratic countries. State allegiance has interfered with that due to the nation. But the same spirit which has everywhere revived the zeal for our national songs,

and which, amid the turmoil of civil war, has kept the artificers at work and the great dome steadily arising over the Capitol, will lead the visitor to look upon that edifice as our Westminster; bearing, in every hall painting and statue, mementos of the national struggles, and standing on the only territory which is the common property of all, and governed and sustained exclusively by the Union. It is not too much to suppose that, as Englishmen now look back on their own civil wars, so future generations may here look with complacency on the representation of scenes where their ancestors took opposite sides; but from which all will then agree in deducing good.

XXII.

THE CAPITOL.

THE first object which attracts the traveller's attention as he enters Washington by rail, is the Capitol, and, as thus seen, it cannot be said to present a very imposing appearance. Only one end is visible, with a portion of the dome, and the edifice appears to stand all alone, with everything around in a state of incompleteness, -unfinished streets, looking as if they were never to be finished, and here and there, a

shabby building, serving only to give a desolate aspect to the scene.

It is not unusual, on the continent, to see a noble cathedral surrounded by miserable tumble-down structures, many of which are so ancient as to indicate that the shrine never had an appropriate setting; and this circumstance makes the surroundings of the Capitol a matter of less remark to a foreigner than to an American, whose first impressions are that the edifice never will have any buildings around in keeping with its own grandeur; though this would be a very hasty conclusion, if we could only divert our minds from the thought of the civil war and its effects. At all events, there is room for hope here in the future. There is none in the case of the cathedral, for there the past is everything, with no reason for believing that any brighter future will ever arise.

Much of the ground around the Capitol belongs to the Government, and is to be inclosed when the building is completed. The horse railroad has been constructed across it, which will be an unsightly feature, unless a tunnel, or some other contrivance, be introduced to hide it from view.

As you approach the city from the Potomac, the public buildings all appear to great advantage, being on high ground and rising