might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnificent
Intentions; for it is only on taking a bird’s-eye view of it from
the top of the Capitol, that one can at all comprehend the vast
designs of its projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spacious avenues,
that begin in nothing, and lead nowhere; streets, mile-long, that
only want houses, roads and inhabitants; public buildings that need
but a public to be complete; and ornaments of great thoroughfares,
which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament – are its leading
features. One might fancy the season over, and most of the houses
gone out of town for ever with their masters. To the admirers of
cities it is a Barmecide Feast: a pleasant field for the
imagination to rove in; a monument raised to a deceased project,
with not even a legible inscription to record its departed
greatness.
Such as it is, it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen
for the seat of Government, as a means of averting the conflicting
jealousies and interests of the different States; and very
probably, too, as being remote from mobs: a consideration not to
be slighted, even in America. It has no trade or commerce of its
own: having little or no population beyond the President and his
establishment; the members of the legislature who reside there
during the session; the Government clerks and officers employed in
the various departments; the keepers of the hotels and boardinghouses;
and the tradesmen who supply their tables. It is very
unhealthy. Few people would live in Washington, I take it, who
were not obliged to reside there; and the tides of emigration and
speculation, those rapid and regardless currents, are little likely
to flow at any time towards such dull and sluggish water.
The principal features of the Capitol, are, of course, the two
houses of Assembly. But there is, besides, in the centre of the
building, a fine rotunda, ninety-six feet in diameter, and ninetysix
high, whose circular wall is divided into compartments,
ornamented by historical pictures. Four of these have for their
subjects prominent events in the revolutionary struggle. They were
painted by Colonel Trumbull, himself a member of Washington’s staff
at the time of their occurrence; from which circumstance they
derive a peculiar interest of their own. In this same hall Mr.
Greenough’s large statue of Washington has been lately placed. It
has great merits of course, but it struck me as being rather
strained and violent for its subject. I could wish, however, to
have seen it in a better light than it can ever be viewed in, where
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Dickens, Charles – American Notes for General Circulation
it stands.
There is a very pleasant and commodious library in the Capitol; and
from a balcony in front, the bird’s-eye view, of which I have just
spoken, may be had, together with a beautiful prospect of the
adjacent country. In one of the ornamented portions of the
building, there is a figure of Justice; whereunto the Guide Book
says, ‘the artist at first contemplated giving more of nudity, but
he was warned that the public sentiment in this country would not
admit of it, and in his caution he has gone, perhaps, into the
opposite extreme.’ Poor Justice! she has been made to wear much
stranger garments in America than those she pines in, in the
Capitol. Let us hope that she has changed her dress-maker since
they were fashioned, and that the public sentiment of the country
did not cut out the clothes she hides her lovely figure in, just
now.
The House of Representatives is a beautiful and spacious hall, of
semicircular shape, supported by handsome pillars. One part of the
gallery is appropriated to the ladies, and there they sit in front
rows, and come in, and go out, as at a play or concert. The chair
is canopied, and raised considerably above the floor of the House;
and every member has an easy chair and a writing desk to himself:
which is denounced by some people out of doors as a most
unfortunate and injudicious arrangement, tending to long sittings
and prosaic speeches. It is an elegant chamber to look at, but a