WASHINGTON, FROM THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE.

49

Hale was collected and calm. To the last he displayed his native elevation of soul, and his dignity of deportment.

"But," says a distinguished writer of biography, "whatever may have been the parallel between these two individuals while living, it ceased with their death. A monument was raised and consecrated to the memory of André by the bounty of a grateful sovereign. His ashes have been removed from their obscure restingplace, transported across the ocean, and deposited with the remains of the illustrious dead in Westminster Abbey. Where is the memento of the virtues, the patriotic sacrifice, the early fate of Hale?"

WASHINGTON,

(FROM THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE.)

DISTANCE lends more enchantment to a view of Washington than to most other views. Covering a good deal of ground, possessing two or three very fine points in itself, and lying in the centre of a superb outer circle of scenery, it has all the qualities which a draftsman could desire for his sketch. Thus much was seen or anticipated by the sagacious eye of the great patriot whose name it bears. Every one knows, however, that the location of the President's House was the result of after speculation, or rather the result of a dispute between the owners of estates, two miles distant from each other, each desirous of locating all the public buildings on his own land, but who, like children quarrelling for a sugar-toy, pulled the subject of dispute in two. The Capitol was already placed on one elevation, and the President's House carried off two miles to another. The consequence is, that the town itself, which, being a merely legislative metropolis, could never be very large, stretches and straddles between these two distant points, trying in vain to grow into compactness, and form the continuous and close-built street of a city.

The common sagacity acquired by travel is of little use to the stranger arriving for the first time in Washington. Visiting it during the session of Congress, he thinks himself very safe in requesting to be set down at the hotel nearest the

VOL. II.

50

WASHINGTON, FROM THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE.

Capitol, presuming, naturally, that this must be the great centre of convenience, as well as of interest. He accordingly takes a pigeon-hole at Gadsby's Hotel, a vast white wooden caravanserai, accommodating many hundreds of people; and on the first day, walks half a mile to the Capitol, and wonders why the deuce the hotel was not built on some of the waste lots immediately at the foot of the hill. In a day or two, however, the secretaries and diplomatists begin to call on him, and the party-giving inhabitants shower upon him the "small rain" of pink billets. He sets apart a day for returning his visits; and, inquiring the addresses of his friends, is told that it is impossible to direct him, but the hackney coachmen all know. He calls a carriage, and the first thing is a drive of two miles directly away from the Capitol. He passes the President's House, and getting off the Macadamized road, begins to pitch and plunge through miry lanes and waste lots, passing occasionally a house which lacks nothing of being in the country but trees, garden, and fences. It looks as if it had rained naked brick houses upon an open plain, and every man had made a street with reference to his own front door. The much shaken and more bewildered victim consumes his morning and. his temper, and has made by dinner-time but six out of forty calls, all imperatively due, and all to be traced through the same irregular and ill-defined geography. He pays a price for his hackney coach which would keep a chariot and two posters for twice the time in London, and the next day moves into the disjointed settlement on the other side of President's Square, abandons the Capitol, except on great occasions, and makes all visits by proxy that are not for a dance, or a dinner.

Malgré all these inconveniences, however, Washington is by much the most agreeable place in the United States for winter society. The great deficiency in all our cities, the company of highly cultivated and superior men, is here supplied. Female society, in any city or village, is seldom wanting in interest or cultivation; for women refine and elevate themselves with or without the advantages of metropolitan intercourse. But the men of our cities, devoted usually to one engrossing and depressing pursuit, have little time and less inclination to form themselves for intellectual intercourse. The ordeal through which a legislator must have come who finds himself at Washington, however, implies force of character at least, and oftenest, high talent; while the leaders and principal opposers of the ruling party, are, more necessarily than in any other country, men of exalted abilities and great experience of men and the world. The smaller lines which define polished society in May Fair, and the Faubourg St. Germain, may be wanting, but the stamen and spirit of high and cultivated intercourse, such as may well please the most fastidious, is seen in all the society in which the stranger would mingle during the session.