WASHINGTON'S MONUMENT AT BALTIMORE.

THIS fine monument stands at the end of a long street, forming an ascending perspective; and as its base crowns the summit of a considerable hill, it is fully relieved against the sky, and shows very nobly. The square which immediately surrounds it is newly divided into building-lots, and is becoming the "west end" of Baltimore. The Monument and the handsome buildings which are going up around are a mutual improvement of appearance.

The design of this monument was conceived in 1809, when a company obtained leave of the legislature to raise 100,000 dollars for the purpose by a lottery. By the year 1815, funds sufficient to authorize the commencement of the work had been raised, and a plan had been furnished by Mr. Robert Mills. On the 4th of July, the corner stone was laid upon ground presented by Col. John E. Howard. The monument is a Doric column upon a square base, surmounted by a pedestal, upon which is placed a colossal statue of Washington. The base is fifty feet square, and is elevated twenty feet; the column, to the feet of the statue, is one hundred and sixty feet, and the statue is thirteen feet in height. The statue is the work of Causici, an Italian, and represents Washington at the instant when he resigned his commission after the Revolution.

There were three periods in Washington's life, and either of the two first would alone have placed him in the highest roll of the names of great men. The close of his military life (here represented) terminated the first period. His civil career in the presidency terminated the second; and here all comparison between Washington and any other man that ever lived ceases entirely. With a fame as complete as his,

BOD

WASHINGTON'S MONUMENT AT BALTIMORE.

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on his second retirement to Mount Vernon, a sincere and ardent wish to pass the remainder of his days in peaceful seclusion, and domestic ties and attachments of the strongest character; with all this around him, to come out once more from his tent of glory, and at his country's call to expose his bright name again to the hazards of failure, and to the eagerness of human envy and misconstruction,—this seems to me the sublimest moment of the life of Washington.

"You know, Sir," he says in his letter to the President, accepting the office of commander-in-chief of the army, "what calculations I had made relative to the probable course of events on my retiring from office, and the determination with which I had consoled myself of closing the remnant of my days in my present peaceful abode. You will, therefore, be at no loss to conceive and appreciate the sensations I must have experienced to bring my mind to any conclusion that would pledge me, at so late a period of life, to leave scenes I sincerely love to enter upon the boundless field of public action, incessant trouble, and high responsibility."

It is singular how all the contemporaneous judgments of Washington's character unite in ascribing the difficulty of drawing his portrait to the unity, harmony, and perfectability of his character. Chastellux says very forcibly, "If you are presented with medals of Cæsar, of Trajan, or Alexander, on examining their features you will still be led to ask, what was their stature and the form of their persons; but if you discover in a heap of ruins the head or a limb of the Apollo, be not curious about the other parts, but rest assured that they were all conformable to those of a god. Let not this impression be attributed to enthusiasm. I wish only to express the impression that Washington has left on my mind: the idea of a perfect whole, that cannot be the produce of enthusiasm, which rather would reject it, since the effect of proportion is to diminish the idea of greatness."

In a funereal eulogy pronounced by Mr. Ware at Hingham, occurs nearly the same sentiment.

"The image of this great man is not like that of most others who have shone with distinguished lustre in the annals of the world. It is not composed of some bright spots surrounded with dark shades, so as to dazzle without enlightening the beholder. His character is not an assemblage of great talents by the side of great defects, and splendid virtues contaminated by their vicinity to atrocious vices: he shone with a clear and steady lustre, which, if it seldom appeared with flashes of splendour to dazzle and astonish, was yet never mingled with shades, nor intercepted by clouds. The circumstance which seems to distinguish his name from that of all others, is not the pre-eminence of any one talent or virtue, but a unity of character resulting from the perfect combination and exact balancing of all those great and good qualities, which enter into the character of one who is to possess public esteem, guide public opinion, and command universal respect and confidence."

EAST PORT, AND PASSAMAQUODDY BAY.

THE people of this beautiful State are just now enduring a double share of the evils of border location, having not only the ill-directed "sympathy" with the insurrectionists of Canada to repress, but the excitement of the newly-vexed question of boundary. As this last subject is one little understood, perhaps the history of the negotiations on the subject may not be unacceptable to the readers of the AMERICAN SCENERY.

"In their endeavours to bring about the settlement of another contested point, the two governments were less successful than they had been with respect to the commercial intercourse between America and the West India Island. This point related to the fixing the north-eastern boundary of the United States.

"By the treaty of 1783, which recognised their independence, it was declared that the eastern boundary of the United States, dividing them from Nova Scotia, should be a line to be drawn along the middle of the river St. Croix, from its mouth in the bay of Fundy to its source, and from its source, directly north, to the highlands, which divide the rivers that fall into the Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the river St. Lawrence.' The northern line, separating Canada from the New States, was to commence from the north-west angle of Nova Scotia ; viz. that angle which is formed by a line drawn due north from the source of the St. Croix river to the highlands, along the said highlands, which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to the north-westernmost head of Connecticut river; thence, descending along that river to the forty-fifth degree of latitude, thence due west