Washington would be a beautiful city if it were built; but as it is not I cannot say much about it. There is the Capitol, however, standing like the sun, from which are to radiate majestic beams of streets and avenues of enormous breadth and astonishing length; but at present the execution limps and lingers sadly after the design.

This noble metropolitan myth hovers over the north bank of the Potomac (this Indian name means, I believe, the wild swan, or the river of the wild swan), about one hundred and twenty miles from Chesapeake bay and at the head of tide water. Pennsylvania-avenue is splendid : it is about three hundred feet broad; but the houses are not colossal enough to be in keeping with the immense space appropriated to the thoroughfare. They should be at least as high as the highest of old Edinburgh houses, instead of like those of London, which some one compared to the Paris ones making a profound curtsey. Now these Pennsylvania-avenue habitations seem making a very distant curtsey indeed to their opposite non-neighbours; and it made us think of people at an immensely wide dining-table, separated as “far as the poles asunder,’ by way of a pleasing rencontre and social intercourse. However, that is merely fancy; you do not want to talk across the streets; and this appearance would vanish if the houses were taller and larger.