In conclusion, it must be admitted that Washington is the Elysium of oddities, the Limbo of absurdities, an imbroglio of ludicrous anomalies.  Planned on a scale of surpassing grandeur, its architectural execution is almost contemptible.  Blessed with the name of the purest of men, it has the reputation of Sodom.  The seat of the law-making power, it is the centre of violence and disorder which disturb the peace and harmony of the whole Republic,—­the chosen resort for duelling, clandestine marriages, and the most stupendous thefts.  It is a city without commerce and without manufactures; or rather, its commerce is illicit, and its manufacturers are newspaper-correspondents, who weave tissues of fiction out of the warp of rumor and the web of prevarication.  The site of the United States Treasury, it is the home of everything but affluence.  Its public buildings are splendid, its private dwellings generally squalid.  The houses are low, the rents high; the streets are broad, the crossings narrow; the hacks are black, the horses white; the squares are triangles, except that of the Capitol, which is oval; and the water is so soft that it is hard to drink it, even with the admixture of alcohol.  It has a Monument that will never be finished, a Capitol that is to have a dome, a Scientific Institute which does nothing but report the rise and fall of the thermometer, and two pieces of Equestrian Statuary which it would be a waste of time to criticize.  It boasts a streamlet dignified with the name of the river Tiber, and this streamlet is of the size and much the appearance of a vein in a dirty man’s arm.  It has a canal, but the canal is a mud-puddle during one half the day and an empty ditch during the other.  In spite of the labors of the Smithsonian Institute, it has no particular weather.  It has the climates of all parts of the habitable globe.  It rains, hails, snows, blows, freezes, and melts in Washington, all in the space of twenty-four hours.  After a fortnight of steady rain, the sun shines out, and in half an hour the streets are filled with clouds of dust.  Property in Washington is exceedingly sensitive, the people alarmingly callous.  The men are fine-looking, the women homely.  The latter have plain faces, but magnificent busts and graceful figures.  The former have an imposing presence and an empty pocket, a great name and a small conscience.  Notwithstanding all these impediments and disadvantages, Washington is progressing rapidly.  It is fast becoming a large city, but it must always remain a deserted village in the summer.  Its destiny is that of the Union.  It will be the greatest capital the world ever saw, or it will be “a parched place in the wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited,” and “every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished and wag his head.”

MIDSUMMER AND MAY.

[Concluded.]

Spring at last stole placidly into summer, and Marguerite, who was always shivering in the house, kept the company in a whirl of out-door festivals.