, while but six miles above they float
nothing larger than a Bladensburg goose. To the left flows the Potomac,
a mile wide. Between the rivers lies Washington. A vast amphitheatre,
its green or gray walls cloven only by the two rivers, appears to
surround the city. "Amphitheatre" is the word, for within the great
circle, proportioned to it in size and magnificence, dwarfing all other
objects, stands the veritable arena where our public gladiators and wild
beasts hold their combats. This of course is the Capitol, whose white
dome rises like a blossoming lily from the dark expanse below.

Along these summits are the remains of a chain of earthworks that
completely enveloped the capital. They are all overgrown by verdure, and
are fast disappearing; but whenever the site of one is relieved against
the clear sky a grassy embrasure or a bit of rampart may yet be seen
from a distance. Here stretched

The watchfires of a hundred circling camps,

whose light is in the "Battle-Hymn of the Republic," for it was a
personal view of them, and of these altars built in the evening dews and
damps, which gave form to the great lyric. Here in a few years, when
more of the business-men of Washington shall have learned how to do
business, or when her social development shall have detained the
cultured and wealthy who now come and go, will be found a circle of
beautiful villas and nearly all the luxuries of summer life.

Below the high bank opposite, where the Congressional Cemetery skirts
the city, where some famous men are actually buried, and where Congress
places cenotaphs that look like long rows of antiquated beehives for all
who die while members of that body, a line of black dots crosses the
Anacostia like the corks of a fisherman's seine. They are the piles that
upheld a bridge in the summer of 1814. On the hills to the right the
little army of five thousand redcoats made a feint toward this bridge,
and caused the Americans to burn it. Away to the left, across the
Potomac, stretches Long Bridge, which was also fired the next night by
the British and by the fleeing inhabitants of the captured town.

The eight miles of Virginia shore visible from Washington contain really
but three objects. Two or three dark chimneys and steeples and a few
misty outlines are all one needs to see of Alexandria, which is six
miles down the river, and appears about as ancient as its Egyptian
namesake. Nearer, the monotony is broken by the tower o