cannot repeat brains--to kill not only the
town, but the people in it. This was the great pestiferous open sewer
that stole into a filthy existence under the name of the Washington
Canal.

But there was a greater misfortune than any of these. Slavery need only
be mentioned. More of Washington's present defects are attributable to
it in one way or another than to all else. Yet under this crowning
calamity, added to the others, the undulating plain before us, which
appears so sluggish from the height to which we have climbed, has within
seventy-five years passed from a wilderness into a city of one hundred
and eleven thousand inhabitants. Although the general government kept
the breath of life in it during a period when perhaps nothing else could
have done so, yet such a growth, under all the circumstances, cannot be
accounted for without recognizing an inherent strength that has never
been acknowledged by the multitudes who come to "see" Washington. It
proves that she may have a significance of her own. The visitor should
remember that New York and Boston are enjoying, and Philadelphia has
nearly reached, the third century of their lives.

This scene from the heights is a fascinating one for the day-dreamer.
Everything is in harmony with the past character of the capital.
Everything is misty, vast, uncertain, grand and ill-defined. One does
not see clearly the boundaries--the city and country are one. Every
street we trace in the distance, almost every building, almost every
foot of ground, has gathered something of tradition from the lives of
the statesmen, generals, jurists, diplomates who have lived and wrought
here for three-quarters of a century. The visions that passed before the
eyes of Washington as he stood on the Observatory Hill there, a
subaltern under Braddock, contemplating the wilderness about him and
imagining the future; the pictures that filled the fancy of the
intractable L'Enfant as he defined the great mall and thought of the
gardens between the Tuileries and the Chamber of Deputies; Andrew J.
Downing giving his last days to such an arrangement of the trees and
grass as would be worthy of the design; President Madison and his
cabinet, with a useless little army at their heels, flying in despair
from yonder bloody hillside; Admiral Cockburn derisively riding an old
mare up Pennsylvania Avenue; the burning Capitol and White House
lighting up the gloom of that hideous night; Stephen Decatur shot to
de