ted castles of genii. Long suites of apartments
with frescoed walls, ceilings of gold and pearl, floors inlaid with
exquisite mosaics of silver and ebony, and with hangings of costly
lace, velvet and satin, huge waxen candles, and lamps fed with
perfumed oil that are never suffered to expire, mirrors, pictures, and
statuettes innumerable, with cups, basins, and even spittoons, of
pure gold,--all these are but a tithe of the lavish adornments of this
Oriental paradise, where birds sing, flowers bloom, and the sounds
of low sweet music ever greet the ear of the favored visitor. The
accompanying engraving will give some idea of the general appearance
of the entrance to the harem, with its burnished roof of green and
gold, its graceful turrets and mosque-like pinnacles, and its base
of pure white marble, chaste and elegant. But neither language nor
pictorial illustration can convey to the mind any adequate realization
of its bewildering beauty; and Count de Beauvoir but echoes the
language of every traveler who has visited Bangkok when he declares,
in his recent work, that "its temples and palaces are the most
splendid of even the gorgeous East."

FANNIE R. FEUDGE.

LIFE AT THE NATIONAL CAPITAL.

There are few cities where life is so well put upon the stage as in
Washington, so far as opportunity for satisfaction and enjoyment is
considered. A certain grandeur characterizes all the approaches to
the city. From the west you descend upon it by a way that leads out
of cloudy mountain-chains and over chasms spanned by an awful
trestle-work; from the south, passing our national Mecca, the Tomb
of Washington, your highway is the picturesque Potomac, which here,
nearly three hundred miles from the sea, broadly embays itself as
if to mirror the magnificence of the place; from the north the track
winds along the banks of the Delaware, white with its coastwise
commerce, in and out among the beautiful bridges that arch the
Schuylkill, across the broad Susquehanna, past blazing forges and
foundries, and over the long and lonely expanses of the two Gunpowder
Rivers--desert wastes of water, stretching for miles away without a
sail, without a light, in the melancholy grandeur of a very dream of
desolation. If it is at night that you step from the station, halfway
down the distance you presently see the ray of a street-lamp throw up
the facade of the Patent Office in broken light and shadow; you see
before you and under the hil