re is hardly a street but
down its vista some allurement is displayed: this one reaches far
away, through the green of willows and the blue of distance, across
the Long Bridge and into the hills of Virginia; that one ends in the
Agricultural Department and its delightful grounds; down these the
Institution is seen at various angles in various guises; while the
great Pennsylvania Avenue gives you at one end the Capitol dome,
always a thin and pale blue mist about its whiteness, with the shining
colonnades that bear it lifted high over the tossing treetops below,
and at the other end the southern facade of the Treasury, rising
before you like an antique temple, while noble views open at every
intersection of the cross-streets there; and toward nightfall the
distant mists of the river-country beyond build up sunsets unrivaled
in their gorgeousness.

There are few more interesting thoroughfares in the world than this
avenue. Here ruler and ruled jostle each other; here thunder the
liveried equipages of foreign nobles; here saunters the President, and
nobody turns to look. Sooner or later all the famous of the world
are tolerably sure to be met upon it: as we walk there History walks
beside us and mighty shadows move before us. Washington has dashed
down that avenue in his yellow chariot that was painted with cupids
and drawn by six white horses; Hamilton, Jefferson, La Fayette,
Burr, and all the gods of the republic have trodden it before us;
dishonoring British squadrons have marched upon it; it has shaken to
the tread of our own legions; and great forms begin to loom in the
national memory that have just passed from its daily crowds. Nor does
all its interest belong to the past: those daily crowds themselves are
full of perpetual dramas in which the actors are unknown perhaps to
fame or fiction, but none the less real and in sad earnest with their
play. Here goes a little withered man in his threadbare coat: he has
a proud and scowling face, but he pauses with a singularly sweet and
gentle manner at every group of children, black or white. He is an old
numismatician, a foreigner, and his youth in Europe was given to
the gathering of coins and medals till he had a nearly unrivaled
collection, and he came over the sea, hoping to dispose of them to
the government of this country. Failing in his purpose, his means
dwindling day by day, he was obliged to pledge a portion of his
treasure that he might be able to live. It cut h