ow they appear dingy; under a
summer sun they must show to far greater advantage. What ancient Athens
appeared like, surrounding its marble temples, I can hardly realize; but
the effect of the splendid public buildings in Washington is very much
detracted from by the sheds and shanties which are near them. The
builders of Washington determined that it should be a great city, and
staked out its streets accordingly twice the width and length of any
other streets: rightly is it named the city of magnificent distances.
But although the Potomac is certainly wide enough, and apparently deep
enough, to justify a certain amount of trade, and its situation is more
central than that of Philadelphia, the town has never grown to fill the
outlines traced for it.

To make a Washington street, take one marble temple or public office, a
dozen good houses of brick, and a dozen of wood, and fill in with sheds
and fields. Some blight seems to have fallen upon the city. It is the
only place we have seen which is not full of growth and vitality. I have
even heard its inhabitants tell stories of nightly pig-hunts in the
streets, and of the danger of tumbling over a cow on the pavement on a
dark night; but this must refer to by-gone times.

One of the most curious and characteristic of the great public buildings
of Washington is the Patent Office, in which a working model is
deposited of every patent taken out in the United States for the
improvement of machinery.

This assemblage of specimens is an exhibition of which all Americans are
proud, as a proof of the activity of American ingenuity working in every
direction. Capacity to take out a patent is a quality necessary to make
up the character of the perfect citizen. Labor is honorable, but the man
who can invent a labor-saving machine is more honorable; he has gained a
step in the great struggle with the powers of nature. An American who
has utilized a water-power feels, I take it, two distinct and separate
pleasures: first, in that dollars and cents drip off his water-wheel,
and, secondly, in that he has inveigled the water-sprites into doing his
work. If you tell an American that you are going to Washington, his
first remark is not, "Then you will see Congress sitting," but, "Mind
you go and see the Patent Office."

THE NATURAL BRIDGE AND TUNNEL OF VIRGINIA.

EDWARD A. POLLARD.

[The Old Dominion--to give Virginia its home title--is full
of natural wonders, some of