respect for public opinion would urge that the enormous whole be summed
up in the comparatively safe and respectful assertion, that the one only
absolutely certain thing in Washington is the absence of everything
that is at all permanent. The following are some of the more obnoxious
astonishments of the place.

Traversing a rocky prairie inflated with hacks, you arrive late in the
afternoon at a curbed boundary, too fatigued in body and too suffocated
with dust to resent the insult to your common-sense implied in the
announcement that you have merely crossed what is called an Avenue.
Recovered from your fatigue, you ascend the steps of a marble palace,
and enter but to find it garrisoned by shabby regiments armed with
quills and steel pens. The cells they inhabit are gloomy as dungeons,
but furnished like parlors. Their business is to keep everybody's
accounts but their own. They are of all ages, but of a uniformly
dejected aspect. Do not underrate their value. Mr. Bulwer has said,
that, in the hands of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the
sword. Suffer yourself to be astonished at their numbers, but permit
yourself to withdraw from their vicinity without questioning too closely
their present utility or future destination. No personal affront to the
public or the nineteenth century is intended by the superfluity of their
numbers or the inadequacy of their capacities. Their rapid increase is
attributable not to any incestuous breeding in-and-in among themselves,
but to a violent seduction of the President and the Heads of Department
by importunate Congressmen; and you may rest assured that this criminal
multiplication fills nobody with half so much righteous indignation and
virtuous sorrow as the clerks themselves. Emerging from the palace of
quill-drivers, a new surprise awaits you. The palace is surmounted by
what appear to be gigantic masts and booms, economically, but strongly
rigged, and without any sails. In the distance, you see other palaces