rigged in the same manner. The effect of this spectacle is painful in
the extreme. Standing dry-shod as the Israelites were while crossing the
Red Sea, you nevertheless seem to be in the midst of a small fleet of
unaccountable sloops of the Saurian period. You question whether these
are not the fabulous "Ships of State" so often mentioned in the elegant
oratory of your country. You observe that these ships are anchored in an
ocean of pavement, and your no longer trustworthy eyes search vainly
for their helms. The nearest approach to a rudder is a chimney or an
unfinished pillar; the closest resemblance to a pilot is a hod-carrying
workman clambering up a gangway. Dismissing the nautical hypothesis,
your next effort to relieve your perplexity results in the conjecture
that the prodigious masts and booms may be nothing more than curious
gibbets, the cross-pieces to which, conforming rigidly to the Washington
rule of contrariety, are fastened to the bottom instead of the top of
the upright. Your theory is, that the destinies of the nation are to be
hanged on these monstrous gibbets, and you wonder whether the laws of
gravitation will be complaisant enough to turn upside down for the
accommodation of the hangman, whoever he may be. It is not without
pain that you are forced at last to the commonplace belief that these
remarkable mountings of the Public Buildings are neither masts nor
booms, but simply derricks,--mechanical contrivances for the lifting of
very heavy weights. It is some consolation, however, to be told that
the weakness of these derricks has never been proved by the endeavor
to elevate by means of them the moral character of the inhabitants of
Washington. Content yourself, after a reasonable delay for natural
wonderment, to leave the strange scene. This shipping-like aspect of the
incomplete Departments is only a nice architectural tribute to the fact
that the population of Washington is a floating population. This you
will not be long in finding out. The oldest inhabitants are here to-day
and gone tomorrow, as punctually, if not as poetically, as the Arabs of