manifestly destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do some wrong
to its eminently spacious and seemly actuality. But to the mind's eye,
to the ideal sense, it has the imperishable beauty of absolute fitness.
Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was founded there was some
thought of calling it "Federal City." How much finer, in its heroic and
yet human associations, is the name it bears! Since Alfred the Great,
the Anglo-Saxon race has produced no loftier or purer personality than
George Washington, and his country could not blazon on her shield a more
inspiring name. Carlyle's treatment of Washington is, perhaps, the most
unpardonable of his many similar offences. One almost wonders at the
forgiving spirit in which the decorators of the Library of Congress have
inscribed upon the walls of the new building certain maxims from the
splenetic Sage. And if the city is named with exquisite fitness, so are
its radiating avenues. Each of them takes its name from one of the
States of the Union--names which, as Stevenson long ago pointed out,
form an unrivalled array of "sweet and sonorous vocables." In its whole
conception, Washington is an ideal capital for the United States--not
least typical, perhaps, in its factitiousness, since this Republic is
not so much a product of natural development as a deliberate creation of
will and intelligence. It represents the struggle of an Idea against the
crude forces of nature and human nature. The Capitol, with its clear and
logical design, is as aptly symbolic of its history and function as are
our Houses of Parliament, with their bewildering but grandiose
agglomeration of shafts and turrets, spires and pinnacles; and the two
buildings should rank side by side in the esteem of the English-speaking
peoples, as the twin foci of our civilisation.