Distance lends more enchantment to a view of Washington than to most other views. Covering a good deal of ground, possessing two or three very fine points in itself, and lying in the centre of a superb outer circle of scenery, it has all the qualities which a draftsman could desire for his sketch. Thus much was seen or anticipated by the sagacious eye of the great patriot whose name it bears. Every one knows, however, that the location of the President’s House was the result of after speculation, or rather the result of a dispute between the owners of estates, two miles distant from each other, each desirous of locating all the public buildings on his own land, but who, like children quarrelling for a sugar-toy, pulled the subject of dispute in two. The Capitol was already placed on one elevation, and the President’s House carried off two miles to another. The consequence is, that the town itself, which, being a merely legislative metropolis, could never be very large, stretches and straddles between these two distant points, trying in vain to grow into compactness, and form the continuous and close-built street of a city. The common sagacity acquired by travel is of little use to the stranger arriving for the first time in Washington. Visiting it during the session of Congress, he thinks himself very safe in requesting to be set down at the hotel nearest the Capitol, presuming, naturally, that this must be the great centre of convenience, as well as of interest. He accordingly takes a pigeon-hole at Gadsby’s Hotel, a vast white wooden caravanserai, accommodating many hundreds of people; and on the first day, walks half a mile to the Capitol, and wonders why the deuce the hotel was not built on some of the waste lots immediately at the foot of the hill. In a day or two, however, the secretaries and diplomatists begin to call on him, and the party-giving inhabitants shower upon him the “small rain” of pink billets. He sets apart a day for returning his visits; and, inquiring the addresses of his friends, is told that it is impossible to direct him, but _the hackney coachmen all know_. He calls a carriage, and the first thing is a drive of two miles directly away from the Capitol. He passes the President’s House, and getting off the Macadamized road, begins to pitch and plunge through miry lanes and waste lots, passing occasionally a house which lacks nothing of being in the country but trees, garden, and fences. It looks as if it had rained naked brick houses upon an open plain, and every man had made a street with reference to his own front door. The much shaken and more bewildered victim consumes his morning and his temper, and has made by dinner-time but six out of forty calls, all imperatively due, and all to be traced through the same irregular and ill-defined geography. He pays a price for his hackney coach which would keep a chariot and two posters for twice the time in London, and the next day moves into the disjointed