settlement on the other side of President’s Square, abandons the Capitol, except on great occasions, and makes all visits by proxy that are not for a dance, or a dinner. _Malgré_ all these inconveniences, however, Washington is by much the most agreeable place in the United States for winter society. The great deficiency in all our cities, the company of highly cultivated and superior men, is here supplied. Female society, in any city or village, is seldom wanting in interest or cultivation; for women refine and elevate themselves with or without the advantages of metropolitan intercourse. But the men of our cities, devoted usually to one engrossing and depressing pursuit, have little time and less inclination to form themselves for intellectual intercourse. The ordeal through which a legislator must have come who finds himself at Washington, however, implies force of character at least, and oftenest, high talent; while the leaders and principal opposers of the ruling party, are, more necessarily than in any other country, men of exalted abilities and great experience of men and the world. The smaller lines which define polished society in May Fair, and the Faubourg St. Germain, may be wanting, but the stamen and spirit of high and cultivated intercourse, such as may well please the most fastidious, is seen in all the society in which the stranger would mingle during the session. [Illustration] VIEW OF BALTIMORE. * * * * * The hospitable and wealthy metropolis of Maryland owes its location to the principle, that “second thoughts are best.” The two brothers of Lord Baltimore, one of whom, Leonard Calvert, had been appointed governor of the province, landed with his two hundred colonists on the north side of the Potomac, and there founded the town of St. Mary’s, the intended capital of Maryland. Little remains of St. Mary’s now, though it enjoyed its prospective honours for several years; and, as the historian says, “the worthy burghers cleared the adjacent lands, lived at peace with their Indian neighbours, and dozed away life, amid their tobacco-fields, with a comfortable and satisfactory sense of their own mark and importance.” The principal event in its history, is an attack upon it by a certain Captain Ingle, who, in the course of a rebellion, seized upon the public records, and drove the governor over the Potomac into Virginia.