The Capitol presents a very noble appearance, as the spectator advances to it in the point of view taken by the artist; and from what is shown of the proportions and size of the building, a very imposing effect is produced. Its height, the ascending terraces, the monument and its fountain, the grand balustrade of freestone which protects the offices below, and the distinct object which it forms, standing alone on its lofty site, combine to make up the impression of grandeur, in which its architectural defects are lost or forgotten. The waste lands which lie at the foot of Capitol Hill might be marshes in the centre of a wilderness for any trace of cultivation about them; but they are appropriated for a botanical garden, when Congress shall find time to order its arrangement and cultivation. This, however, and other features of desolation which belong to so thinly settled a metropolis, are said, by the defenders of Washington’s foresight, to answer one of his chief ends, in the location of the Capitol far from any commercial centre—that to prevent intimidation or interference from the people, the legislative capital should be thinly peopled, and in the power exclusively of the legislators themselves. The district of Columbia, accordingly, which was presented and set apart to the General Congress, by the different states, has a sort of civic government, of which the President of the United States held, in the first instance, the office of Mayor, and by its distance from the sea, and the natural independence of its position, it is impossible it should ever become a commercial or a thickly populated mart. In a little volume written by a descendant of Washington, an account is given of the first survey of the Potomac, by the great patriot, with reference to the navigation above tide-water.