Washington to-day is richer in historic memories than any other city on the continent. To the literary worker and historian it is a boundless treasure-house. Standing on the hills of Anacostia, and musing on the story of Powhatan’s vanished capital, one may read in the surrounding spires and domes and monuments of the city the eventful story of Anglo-Saxon triumph in the Western Hemisphere. One smiles now at the satire of the poet Moore; for the morasses have indeed become parks, and imposing shrines have been built to commemorate heroes that were then unborn. In what was once the wilderness of “magnificent distances” are the palatial houses in brick and granite of men and women celebrated in letters, in art and in public life. In the galleries of the Capitol will be found the portraits and memorials of America’s illustrious dead. In the State Department is to be seen the faded original of the Declaration of Independence. The city that Washington founded has become one of venerable memories and matchless triumphs. From the “Rome” of Francis Pope the visitor looks down Pennsylvania Avenue, the Via Sacra of the new world, whereon the men most illustrious in the annals of the Republic have walked and ridden to their public offices, and along whose historic thoroughfares the heroes of great wars have enjoyed their triumphs. Here Lafayette was received with joyous welcome when, in 1824, he returned to measure the majestic growth of the Republic during the fifty years that had passed since he and Washington were comrades in the fight for freedom. As, standing on the superb terraces on the west front of the Capitol, one views the monument, the sacred hills of Arlington, the Potomac winding towards Alexandria, which Adams predicted would become the continent’s metropolis and greatest export city, the imposing declivities of old Georgetown, at whose base were once anchored merchant ships from foreign ports, there passes before the mind a vivid panorama of the history of the American people. Beauty and majesty have obliterated the infant city of a hundred years ago. The achievements of science have mocked many of the ancient prophecies. The canal, starting at Georgetown, which was to have carried the deliberations of Congress to the Western world, knows no such use, and the ships that were to crowd the Potomac are content to moor at railway termini along the Atlantic coast. But although applied science has confounded the wisdom of a hundred years ago, the hopes and dreams of the founder of the capital have been realized. In 1798, before the Government moved to the new city, Washington wrote concerning the capital: “A century hence if this country keeps united, it will produce a city, though not so large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior to few others in Europe.”