The Treasury borrowed its face from the Parthenon; and, as it turns it toward the Potomac this May morning, it is one of the fairest sites in Washington. From the southern portico we look across sloping tree-shaded meadows. Beyond, we see the shimmering river, with its girdle of green, and above, “the flush and frontage of the hills.” When flowers, and trees and soft lights shall have taken the place of all this glare—how beautiful it will be to the eyes of generations to come. But even now the bright grass, flower-parterres and lapsing fountains are pleasant to behold, while the southern front of the Treasury is an object upon which the eyes must always rest with a sense of satisfaction. The Capitol lords it over the east, but the Treasury reigns over the west end. To be sure, it stands upon the poorest make-believe of an Acropolis, but coming along Pennsylvania avenue we look up to its noble façade and fair Ionic columns gleaming before us, as a compensation for the poverty of beauty in the streets which we travel. The western windows overlook the grounds of the presidential mansion, now gay with flowers and dazzling with sunshine, their trees decked in the vivid foliage of a southern June-time. How many pairs of weary human eyes look up from their tasks within these walls, and, without knowing it, thank God for this fair outlook. The breeze-blown grass, the fragrant winds, the lavish light of these open windows—to dusty lips and tired eyes which take them in—are God’s own benedictions. Hundreds of such look up from their desks. Past the great fountain, tossing its diamonds below, past the sunny knolls and mimic mounds of newly-cut grass, above the bloom-burdened trees and all the tender verdure of early spring and summer, they see the windows of the presidential reception-room, whose doors, through all the winter months, are besieged by an army of office and favor seekers, but which are shut and silent and deserted now, while “the Government” drives among the hills or loiters by the sea. But I began to talk about the Treasury, and no matter how I wander for ever so many pages, I must come back to it again. It is easier to comprehend the outside than the inside of it. One might as well try to snatch up a city and portray it in a sitting, as even to outline the Treasury of the United States in a single chapter.