Washington’s Faith in the Future—Mr. Sparks is “inclined to think”—A Slight Miscalculation—Theoretical Spartans—Clinging to Old World Glories—Jefferson Acts the Critic—He Communicates Some Ideas—Models of Antiquity—Babylon Revived—Difficulty in Satisfying a Frenchman’s Soul—The Man who Planned the Capital—Who was L’Enfant?—His Troubles—His Dismissal—His Personal Appearance, Old Age, Death and Burial-Place—His Successor—The French Genius “Proceeded”—The New City of Washington—A Magnificent Plan—All About the City—The Major not Appreciated—“Getting on Badly”—L’Enfant Worries Washington—A Record which Can Never Perish—An Overpaid Quaker—Jefferson Expresses his Sentiments—A Sable Franklin—The Negro Engineer, Benjamin Bancker—A Chance for a Monument. The majority of Congress were opposed to a commercial Capital, yet there are many proofs extant that to the hour of his death George Washington cherished the hope that the new city of his love would be not only the capital of the nation, but a great commercial metropolis of the world. Mr. Jared Sparks, the historian, in a private letter says: “I am inclined to think that Washington’s anticipations were more sanguine than events have justified. He early entertained very large and just ideas of the vast resources of the West, and of the commercial intercourse that must spring up between that region and the Atlantic coast, and he was wont to regard the central position of the Potomac as affording the most direct and easy channel of communication. Steamboats and railroads have since changed the face of the world, and have set at defiance all the calculations founded on the old order of things; and especially have they operated on the destiny of the West and our entire system of internal commerce, in a manner that could not possibly have been foreseen in the life-time of Washington.” Throughout the correspondence of Washington are scattered constant allusions to the future magnificence of the Federal City, the name by which he loved to call the city of his heart, allusions which show that his faith in its great destiny never faltered. In a letter to his neighbor, Mrs. Fairfax, then in England, he said: “A century hence, if this country keeps united, it will produce a city, though not as large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior to few others in Europe.” At that time, after a growth of centuries, London contained eight hundred thousand inhabitants. Three-fourths of Washington’s predicted century have expired, and the city of Washington now numbers one hundred and fifty thousand people.