The man who planned the Capital of the United States not for the present but for all time, was Peter Charles L’Enfant, born in France in 1755. He was a lieutenant in the French provincial forces, and with others of his countrymen was early drawn to these shores by the magnetism of a new people, and the promise of a new land. He offered his services to the revolutionary army as an engineer, in 1777, and was appointed captain of engineers February 18, 1778. After being wounded at the siege of Savannah, he was promoted to major of engineers, and served near the person of Washington. Probably at that time there was no man in America who possessed so much genius and art-culture in the same directions as Major L’Enfant. In a crude land, where nearly every artisan had to be imported from foreign shores, the chief designer and architect surely would have to be. Thus we may conclude at the beginning, it seemed a lucky circumstance to find an engineer for the new city on the spot. The first public communication extant concerning the laying out of the city of Washington is from the pen of General Washington, dated March 11, 1791. In a letter dated April 30, 1791, he first called it the Federal City. Four months later, without his knowledge, it received its present name in a letter from the first commissioners, Messrs. Johnson, Stuart, and Carroll, which bears the date of Georgetown, September 9, 1791, to Major L’Enfant, which informs that gentleman that they have agreed that the federal district shall be called The Territory of Columbia, (its present title,) and the federal city the city of Washington, directing him to entitle his map accordingly. In March, 1791, we find Jefferson addressing Major L’Enfant in these words: “You are desired to proceed to Georgetown, where you will find Mr. Ellicott employed in making a survey and map of the federal territory. The special object of asking your aid is to have the drawings of the particular grounds most likely to be approved for the site of the federal grounds and buildings.” The French genius “proceeded,” and behold the result, the city of “magnificent distances,” and from the beginning of magnificent intentions,—intentions which almost to the present hour, have called forth only ridicule—because in the slow mills of time their fulfillment has been so long delayed. As Thomas Jefferson wanted the chessboard squares and angles of Philadelphia, L’Enfant used them for the base of the new city, but his genius avenged itself for this outrage on its taste by transversing them with sixteen magnificent avenues, which from that day to this have proved the confusion and the glory of the city. French instinct diamonded the squares of Philadelphia with the broad corsos of Versailles, as Major L’Enfant’s map said, “to preserve through the whole a reciprocity of sight at the same time.”