For a time, after the incorporation of the city, its founders and patrons zealously pursued plans for its improvement. But failing funds, a weak municipality, and indifferent Congresses, did their work, and for many years “the city of magnificent distances” had little but those distances of which to boast. Jefferson had Pennsylvania avenue planted with double rows of Lombardy poplars from Executive Mansion to Capitol, in imitation of the walk and drive in Berlin known as _Unter den Linden_. But the tops of the poplars did not flourish, and the roots were troublesome, and in 1832 the hoped for arcade came to naught. In truth Pennsylvania avenue was one long plain of mud, punched with dangerous holes and seamed with deep ravines. The interlacing roots of the poplars made these holes and ravines the more dangerous, till an appropriation, during the administration of Jackson, caused them to be dug up and the entire avenue to be macadamized, notwithstanding a large minority in Congress could find no authority in the Constitution for such an unprecedented provision for the public safety. Every Congress was packed with strict constructionists and economists, who opposed every effort to improve the National Capital. Many, narrow, sectional and provincial, had no comprehension of the plan of a city founded to meet the wants of a great nation, rather than to suit the convenience of a meagre population. A city planned to become the magnificent Capital of a vast people could not fail through its very dimensions to be oppressive to its citizens, if the chief weight of its improvement was laid upon their scanty resources. A National Capital could only be fitly built by the Nation. For many years the Congress of the United States refused to do this to any fit degree, and the result for more than one generation was the most forlorn city in Christendom. At a recent meeting of the friends of Columbia College Attorney General Williams stated that when he first visited Washington, in 1853, the “Egypt” of Indiana could not compare in dreariness and discomfort with the Capital of the Nation.