This city bodes no common fate-- All other towns, as books relate, With huts at first were thinly spread, With hovels mean, or humble shed. But matters here are quite reversed, Here, palaces are built the first, And late will common rustics come In such abodes to find a home. Meantime, it will be fair and just (Nor will our congress fret, we trust) If while the poor at distance lurk-- Themselves do their own dirty work. Rome's earliest citizens were thieves, So history tells, and man believes, May matters be again reversed, May they who here inhabit first Instruct the late historians pen To write--that they were honest men. [144] From the 1815 edition. A young Englishman, Thomas Twining, who visited Washington in 1796, describes it as follows: "Having crossed an extensive tract of level country somewhat resembling an English heath, I entered a large wood through which a very imperfect road had been made, principally by removing the trees or the upper parts of them in the usual manner. After some time this indistinct way assumed more the appearance of a regular avenue, the trees having been cut down in a straight line although no habitation of any kind was visible. I had no doubt but I was now riding along one of the streets of the metropolitan city. I continued in this spacious avenue for half a mile and then came out upon a large spot cleared of wood, in the center of which I saw two unfinished buildings and men at work on one of them. Advancing and speaking to these workmen, they informed me that I was in the center of the city and that the building was the Capitol. Looking from where I stood I saw on every side a thick wood pierced with avenues in a more or less perfect state." THE ROYAL COCKNEYS IN AMERICA[145] 1797 Why travel so far from your insular home, Ye cockneys of London, and all in a foam, To talk, and to talk, with coxcombical phiz, And tell what a nuisance democracy is: Twas a lesson we learn'd When you were concern'd In wishing success to the vast preparations To conquer and pillage the royal-plantations. We Americans far from your king-ridden isle Do humbly beseech you, all democrat haters, For fear that your bodies or souls you defile, Would fairly go off, with your lies and your satires: The monarch you worship requests your assistance, And how can you help him at such a long distance? Tis an Englishman's creed, And they all have agreed That, out of old England, there's nothing, they swear, That can with old England--dear England--compare; So, away to old England, or we'll send you there. A swarm is arrived from the hives of the east, Determined to sap the republic's foundation; And who is their leader, their scribe, and their priest? Why, Porcupine Peter, The democrat-eater, Transported by Pitt, at the charge of the nation, To preach to the demos a new revelation.