DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.

New Zealander, Volume XX, Issue 2139, 13 June 1864, Page 3

DESCRIPTION OF THE CITY OF WASHINGTON.

Augustus Saja, the "Special Conmissione-" of the London Daily Telegraph, thus graphically describes the City of Washington:— I have been endeavouring many hours, but with indifferent success, to determine in my own mind what Washington is like. That it resembles, in any way, the metropolis of a great, powerful, ami wealthy commonwealth can at once, without much fear of contradiction, be denied. It contains, certainly, some notable public buildings, but they are scattered far and wide, with all kinds of incongruous environments, producing upon the stranger a perplexed impression that the British Mu-eum has suddenly migra'ed to the centre of an exhausted brickfield, where rubbish may be shot; or that St. Paul's Cathedral, washed quite white, and stuck upon stone stilts, lias been transferred to the great desert of Sahara, and called a Capitol. There is a perpetual solution of continuity at Washington. There is no cohesion about Pennsylvania avenue ; its houses are as Hudibras's story of the bear and the fiddle—begun and broke off in the middle. It is an architectural, conundrum which nobody can guess, and in which I candidly believe there is no meaning. The Vitruviuses and Palladios of America have perpetrated a vast practical joke, and called it Washington. There is ho beginning, no centre, and no end to Washington. It is the mo t bogus of towns- —a shin-plaster in bricks and mortar and marble., The people seem to be very fond of building houses but when they have run up three or four stories which threaten to attain the altitude of the Tower of Babel, the ponfusion of tongues sets in ; the builders abandon their work, but, nothing disheartened, erect three or four stories of fresh houses elsewhere. It is said of these patrons of the drama who habitually avail themselves of half-price, that they have seen nothing but denouements. Washington, on the contrary, is a collection of first acts without any catastrophes. It presents a converse to Merculio's description of his wound ; its avenues are as deep as wells, and its blocksas wide as church doors ; bui they do not serve any purpose that lam aware of. Washington will be, when completed, the most magnifioen: city on this side the Atlantic, but it is not quite begun yet. We are still at the soup and fish, and have not got to the first entree. Never was there so interminable an overture. " Two piastres more," cries the Arab funambulist, unworthily parodied by the Loudon street mountebank, "and the ass shall.ascend the ladder." But those piastres are never forthcoming, and the donkey > never goes up. Only two hundred millions of dollars more, and two hundred thousand inhabitants, and Washington would be able to rival the Empire City and the Crescent City, and all the other cities to whica the Americans have given, to use the diction of Mr. Artemus Ward, '• manadorious and spanglorious" appellatives. Pendente lite, Washington doesn't precisely languish, but it wallows in the dust like an eel in a sanl-basket, delicious when fried or stewed, but slightly repulsive to the sight before he is skinned and cooked. Washington will be, I have no doubt, some day uproariously splendid; but at present it isn't anything. It is in the District of Columbia and the State of the Future. And yet I must, for the sake of those who will never probably visit this rambling mass of streets without houses and houses without streets, 1 ken it to something. Well, it is like a jumbled-up collection of children's toy villages seen through the opera glass of the King of Brobdignag. Again, it is not unlike the Old Kent Road, grown out of all patience. Stay, it is like Brentford run mad, with a dash of Highgue out of its wits, and a spice of Barnet at the fair time-—tor ragged horse-flesh is here abundant—the whole mingled with Holborn Hill and set in the mi Ist of Salisbury Plains. After this imagine a tohjbohu of Canterbury Halls and dancing saloons, government offices and old clothes' shops, Bath and Cheltenham private mansions and log cabins, oysters, negroes, lagerbeer, mules, oxen, waggons, ladies in crinolines am! loafers in " sit on 'em" hats, and the very faintest notion of Washington may begiu to dawn upon you. Willard's Hotel, notwithstanding, is wonderful place. Opinions may differ as to the amount of personal comfort to be obtained there, and it is up means rare to hear Americans assert the preferabiiity of private lodgings over the huge, noisy, caravanserai of Congressopolis. There is a drawback, however, to giving practical effect to such a preference, inasmuch as private apartments are all but impossible to procure. Our cousins are not a lodging-letting people. Mrs. Lirriper would not be at home here. The omnivorous lo igiughouse cat is an animal happily unknown to the Butfons and Cuviers of the States. To keep an hotel, indeed, or a hotel, as grammatical precisians on this side persist on the word being pronounced, is accounted a grand, wise, and beautiful thing; aud next t j the President of the United States, the commander of the army of the Potomac, the conductor of a railway car, and the editor of the Neuo York Knuckleduster, I have very little doubt that an hotel keeper is about as remarkable and important a personage as can be be met with in a country where nine out of every tea individuals you meet are presumedly remarkable and confessedly important. You may keep a boardinghouse, too, without derogating to any great extent from your dignity ; although, as a rule, a lady who takes boarders commands more respect than a man engaged in the same vocation would do ; but you mnsn't let lodgings—it is "maan;' and, above all human frailties, the Americans, to their honor, abhor meanness. Thus, failing furnished lodgings and a " man of the house," or worse still, a Magaera who lives on her lodger, Willard's becomes in most cases. Hobson's choice. " I hive stayed at Willard's for twenty years," an acquaintance recently remarked, "and for twenty years I have declared I would never go to Willard's again." There are two or three most ostensibly first-class hotels, but virtually there is but one step from Willard's to the most comfortless and the groggiest taverns. So you go to Willard's and grumble, or else grin, shrug your shoulders, and bear the he.it, the noise, the dust, the smoke, the expectoration, tha scramble for eatabies, and the struggle for drinkables, precisely as you happen to be a philosopher or otherwise. Aftei all, it is something to be continually jostling senators iu the hall anil members ot the House of Representatives on the staircases. You can scarcely tail either to gain some salutary insight into the practical equality which in lxaay instances marks American society ; for neither senator nor representative, governor of State, nor general in the army, millionaire, merchant, nor roving English dandy, is a bit better off or treated with one whit more deference at Willard's, than the roughest specimen of a bngman in the dry g>ods line, or the poorest suitor for Government empijy.uent, who has come up to Washington with the hope of getting a consulate and woold be glad to get a lighthouse.