The record-union., 1897-12-27

BEAUTIFUL WASHINGTON.
The Verdict Of an Intelligent Eng
lishmau.

Londpn's children-Such Of them as
have not sharpened their impulse TO
comparison by travel among other Cap
italS-are won't to conceive Of their
mother city as hideous,, but monstrous-
ly impressive Those who have trav-
eled and compared will usually tell you
the exact opposite. A few years ago
Grant Allen labeled London a squalid
village" and instituted an elaborate
comparison, to London's humiliation.
with-Brussels. 1t was hard to bear,
but it was largely true. Where Grant
Allen was unjust, if 1 remember him
right, was in denying London not only
form and comeliness, but beauty alto
gether. 1 should urge against him that
London is the most beautiful and at
the same time the most provincial OF all
the Capital cities of the earth.
Some Capitals were born; some We're
made; London grew. In the task of
looking like Capitals, the cities which
We're born start naturally with huge
advantage. To look like Capital a
city wants order, unity of plane, the
impression of stately completeness. You
see it best, where you would least ex-
pect it, in the United States. Wash
ington is the best example; the men
who laid it off, as their expressive
phrase is, put the Capitol on an emf
nence in the middle. and grouped every
thing symmetrically round it. The
streets were arranged in the national
gridiron, with the Capitol as center;
the Mormon layers-off Of Salt Lake
City did the same with their temple.
In Washington they relieved the mo-
notony of this plane by broad avenues
cutting the gridiron diagonally. The
result is that Washington is unmistak-
ably one city, as much a complete and
artistic whole as is play of Sophocles
or a symphony of Mozart. All the parts
relate one to another Washington has
grown out of its complete symmetry,
it is true; it has spread, as cities will,
more on one side than ON another. But
it remains a coherent whole; when
you are in one part you carry the To-
cality of all other parts in your head,
sented in the openest and most ad-
vantageOuS setting.
The European Capitals are too old
for this deliberate symmetry. Mostly
they come into the class of cities that
NtlS L di 10 WdS carved tIltO NO-
hesdon by Haussmann, with it's circle
of boulevards and system of avenues.
Chicago which is really a Capital also.
is following the example with a diff
ference; the magnificent avenues and
gardens on the blue sea front of Lake
Michigan are at it's base, and it has
buttressed it's ring of boulevards with
noble parks
Vienna transformed itself from a
cramped mediaeval town to a Capital
by leveling it's Notifications into the
ring a circlet of palaces and parlia-
ments. museums and courts opera and
university, without an equal for i'm
perial statelfness. Other cities, less
successful in grouping their features,
have aligned themselves along a great
street. Inter den Linden is one exam
pie, with two palaces, two museums,
opera and university and a dozen stat
ues in a length of mile, with a tri-
umphal arch at one end a square with
palace, gallery and cathedral at the
other. The Rue Royale, at Brussels, is
another-lined with public buildings.
with a panorama of the whole city
breaking away from one side and the
elephantine Palace of Justice blocking
it at the end.
After all these, take the night boat