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By Root 15802 0

does not controvert, in any degree, the opinion that it was a passion (if passion it can properly be termed) of the most thoroughly romantic, shadowy and imaginative character. It was born of the hour, and of the youthful necessity to love, while it was nurtured by the waters and the hills, and the flowers and the stars. It had no peculiar regard to the person, or to the character, or to the reciprocating affection of Mary Chaworth. Any maiden, not immediately and positively repulsive, he would have loved, under the same circumstances of hourly and unrestricted communion, such as our engraving shadows forth. They met without restraint and without reserve. As mere children they sported together; in boyhood and girlhood they read from the same books, sang the same songs, or roamed, hand in hand, through the grounds of the conjoining estates. The result was not merely natural or merely probable, it was as inevitable as destiny itself.

In view of a passion thus engendered, Miss Chaworth, (who is represented as possessed of no little personal beauty and some accomplishments,) could not have failed to serve sufficiently well as the incarnation of the ideal that haunted the fancy of the poet. It is perhaps better, nevertheless, for the mere romance of the love-passages between the two, that their intercourse was broken up in early life and never uninterruptedly resumed in after years. Whatever of warmth, whatever of soul-passion, whatever of the truer nare and essentiality of romance was elicited during the youthful association is to be attributed altogether to the poet. If she felt at all, it was only while the magnetism of his actual presence compelled her to feel. If she responded at all, it was merely because the necromancy of his words of fire could not do otherwise than exhort a response. In absence, the bard bore easily with him all the fancies which were the basis of his flame — a flame which absence itself but served to keep in vigor — while the less ideal but at the same time the less really substantial affection of his ladye-love, perished utterly and forthwith, through simple lack of the element which had fanned it into being. He to her, in brief, was a not unhandsome, and not ignoble. [[,]] but somewhat portionless, somewhat eccentric and rather lame young man. She to him was the Egeria of his dreams — the Venus Aphrodite that sprang, in full and supernal loveliness, from the bright foam upon the storm-tormented ocean of his thoughts.

THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON

THIS building was commenced in 1793 by Mr. Hallet as architect, who was succeeded by Mr. G. Hadfield and Mr. Hoban, who finished the north wing. The charge of the work was then given to Mr. Henry B. Latrobe, (architect) who directed the building of the south wing, and prepared the halls for the reception of Congress. Such portions of the building having been completed as were indispensably necessary for public use, farther proceedings were suspended during the embargo, non-intercourse, and war; at which time the interior of both wings was destroyed, in an incursion of the enemy. After the close of the war, Congress assembled, for several sessions, in a building patriotically raised by the citizens of Washington, for their accommodation. In 1815, Government determined to restore the Capitol. The work was commenced under B. H. Latrobe, who superintended it until December, 1817, when upon his resigning his charge, the farther proceedings were entrusted to C. Bulfinch, who proceeded to execute the designs already adopted for the Representatives' Hall and Senate Chamber, and to lay the foundation of the centre, comprising the Rotunda, Library, etc. These have been completed, with the accompanying terraces, gate-ways, lodges, etc. in the course of ten years. The building now exhibits an harmonious whole, imposing for its mass and commanding situation, and well adapted for the important uses for which it is intended. It may be described as follows: —

The Capitol of the United States is situated on an area enclosed by an iron railing, and including twenty-two