Yet I cannot but feel that I have, so to speak, found Washington out. I
have chanced upon her without her make-up, and seen the real face of the
city divested of its wig of leafage and rouge of blossoms. Here, for the
first time, at any rate, I am impressed by that sense of rawness and
incompleteness which is said to be characteristic of America. Washington
will one day be a magnificent city, of that there is no doubt; but for
the present it is distinctly unfinished. The very breadth of its
avenues, contrasted with the comparative lowness of the buildings which
line them, gives it the air rather of a magnified and glorified frontier
township than of a great capital on the European scale. Here, for the
first time, I am really conscious of the newness of things. The eastern
cities--Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore--are, in effect, not a
whit newer than most English towns. Oxford and Cambridge, no doubt, and
a few cathedral cities, give one a habitual consciousness of dwelling
among the relics of the past. They are our Nuremburg or Prague, Siena or
Perugia. In most English cities, on the other hand, as in London itself,
one has no habitual sense of the antiquity of one's surroundings.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79