Mr. McKinley's action in this matter is considered to be not only right
in itself, but an invaluable precedent.
Let me not be understood, I beg, to make light of the National Capital.
I merely say that to the outward eye it is not yet the city it is
manifestly destined to become. Its splendid potentialities do some wrong
to its eminently spacious and seemly actuality. But to the mind's eye,
to the ideal sense, it has the imperishable beauty of absolute fitness.
Omniscient Baedeker informs us that when it was founded there was some
thought of calling it "Federal City." How much finer, in its heroic and
yet human associations, is the name it bears! Since Alfred the Great,
the Anglo-Saxon race has produced no loftier or purer personality than
George Washington, and his country could not blazon on her shield a more
inspiring name. Carlyle's treatment of Washington is, perhaps, the most
unpardonable of his many similar offences. One almost wonders at the
forgiving spirit in which the decorators of the Library of Congress have
inscribed upon the walls of the new building certain maxims from the
splenetic Sage. And if the city is named with exquisite fitness, so are
its radiating avenues.
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