and proper, he has been notified that his services are at an end. It is now proper that he should receive the reward of his past services, and the wish that he should have no just cause of discontent suggests that it should be liberal. The President thinks of $2,500, or $3,000, but leaves the determination to you." Jefferson wrote in the same letter: "The enemies of the enterprise will take the advantage of the retirement of L'Enfant to trumpet the whole as an abortion." But L'Enfant lived and died within sight of the dawning city of his love which he had himself created-and never wrought it, or its projectors any harm through all the days of his life. He was loyal to his adopted government, but to his last breath clung to every atom of his personal claim upon it, as pugnaciously as he did to his maps, when commanded to give them up. He lived without honor, and died without fame. Time will vindicate one and perpetuate the other in one of the most magnificent capitals of earth. His living picture lingers still with more than one old inhabitant. One tells of him in an unchangeable "green surtout, walking across the commons and fields, followed by half-a-dozen hunting dogs." Also, of reporting to him at Fort Washington in 1814 to do duty, and of first receiving a glass of wine from the old soldier-architect and engineer before he told him what to do. Mr. Corcoran, the banker, tells how L'Enfant looked in his latter days: "a rather seedy, stylish old man, with a long blue or green coat buttoned up to his throat, and a bell-crowned hat; a little moody and lonely, like one wronged."

He lived for many years on the Digges' farm, the estate now owned by George Riggs, the banker, situated about eight miles from Washington. He was buried in the

A FIGHTING QUAKER SUCCEEDS.

49

family burial-ground, in the Digges' garden. When the Digges family were disinterred, his dust was left nearly alone. There it lies to-day, and the perpetually growing splendor of the ruling city which he planned, is his only

monument.

He was succeeded by Andrew Ellicott, a practical engineer, born in Buck's County, Pennsylvania. He was called a man of "uncommon talent" and "placid temper." Neither saved him from conflicts, (though of a milder type than L'Enfant's,) with the Commissioners. A Quaker, he yet commanded a battalion of militia in the Revolution, and "was thirty-seven years of age when he rode out with Washington to survey the embryo city." He finished, (with certain modifications,) the work which L'Enfant began. For this he received the stupendous sum of $5.00 per day which, with "expenses," Jefferson thought to be altogether too much. In his letter to the Commissioners dismissing L'Enfant, he says: "Ellicott is to go on to finish laying off the plan on the ground, and surveying and plotting the district. I have remonstrated with him on the excess of five dollars a day and his expenses, and he has proposed striking off the latter."

After Ellicott concluded laying out the Capital, he became Surveyor-General of the United States; laid out the towns of Erie, Warren and Franklin, in Pennsylvania, and built Fort Erie. He defined the boundary dividing the Republic from the Spanish Possessions; became Secretary of the Pennsylvania Land Office, and in 1812 Professor of Mathematics at West Point, where he died August, 1820, aged 66.

Ellicott's most remarkable assistant was Benjamin Bancker, a negro. Ile was, I believe, the first of his

race to distinguish himself in the new Republic. He was born with a genius for mathematics and the exact sciences, and at an early age was the author of an Almanac, which attracted the attention and commanded the praise of Thomas Jefferson. When he came to "run the lines" of the future Capital, he was sixty years of age. The caste of color could not have grown to its hight at that day, for the Commissioners invited him to an official seat with themselves, an honor which he declined. The picture given us of him is that of a sable Franklin, large, noble, and venerable, with a dusky face, white hair, a drab coat of superfine broadcloth, and a Quaker hat. He was born and buried at Ellicott's Mills, where his grave is now unmarked. Here is a chance for the rising race to erect a monument to one of their own sons, who in the face of ignorance and bondage proved himself "every inch a man," in intellectual gifts equal to the best.

CHAPTER IV.

OLD WASHINGTON.

How the City was Built-"A Matter of Moonshine"-Calls for PaperBesieging Congressmen-How they Raised the Money-The Government Requires Sponsors-Birth of the Nation's Capital-Seventy Years Ago in Washington-Graphic Picture of Early Times-A Much-Marrying City-Unwashed Virginian Belles-Stuck in the Mud-Extraordinary Religious Services.

NOTHING

OTHING in the architecture of the city of Washington calls forth more comment from strangers than the distance between the Capitol and the Executive Departments. John Randolph early called it "the city of magnificent distances," and it is still a chronic and fashionable complaint to decry the time and distance it takes to get any where. In the days of a single stage line on Pennsylvania Avenue, these were somewhat lamentable. But five-minute cars abridge distances, and make them less in reality than even in the city of New York. It is a mile and a half from the northern end of the Navy-yard bridge to the Capitol, a mile and a half from the Capitol to the Executive Mansion, and a mile and a half from the Executive Mansion to the corner of Bridge and High Streets, Georgetown. We are constantly hearing exclamations of what a beautiful city Washington would be with the Capitol for the centre of a square formed by a chain of magnificent public buildings. John Adams wanted the Departments around the

Capitol. George Washington but a short time before his death, gave in a letter the reasons for their present position. In going through his correspondence one finds that there is nothing, scarcely, in the past, present or future of its Capital, for which the Father of his Country has not left on record a wise, far-reaching reason. In this letter, he says: "Where or how the houses for the President, and the public offices may be fixed is to me, as an individual, a matter of moonshine. But the reverse of the President's motive for placing the latter near the Capitol was my motive for fixing them by the former. The daily intercourse which the secretaries of departments must have with the President would render a distant situation extremely inconvenient to them, and not much less so would one be close to the Capitol; for it was the universal complaint of them all, that while the Legislature was in session, they could do little or no business, so much were they interrupted by the individual visits of members in office hours, and by calls for paper. Many of them have disclosed to me that they have been obliged often to go home and deny themselves in order to transact the current business." The denizen of the present time, who knows the Secretaries' dread of the average besieging Congressman, will smile to find that the dread was as potent in the era of George Washington as it is to-day. A more conclusive reason could not be given why Capitol and Departments should be a mile apart. The newspapers of that day were filled with long articles on the laying out of the Capital city. We find in a copy of The Philadelphia Herald of January 4, 1795, after a discussion of the Mall-the yet-to-be garden extending from the Capitol to the President's house