Or If, As May Be The Case, The Blood Of The Races Has Now Been Too Well Mixed To Allow Of This Being Said With Absolute Truth, Yet Something Of The Manners Of The Old Forefathers Has Been Left.

The Southern gentleman is more genial, less dry - I will not say more hospitable, but more given to enjoy hospitality than his Northern brother; and this difference is quite as strong with the women as with the men.

It may therefore be understood that secession would be very fatal to the society of Washington. It was not only that the members of Congress were not there. As to very many of the Representatives, it may be said that they do not belong sufficiently to Washington to make a part of its society. It is not every Representative that is, perhaps, qualified to do so. But secession had taken away from Washington those who held property in the South - who were bound to the South by any ties, whether political or other; who belonged to the South by blood, education, and old habits. In very many cases - nay, in most such cases - it had been necessary that a man should select whether he would be a friend to the South, and therefore a rebel; or else an enemy to the South, and therefore untrue to all the predilections and sympathies of his life. Here has been the hardship. For such people there has been no neutrality possible. Ladies even have not been able to profess themselves simply anxious for peace and good- will, and so to remain tranquil. They who are not for me are against me, has been spoken by one side and by the other. And I suppose that in all civil war it is necessary that it should be so. I heard of various cases in which father and son had espoused different sides in order that property might be retained both in the North and in the South. Under such circumstances it may be supposed that society in Washington would be considerably cut up. All this made the place somewhat melancholy.

CHAPTER II.

CONGRESS.

In the interior of the Capitol much space is at present wasted, but this arises from the fact of great additions to the original plan having been made. The two chambers - that of the Senate and the Representatives - are in the two new wings, on the middle or what we call the first floor. The entrance is made under a dome to a large circular hall, which is hung around with surely the worst pictures by which a nation ever sought to glorify its own deeds. There are yards of paintings at Versailles which are bad enough; but there is nothing at Versailles comparable in villany to the huge daubs which are preserved in this hall at the Capitol. It is strange that even self-laudatory patriotism should desire the perpetuation of such rubbish. When I was there the new dome was still in progress; and an ugly column of wood-work, required for internal support and affording a staircase to the top, stood in this hall.

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