terly features in the design. Not only is the general outline of the bird strikingly true to nature, but the finish of every part of it beautiful in the extreme. Its head is raised, and turned upward toward the countenance of America, while its wings are partially expanded, in act to rise, is if ready and eager to fly at her command.

All the figures of the group are colossal, being about seven and a half feet in height. A perfect symmetry has been given to the form, and the attitudes are at once graceful and expressive.

View

ed with the eye of an anatomist, the minuter parts of the human structure are developed with a distinctness and truth which, while it displays the labor which the artist has directed to the production of these details, exhibits also the extent and correctness of his scientific acquirements. In the draperies of the figures there is great felicity of execution; the fulness, the folds and flow of the mantle, exhibit surpassing excellence.

The eastern entrance to the rotundo, from the floor of the portico, is ornamented with two light and beautiful figures, in stone, in the act of crowning with laurel the bust of Washington, placed immediately above the door.

The rotundo is topped by a cupola and balustrade, accessible by means of a staircase passing between the roof and ceiling. From this elevation the prospect which bursts upon the eye is splendid Three cities are spread before you: the Potomac on one side, and the Eastern Branch on the other, running and rolling their waters to the ocean; a range of hills extending in a magnificent

sweep around you, and displaying all the richness and verdure of woodland scenery, with here and there beautiful slopes in cultivation-the whole coloured by the golden beams of the setting sun, burnishing the reposing clouds, and gilding the tops of the trees, or giving light and shade to the living landscape-form a scene which few portions of the earth can rival, and which none can surpass. The dome of the centre, though nearly a semicircle, does not please the eye of a stranger; it wants greater or less elevation to contrast agreeably with the domes of the wings.

Besides the principal rooms above mentioned, two others deserve notice, from the peculiarity of their architecture-the round apartment under the rotundo, enclosing forty columns supporting groind arches, which form the floor of the rotundo. This room is similar to the substructions of the European cathedrals, and may take the name of Crypt from them: the other room is used by the supreme court of the United States-of the same style of architecture, with a bold and curiously arched ceiling, the columns of these rooms are of a massy Doric imitated from the temples of Postum. Twenty-five other rooms, of various sizes, are appropriated to the officers of the two houses of Congress, and of the supreme court, and fortyfive to the use of committees; they are all vaulted and floored with brick and stone. Three principal staircases are spacious and varied in their form; these, with the vestibules and numerous corridors or passages, it would be difficult to describe intelligibly we will only say, that they are in con

formity to the dignity of the building and style of the parts already named. The building having been situated originally on the declivity of a hill, occasioned the west front to show its elevation one story of rooms below the general level of the east front and the ends; to remedy this defect, and to obtain safe deposites for the large quantities of fuel annually consumed, a range of casemate arches has been projected in a semicircular form to the west, and a paved terrace formed over them: this addition is of great utility and beauty, and at a short distance exhibits the building on one uniform level this terrace is faced with a grass bank, or glacis, and at some distance below, another glacis with steps leads to the level of the west entrance of the Porter's Lodges-these, together with the piers to the gates at the several entrances of the square, are in the same massy style as the basement of the building; the whole area or square is surrounded with a lofty iron railing, planted and decorated with forest-trees, shrubs, gravel walks, and turf.

NOTE. As the dimensions of the columns of the western loggia have been severely criticised, the following on architectural proportions, seem to -justify their apparent want of symmetry:

"The Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders, are claimed by the Greeks as their invention. The lonians are said to have borrowed the proportions of the Ionian column, from the proportion of an Ionic girl, the flutes of the shaft from the -folds of her clothes, and the volutes of the capital,

from her head-dress. And the invention of the Corinthian cap is ascribed to the accidental sight of a basket which had been placed upon the leaves of the acanthus. But these were not the true origin of these orders: and we are disposed to believe with St. Pierre, that the various proportions of the palm-tree were the true basis of the different architectural orders. The diameter of the palm-tree remains the same during the whole period of its existence, and whatever may be the elevation of its stem. Among the ruins of Persepolis may be seen numerous imitations of this tree. It will be recollected that the various proportions of the different orders, which in the Tuscan is seven times its diameter height, the Doric eight times, the Ionic nine, the Corinthian ten, have been described to the difference of proportion in a young woman at different ages. It is said her stature has, in infancy, seven times the breadth of the face, when more advanced, eight times; when still older, nine times; and when arrived at perfect maturity, ten times. "It is not more likely," says St. Pierre," that the trunk of the palm-tree afforded the first model of a pillar by its perpendicular attitude and the equality of its diameters, as well as that it suggested the cylindrical tambours in the Tuscan order, by its annual rings. I am inclined likewise, to look for the first notion of fluting the shafts in the vertical crevices of the bark which serve to convey to the root the rain that falls on its leaves.-I am further inclined to trace the volutes of the Ionic capital to the first circles of the sheathes; the Corinthian capital to

the leaves of its palms; the proportions of the different orders to the height of its trunk at different ages; and finally, the plan of arranging columns together, to the manner in which palm-trees are found grouped by the hand of nature."

THE PRESIDent's house.

On the 14th of March, 1792, the Commissioners of the city of Washington offered a premium, by advertisement in the public papers, for a plan for the President's house, and another for a design for the Capitol, to be presented on the 15th of July.

The plan for the President's house, presented by Capt. James Hoban, was approved, and on the 13th of October a procession was formed for laying the corner-stone of that building.

The President's house was wholly constructed after the designs and under the direction of Capt. James Hoban, and the interior was rebuilt by him, after it had been destroyed by the enemy in 1814, is situated at the westerly part of the city, at the intersection of Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut and Vermont avenues, which radiate from this point as centre.

It stands near the centre of a plat of ground of twenty acres, at an elevation of forty-four feet above the usual high water of the river Potomac. The entrance front faces north, upon La Fayette Square, and the garden front to the south, opens to an extensive and finely varied view of the Capitol and most improved part of the city, of the river, and