clude the House of Representatives, Senate, and Hall of Justice, the Library of Congress, and about seventy apartments for the accommodation of committees.

The first is a splendid semicircular saloon, ninety-five feet in length, and sixty in height; also lighted by the dome. Round the arc of the saloon is a range of columns composed of breccia, with a highly decorated entablature of white marble, -vieing in beauty with the verd antiquities of Italy.. These columns support a gallery, part of which is appropriated to the accommodation of ladies who desire to attend the debates, and is sometimes filled with the beauty and fashion of the city and by visitors from the provinces.

In the centre of the chord is the chair of the Speaker, raised considerably above the floor of the area, richly canopied, from which radiate seven passages to the circumference; and the writing-desks and seats of the members - each individual member possessing one of these conveniences to himself, thoroughly furnished-are ranged in concentric rows. Behind the chair is a kind of corridor or gallery, supported by twentyfour columns of marble, crowned with Corinthian capitals, forming an oblong square, with a stove at each extremity; which apartment being furnished with chairs, sofas, spittoons,* and other requisites, serves as a lounging place for the members, and for strangers to whom the Speaker thinks proper to allow the privilege of entré.

The Hall of the Senate is much smaller than that of the Representatives, being seventy-four feet long and ninety-six feet high, but it is more elegantly furnished. This room is also in the form of a semicircle, and is in style of arrangement similar to the Hall of Representatives; the Vice-President, as the Speaker of the Upper House, occupying an elevated chair, beneath a crimson canopy, in the centre of the radius line fronting the semicircle. The principal materials of the room are of marble, and the floor is beautifully paved in mosaic.

The amount of talent among the members of the Senate, compared with other days, is said to be such as exhibits little or no deterioration. If none are found to supply the place of

Spittoons, among articles of furniture, will doubtless appear strange to English ideas, but they are become necessaries in America by the indulgence of a repulsive national habit. The custom, however, would appear less revolting if the vessels completely answered the uses for which they are intended, especially in rooms ricbly carpeted.

Webster, with his mighty grasp of intellect; of Clay, the great embodiment of his country's nationality, with his glowing and silvery eloquence; of Calhoun, the nervous, energetic, mystic, but powerful southern orator; and of Benton, long the father of the Senate, without a rival in political experience and facts bearing upon the interests of his country; it will appear that the average amount of legislative wisdom is preserved in the whole number, and thus the proportion of really inferior men is comparatively small.

Webster, Clay, Calhoun,-that great triumvirate,—are all gone; they have left the scenes of which they formed the central point of interest, and no Elisha has yet caught their fallen mantle.

Of Webster especially, the American people may well be proud. Though never elected to fill the Presidential chair, he attained the highest moral elevation of earthly honour. He commanded, by the potent influence of his station and talents, the destinies of an empire; he swayed the fortunes of the senate and the nation by the overpowering force and splendour of his eloquence; the efforts of his gigantic intellect far outstripped those of his compeers. He may be likened to some mighty comet moving in majestic career through the heavens, tracking the path of its travels with a radiant brightness, throwing off the sparkling corruscations of its glory, and commanding the wonder and admiration of mankind.

Though there may not be often exhibited in the Congress of the United States, as in the English Parliament, those oratorical displays which delude the judgment as often as they excite the fancy, yet there are frequently manifested the higher qualities of the legislator,—a comprehensive and statesmanlike sagacity of intellect, evident power of philosophical generalization,accurate knowledge, and dexterity in its application to circumstances,―capacity for patient labour,-quickness of comprehension, and stern masculine common sense.

Many of the men possessing these qualities, perhaps, are comparatively little known to fame; but

"Strongest minds

Are often those of whom the noisy world hears least.”*

The mode of debate in the Senate, on particular occasions, has been considered by some European judges as semi-theatrical.

• Wordsworth's Excursion.

The debates do not so much deserve the character of argumentative and logical, as that of a succession of orations, carefully elaborated, delivered with oratorical effect, and generally treating the subject with a philosophic completeness not usual in England.

The leading men in the Senate, as at present constituted, are Cass, Crittenden, Benton, Hunter, Mason, Soule, Atherton, Douglas, Rushe, and Sumner, with Clayton, Seward, Everett, Peace, Dixon, Jones, Badger, Truman, Smith, and Geyer. General Cass and Messrs. Crittenden and Benton are the veterans of the Senate, having each reached the age of seventy years. Most of the others have been born during the present century. The average ages of the forty-five oldest senators, as nearly as can be calculated, is about fifty.

The old States still preserve the preponderance in furnishing national legislators. There are no fewer than thirty-nine out of every forty-nine senators whose birthplaces are known to have been in the old thirteen States. Ethnologically, the fifty-six senators (there being six vacancies) may be thus classed:

Those of Anglo-Saxon origin thirty-nine; Scotch, five; Welsh, six; Irish, one; French, three; Spanish, one; German, one; total, fifty-six.

One of the most striking points in the list of senators, is the vast preponderance of gentlemen of the legal profession. A foreigner, in looking at the occupations in private life of the executive and legislative of the Government of the United States, might suppose that the constitution provided that lawyers should always have the preference. No less than fortyone of the United States senators are, or have been, of the legal profession, leaving fifteen for other occupations; of these last, the medical profession have two, the mechanics two, the military, the planters, and retired gentlemen the remainder; the merchants not having one of their own number to represent them.t

The Presidents of the United States, since the adoption of the constitution, have been as follows:-George Washington, Virginia; John Adams, Massachusets; Thomas Jefferson, Virginia; James Madison, Virginia; James Munro, Virginia; J. Quincy Adams, Massachusetts; Andrew Jackson, Tennesse; Martin Van

* Frazer's Magazine, January, 1853.

+ New York Herald,

Burin, New York; William Henry Harrison, Ohio; John Tyler, Virginia; James K. Polk, Tennesse; Zach. Taylor, Louisiana; Millard Filmore, New York; Franklin Pierce, New Hampshire; and George Buchanan, Pennsylvania.

The President's house stands on an eminence at the opposite extremity of Pennsylvania Avenue, about a mile distant from the Capitol, surrounded also by extensive pleasure grounds of great sylvan beauty, gently rising from the Potomac, whose calm, blue waters spread out in long perspective before the southern front. It is a handsome building, with a portico to the south and north, supported by fine lofty, Ionic columns. The principal materials, as also those of the Capitol, are of sandstone, found in the vicinity, which is by no means durable, being continually impaired by the action of the atmosphere; but, being painted white, has at a distance the appearance of white marble. The entrance-hall is spacious; but the more public apartments generally are plainly furnished. On each side are the offices for the state, war, navy, and treasury departments. The other most important buildings in the city are the Post and Patent Offices, and the Smithsonian Institute.

While the President of this great country maintains the dignity of his high office, and in general supports it, he exacts no external deference beyond that which in ordinary life one gentleman is entitled to claim from another. His dress, even on public occasions, is usually that of a plain suit of black. And although a stranger would discover nothing of the conventional magnificence and courtly elegance in the great Republican Palace, any more than in the person or attire of the President, which he would behold in the abodes of royalty in Europe, he would at the same time see nothing which the most polished courtier could attribute to coarseness and vulgarity.

The

There is perfect freedom from tinsel and glare, from pomp and circumstance, both in the President and the Court. President has no guard of honour, and his residence is without a sentinel.

-to set

The Americans dare to carry out their purposes, themselves against the current,-to uphold the principles which they honestly believe. One of the most deeply interesting spectacles that have been seen in modern times was the appearance of the American Charge d'Affairs," amidst the splendours of a levee in the palace of Napoleon the Third, dressed with the quiet simple elegance of a private gentleman;

a truly honourable representative of the great model Republican Government of the United States !*

The salary of the President is 25,000 dollars, or £5,625 per annum; that of the Vice-President is 8,000 dollars per annum; of the Secretary of State, Treasury, War, Navy, and of the Interior, together with the Postmaster and Attorney-General, 8,000 dollars each. The Chief Justice has 6,500 dollars, and his associate justices, 6,000 each per annum. The salary of the Speaker of the House of Representatives is 3,000 dollars.†

The pay of envoys extraordinary and ministers plenipotentiary is 9,000 dollars per annum as salary, in addition to 9,000 outfit. The pay of a Charge d'Affairs is 4,500 dollars per annum; the Secretaries of Legation, 2,000 dollars; of Ministers resident, 6,000. The salaries of British Ambassadors amount to 90,000 dollars a year, they having from 10,000 to 3,000 per annum each.

While the Government of the United States is the most free and liberal in the world, its administration of affairs is the least expensive. Its national debt, in 1853, if such it may be called, and as will hereafter be more definitely shown, was only 9,844,528 dollars—an amount not equal to the annual interest paid by some nations on their loans.

Dr. Franklin, and the other eminent statesmen who framed the constitution, must have pondered the sentiment of Cicero: "Non intelligunt homines quam magnum vectigal sit parsimonia," and which is especially verified in the experience of the Government of the United States as the result of practical effort in every department of the State.

Although Jamaica is an islet of the Atlantic, much less in size than the county of York, with not double the population of one town in that county, it pays taxes that would suffice for

• It is to be regretted that, in 1853, instructions were issued by the Government of the United States to its representatives at foreign courts, to use the ordinary court dress, but still recommending that of an American citizen when practicable!

+ The Governor of Jamaica has 40,000 dollars for governing 400,000 people, when the President of the United States receives only 25,000 for 25,000,000 of subjects; 15,000 dollars for a Chief Justice in Jamaica, and 10,000 each for his associates, when the Chief Justice of the highest tribunal in the United States gets only 6,000; and so on through a succession of salaries in Jamaica all proportionably enormous and equally unnecessary.

Mankind are not aware to how great an extent a strict economy will attain the same object as increase of revenue.-Cicero's Paradoxes.