Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 39, January, 1861 | Page 7

and fall of the thermometer, and two pieces of Equestrian Statuary
which it would be a waste of time to criticize. It boasts a streamlet
dignified with the name of the river Tiber, and this streamlet is of the
size and much the appearance of a vein in a dirty man's arm. It has a
canal, but the canal is a mud-puddle during one half the day and an
empty ditch during the other. In spite of the labors of the Smithsonian
Institute, it has no particular weather. It has the climates of all parts of
the habitable globe. It rains, hails, snows, blows, freezes, and melts in
Washington, all in the space of twenty-four hours. After a fortnight of
steady rain, the sun shines out, and in half an hour the streets are filled
with clouds of dust. Property in Washington is exceedingly sensitive,
the people alarmingly callous. The men are fine-looking, the women
homely. The latter have plain faces, but magnificent busts and graceful
figures. The former have an imposing presence and an empty pocket, a
great name and a small conscience. Notwithstanding all these
impediments and disadvantages, Washington is progressing rapidly. It
is fast becoming a large city, but it must always remain a deserted
village in the summer. Its destiny is that of the Union. It will be the
greatest capital the world ever saw, or it will be "a parched place in the
wilderness, a salt land and not inhabited," and "every one that passeth
thereby shall be astonished and wag his head."

MIDSUMMER AND MAY.
[Concluded.]
Spring at last stole placidly into summer, and Marguerite, who was
always shivering in the house, kept the company in a whirl of out-door
festivals.
"We have not lived so, Roger," said Mrs. McLean, "since the summer
when you went away. We all follow the caprice of this child as a ship
follows the little compass-needle."
And she made room for the child beside her in the carriage; for Mr.

Raleigh was about driving them into town,--an exercise which had its
particular charm for Marguerite, not only for the glimpse it afforded of
the gay, bustling inland-city-life, but for opportunities of securing the
reins and of occasioning panics. Lately, however, she had resigned the
latter pleasure, and sat with quiet propriety by Mrs. McLean.
Frequently, also, she took long drives alone or with one of the children,
holding the reins listlessly, and ranging the highway unobservantly for
miles around.
Mrs. Purcell declared the girl was homesick; Mrs. Heath doubted if the
climate agreed with her: she neither denied nor affirmed their
propositions.
Mr. Heath came and went from the city where her father was, without
receiving any other notice than she would have bestowed on a peaceful
walking-stick; his attentions to her during his visits were unequivocal;
she accepted them as nonchalantly as from a waiter at table. On the
occasion of his last stay, there had been a somewhat noticeable change
in his demeanor: he wore a trifle of quite novel assurance; his supreme
bearing was not mitigated by the restless sparkle of his eye; and in
addressing her his compliments, he spoke as one having authority.
Mrs. Laudersdale, so long and so entirely accustomed to the reception
of homage that it cost her no more reflection than an imperial princess
bestows on the taxes that produce her tiara, turned slowly from the
apparent apathy thus induced on her modes of thought, passivity lost in
a gulf of anxious speculation, while she watched the theatre of events
with a glow, like wine in lamplight, that burned behind her dusky eyes
till they had the steady penetration of some wild creature's. She may
have wondered if Mr. Raleigh's former feeling were yet alive; she may
have wondered if Marguerite had found the spell that once she found,
herself; she may have been kept in thrall by ignorance if he had ever
read that old confessing note of hers: whatever she thought or hoped or
dreaded, she said nothing, and did nothing.
Of all those who concerned themselves in the affair of Marguerite's
health and spirits, Mr. Raleigh was the only one who might have solved
their mystery. Perhaps the thought of wooing the child whose mother
he had once loved was sufficiently repugnant to him to overcome the
tenderness which every one was forced to feel for so beautiful a
creation. I have not said that Marguerite was this, before, because, until

brought into contrast with her mother, her extreme loveliness was too
little positive to be felt; now it was the evanescent shimmer of pearl to
the deep perpetual fire of the carbuncle. Softened, as she became, from
her versatile cheeriness, she moved round like a moonbeam, and
frequently had a bewildered grace, as if she knew not