THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTE.
South-west from the Capitol, and midway between it and the president’s house, on a gently rising ground, in the midst of a new park which has recently been laid out, stands the Smithsonian Institute, one of the noblest institutions and finest structures in Washington, a view of which is given in the cut beyond.
This edifice is four hundred and fifty feet long, by one hundred and forty wide, and is built of red sand-stone, in the Romanesque or Norman style, embellished by nine towers, from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty feet high, and of different forms. In the building is a lecture-room, large enough to seat some two thousand persons; a museum, for objects of natural history, some two hundred feet long; one of the best supplied laboratories in the United States; a gallery for paintings and statuary; a library-room, capable of containing one hundred thousand volumes; and various other smaller apartments connected with the designs of the building. The institution was endowed by James Smithson, an Englishman, who left his whole fortune, some five hundred thousand dollars, “to found, at Washington, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” The fund, which is in the keeping of the United States government, yields an income of more than thirty thousand dollars per year; and this increase is divided into two parts, one of which is to be devoted to the increase and diffusion of knowledge by means of original research and publications, and the other to the gradual formation of a library, a gallery of art, museum, &c.