[78] A lithographed portrait mentions the later-day titles and dignities of: "I.C. Louis, Baron de Closen, Maréchal de Camp, chambellan et chevalier des ordres français pour le Mérite et de la Légion d'honneur, ainsi que de celui de Cincinnatus des Etats Unis de l'Amérique Septentrionale." Reproduced by C.W. Bowen, who first drew attention to this journal, Century Magazine, February, 1907. Closen died in 1830, aged seventy-five.
[79] Which was done in a letter giving as a reason "that, whenever the two crowns should come to treat, his Most Christian Majesty would show how much the engagements he might enter into were to be relied on, by his exact observance of those he had already had with his present allies." Quoted, as "a sentence which I much liked," by Franklin, writing to John Adams, April 13, 1782.
II
MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY
MAJOR L'ENFANT AND THE FEDERAL CITY
I
Little more than a century ago the hill on which rises the Capitol of the federal city and the ground around it were covered with woods and underbrush; a few scattered farms had been built here and there, with one or two exceptions mere wooden structures whose low roofs scarcely emerged from their leafy surroundings. Not very long before, Indians had used to gather on that eminence and hold their council-fires.
As far now as the eye can reach the picturesque outline of one of the finest cities that exist is discovered; steeples and pinnacles rise above the verdure of the trees lining the avenues within the unaltered frame supplied by the blue hills of Maryland and Virginia.