human
No nation, perhaps, had ever before the opportunity offered them of deliberately deciding on the spot where their capital city should be fixed.... And, although the means now within the power of the country are not such as to pursue the design to any great extent, it will be obvious that the plan should be drawn on such a scale as to leave room for that aggrandizement and embellishment which the increase of the wealth of the nation will permit it to pursue at any period, however remote. Viewing the matter in this light, I am fully sensible of the extent of the undertaking.
gpt
temper, being haughty, proud, intractable, but that he was honest withal, sincere, loyal, full of ideas, and remarkably gifted. He decided to intrust him with the great task, thus justifying, a little later, his selection:
human
Since my first knowledge of the gentleman's abilities in the line of his profession, I have received him not only as a scientific man, but one who has added considerable taste to professional knowledge; and that, for such employment as he is now engaged in, for prosecuting public works and carrying them into effect, he was better qualified than any one who had come within my knowledge in this country. [110] The President informed L'Enfant that he was to set to work at once, and so bestir himself as to have at least a general plan to show a few months later, when he himself would return from a trip South. On March 2, 1791, Washington announced to Colonel Dickens, of Georgetown, the coming of the major:
gpt
An eminent French military engineer starts for Georgetown to examine and survey the site of the federal city. A few days later the arrival of
human
Major Longfont
gpt
I see no other way, he wrote to Jefferson on the 11th,
human
Now, when you may probably have heard that I am finally charged with delineating a plan for the city, I feel a sort of embarrassment how to speak to you as advantageously as I really think of the situation determined upon; for, as there is no doubt, I must feel highly interested in the success of the undertaking, I become apprehensive of being charged with partiality when I assure you that no position in America can be more susceptible of grand improvement than that between the eastern branch of the Potomac and Georgetown.
gpt
Then to Georgetown, where I found Major L'Enfant drawing his plan of the city of Washington; rode with him over the ground on which the city has since been built. Where the Capitol now stands was then a thick wood.
human
I would not leave Georgetown without having seen the ground destined for the federal city. The position seemed to me a most interesting one from every point of view. The French engineer who has already traced the streets, is busy preparing a detailed plan.... The President shows the greatest interest in this new Salente, which is to bear his name.
gpt
;[115] meant to absorb
human
Georgetown itself, whose name will before long be suppressed, and its whole district become a part of the cession. [116] It must be quickly filled with inhabitants, because this will strengthen the Union:
gpt
I earnestly wish all that the Eastern States can spare may come this way, and believe it would answer as good a purpose as that of their emigration to the West. It would deface that line of markation which will ever oppose the South against the East, for when objects are seen at a distance the idea we form of them is apt to mislead us ... and we fancy monstrous that object which, from a nearer view, would charm us.... Hence arises a natural though unwarrantable prejudice of nations against nations, of States against States, and so down to individuals, who often mistrust one another for want of being sufficiently acquainted with each other.
human
at the foot of Capitol Hill,[118] etc., a part of the plan which was, unluckily, left in abeyance. Some had spoken of a plain rectangular plan,
gpt
This might be good enough, L'Enfant declared,
human
But the case is quite different with the future federal city:
gpt
Such regular plans, however answerable they may appear on paper ... become at last tiresome and insipid, and it could never be, in its origin, but a mean continence of some cool imagination wanting a sense of the really grand and truly beautiful, only to be met with where nature contributes with art and diversifies the objects.