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.
[Illustration: The Smithsonian]
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.