The Illinois memorial is the famous Vinnie Ream statue of Lincoln. I wish, because it was done by a woman, that I could like it, but it is weak and unworthy. In every line of his strong, patriotic face lived the gospel of everlasting hope. This figure might well stand for one vanquished in the race. (Was Jesus vanquished? Was Paul? Was Luther? Was Lincoln?)
There is a small bust of Lincoln, by Mrs. Ames, which approaches nearer the true ideal of the great apostle of Liberty.
Illinois is further represented by James Shields, Senator. It would seem that men like Washington and Lincoln, who were the product of national influences, should be venerated as representatives of the nation rather than of individual States.
Missouri is represented by Frank Blair and Thomas H. Benton; Vermont, by Jacob Collamer and Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga; Oregon, by Edward Dickinson Baker, whose fine statue is by Horatio Stone.
Jacques Marquette (by G. Trentanore), in the garb of a Catholic priest, represents Wisconsin. Ohio has President Garfield and William Allen.
Roger Sherman and John Trumbull represent Connecticut, and Rhode Island memorializes Roger Williams and General Nathanael Greene, of Revolutionary fame—the former, in his quaint sixteenth century garb, standing as well for religious freedom as for the State which he founded.
Massachusetts presents Samuel Adams's statue, by Annie Whitney, and John Winthrop's, by R. S. Greenough. What a goodly company they are, those New England heroes![[2]]
[2]. Since the above was written a statue of John James Ingalls, of Kansas, has been placed in Statuary Hall; as well as a statue of Frances Willard, of Illinois, who is the first woman in the United States to be so honored.
Will Kansas have the courage to place there the statue of John Brown, of Osawatomie? He yet is a type of that unconventional State, which regards no precedent, follows no pattern; that State which, in a blind way, is striving to put the Ten Commandments on top and to uphold the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, no difference what man or what party goes down in the strife; that State of which Whittier truthfully said:
We cross the prairie as of old