One of the greatest works of contemporary art, the masterpiece of a master, it has been the subject of more rude and vulgar jests than any other piece of American sculpture. The painful disparity which so often exists between the judgment of the multitude and the inspiration of the creator has never been more touchingly illustrated than in the following words of Horatio Greenough, concerning this monument to his own genius and to the Father of his country. He says: “It is the birth of my thoughts, I have sacrificed to it the flower of my days, and the freshness of my strength; its every lineament has been moistened with the sweat of my toil and the tears of my exile. I would not barter away its association with my name for the proudest fortune that avarice ever dreamed of. In giving it up to the nation that has done me the honor to order it at my hands, I respectfully claim for it that protection which is the boast of civilization to afford art, and which a generous enemy has more than once been seen to extend even to the monuments of its own defeat.”
Retracing our steps to the rotunda, we turn westward through the main hall of the Congressional Library to the lofty colonnade outside, from whose balcony we look down upon the view which Humbolt declared to be the most beautiful of its type in the whole world. Directly below us, past the western terrace of the Capitol, with its open basin full of gold fishes flashing in the sun, stretch the Capitol grounds. Many varieties of trees already grown to forest hight spread their interlacing roof of cool, green shadow over the malachite sward below. Beds of flowers set in the grass, from the early March crocuses to the November blooming roses, make the grounds fragrant and precious with their presence. Here the dandelion spreads its cloth of gold in early May. Here the chrysanthemums fringe the snow with pallid gold in white December. Now the fountains are lapsing in dreamy tune through the long June hours, and the seats under the trees are filled with visitors. Nurses with children in their arms, old men and women leaning on their staffs, lovers “billing and cooing” through the long twilight and starlight seasons. Beyond spreads the city, every ugly outline hidden and lost in a waving sea of greenery rippling and tossing above it. The great avenues run and radiate in all directions. Pennsylvania Avenue stretches straight on between its border of shade trees to its acropolis one mile distant, the great Treasury gleaming in the sun, and the white chimneys of the Executive Mansion peering above the trees; and still on, till it joins the primitive streets of Georgetown. Massachusetts Avenue, broad, straight, magnificent, spans the city from end to end unbroken. Virginia Avenue to the left, goes on to meet Long Bridge, leading far into the Old Dominion. Directly in front stretches the public reservation yet to be made splendid as the Nation’s Boulevards, but already holding the Congressional gardens and conservatories, the unique towers, and picturesque grounds of the Smithsonian Institution, the broad flower-banded terraces of the Agricultural Department, and the incomplete Washington Monument. Beyond we see the wide Potomac, flecked all over with snowy sails, far down old Alexandria, dingy on its farther shore; opposite the Heights of Arlington, and amid its immemorial oaks; Arlington House with the stars and stripes floating free from its crowning summit.
CHAPTER XI.
ART TREASURES OF THE CAPITOL.
Arrival of a Solitary Lady—“The Pantheon of America”—Il Penserosa—Milton’s Ideal—Dirty Condition of the House of Representatives—The Goddess of Melancholy—Vinnie Ream’s Statue of Lincoln—Its Grand Defects—Necessary Qualifications for a Sculptor—The Bust of Lincoln by Mrs. Ames—General Greene and Roger Williams—Barbarous Garments of Modern Times—Statues of Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman—Bust of Kosciusko[Kosciusko]—Pulling His Nose—Alexander Hamilton—Fate of Senator Burr—Statue of Baker—His Last Speech Prophetic—The Glory of a Patriotic Example—The Lesson which Posterity Learns—Horatio Stone, the Sculptor—Washington’s Statue at Richmond—Neglected Condition of the Capitol Statuary—Curious Clock—Grotesque Plaster Image of Liberty—Webster—Clay—Adams—The Pantheon at Rome—The French Pantheon—Bar-Maid Goddess—Dirty Customs of M. C’s—Future Glory of America.
A solitary lady has arrived in the old Hall of the House of Representatives; or, as Senator Anthony eloquently calls it, “the Pantheon of America.” “Considering her age,” (as women sweetly say of each other,) “she looks quite young.” What her precise age may be, I am as unable to tell you as that of any other of my friends. The daughter of Saturn and Vesta, we may, at least, conclude that she has lived long enough to look older than she does. Her name is “Il Penserosa,” and, “to judge by appearances,” she seems to have flourished about twenty-five of our mortal years. Yet Milton sung of her in his youth, before an unruly wife and three disobedient daughters, (who perversely wished to understand the alphabet which they read to their blind father,) had made him crabbed and loftily sour towards women—Milton sung of this maid who has but lately arrived in Washington:
“Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,
All in a robe of darkest grain
Flowing with majestic train,
And sable stole of cypress lawn,