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her head upon his shoulder. Who that has ever seen it will forget her sick look and the mute appeal in the suffering eyes. Here is the bold hunter with his racoon cap, the pioneer boy on horseback, a coffee-pot and cup dangling at his saddle, and oxen-such oxen! it seems as if their friendly noses must touch us; they seem to be feeling out for our hand as we pass up to the gallery. Here is the young man, the old man, and far aloft stands the advance guard fastening on the highest and farthest pinnacle the flag of the United States.

Confusing, disappointing perhaps, at first glance, this painting asserts itself more and more in the soul the oftener and the longer you gaze. Already the swift, smooth wheels of the railway, the shriek of the whistle, and the rush of the engine have made its story history. But it is the history of our past-the story of the heroic West. It is one of a thousand which should line the walls of the Capitol, feeding the hearts of the American people to the latest generation with the memory of our forefathers, showing by what toilsome ways they followed the Star of Empire and made the paths of civilization smooth for their children's feet.

CHAPTER X.

OUTSIDE THE CAPITOL.

The Famous Bronze Doors-The Capitol Grounds-Statue of Washington Criticised-Peculiar Position for "the Father of his Country "-Horace.. Greenough's Defence of the Statue-Picturesque Scenery Around the Capitol-The City and Suburbs-The Public Reservation-The Smithsonian Institution-The Potomac and the Hights of Arlington.

WE

E come back to the grand vestibule of the southern wing, to the flowering magnolias, tobacco and cornleaves of the marble capitals, and pass out to the great portico. This is one of the famous bronze doors designed by Rogers, and cast in Munich. How heavy, slow, and still, its swing! The other opens and closes upon the central door of the north wing, leading to the vestibule of the Senate.

Here, from the portico we look out upon the eastern grounds of the Capitol in the unsullied panoply of a June morning, across the closely shorn grass, the borders of roses and beds of flowers, through the vista of maples with their green arcade of light and shadow, to the august form of George Washington sitting in the centre of the grounds in a lofty cerule chair mounted on a pedestal of granite twelve feet high.

This is the grandest and most criticised work of art about the Capitol. The form being nude to the waist and the right arm outstretched, it is a current vulgar joke

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that he is reaching out his hand for his clothes which are on exhibition in a case at the Patent Office. It is true that a sense of personal discomfort seems to emanate from the drapery—or lack of it—and the posé of this colossal figure. George Washington with his right arm outstretched, his left forever holding up a Roman sword, half naked, yet sitting in a chair, beneath bland summer skies, within a veiling screen of tender leaves is a much more comfortable looking object than when the winds and rains and snows of winter beat upon his unsheltered head and uncovered form. This statue was designed in imitation of the antique statue of Jupiter Tonans. The ancients made. their statues of Jupiter naked above and draped below as being visible to the gods but invisible to men. But the average American citizen, being accustomed to seeing the Father of his country decently attired in small clothes, naturally receives a shock at first beholding him in next to no clothes at all. It is impossible for him to reconcile a Jupiter in sandals with the stately George Washington in knee-breeches and buckled shoes. The spirit of the statue, which is ideal, militates against the spirit of the land which is utilitarian if not commonplace.

Nevertheless, in poetry of feeling, in grandeur of conception, in exquisite fineness of detail and in execution, Horatio Greenough's statue of George Washington is transcendently the greatest work in marble yet wrought at the command of the government for the Capitol. It is scarcely human, certainly not American, but it is godlike. The face is a perfect portrait of Washington. The veining of a single hand, the muscles of a single arm are triumphs of art.

Washington's chair is twined with acanthus leaves and