nate Chamber and the former
Congress Chamber. The old Senate Chamber, being now transferred to the
uses of supreme justice, was closed on the day of our visit, owing to
the funeral of a judge. Europeans would have acquiesced in the firm
negative of its locked doors. But my friends, being American, would not
acquiesce. The mere fact that the room was not on view actually
sharpened their desire that I should see it. They were deaf to
refusals.... I saw that room. And I was glad that I saw it, for in its
august simplicity it was worth seeing. The spirit of the early history
of the United States seemed to reside in that hemicycle; and the crape
on the vacated and peculiar chair added its own effect.

[Illustration: ON PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE]

My first notion on entering the former Congress Chamber was that I was
in presence of the weirdest collection of ugly statues that I had ever
beheld. Which impression, the result of shock, was undoubtedly false. On
reflection I am convinced that those statues of the worthies of the
different States are not more ugly than many statues I could point to in
no matter what fane, museum, or palace of Europe. Their ugliness is only
different from our accustomed European ugliness. The most crudely ugly
mural decorations in the world are to be found all over Italy--the home
of sublime frescos. The most atrociously debased architecture in the
world is to be found in France--the home of sober artistic tradition.
Europe is simply peppered everywhere with sculpture whose appalling
mediocrity defies competition. But when the European meets ugly
sculpture or any ugly form of art in the New World, his instinct is to
exclaim, "Of course!" His instinct is to exclaim, "This beats
everything!" The attitude will not bear examination. And lo! I was
adopting it myself.

"And here's Frances Willard!" cried, ecstatically, a young woman in one
of the numerous parties of excursionists whose more deliberate paths
through the Capitol we were continually crossing in our swift course.

And while, upon the spot where John Quincy Adams fell, I pretended to
listen to the guide, who was proving to me from a distance that the
place was as good a whispering-gallery as any in Europe, I thought: "And
why should not Frances Willard's statue be there? I am glad it is there.
And I am glad to see these groups of provincials admiring with open
mouths the statues of the makers of their history, though the statues
are chiefly pai