ccupied; but those figures--Jefferson, Mason and
Henry--were accepted as surpassing in merit the central work. The
Washington is imposing in size and position, but its art is open to
criticism. The horse is exaggeration of pose and muscle; being equally
strained, though not rampant, as that inopportune charger on which
Clark Mills perched General Jackson, at the national Capital. Nor is
this "first in peace" by any means "the first" on horseback; the figure
being theatric rather than dignified, and the extended arm more
gymnastic than statuesque.

An irate senator once told the august body he addressed that it was a
warning to them--"pointing straight to the penitentiary!" So, as a
whole, the group, if not thoroughly classic, may be admirably useful.

From Capitol Square, open, wide streets--neatly built up and meeting
each other at right angles--stretch away on all sides; an occasional
spire or dome, and frequent houses larger than the rest, breaking the
monotony. Below, toward the river, lie the basins, docks and rows of
warehouses; and further still is the landing, "Rockett's," the head of
river navigation, above which no vessels of any size can come. Just
under the Capitol--to the East--stands the governor's house, a plain,
substantial mansion of the olden time, embosomed in trees and
flower-beds. Further off, in the same line, rise the red and ragged
slopes of Church Hill. It takes its name from the old church in which
Patrick Henry made his celebrated speech--a structure still in pretty
good preservation. And still further away--opposite the vanishing point
of the water view--are seen the green tops of Chimborazo Heights and
Howard's Grove--hospital sites, whose names have been graven upon the
hearts of all southern people by the mordant of sorrow!

Just across the river, to the South, the white and scattered village of
Manchester is prettily relieved against the green slopes on which it
sits. There the bridge cuts the shining chafe of the river like a black
wire; and just under it, the wind sighs softly in the treetops of Belle
Isle, afterward to become so famous in the newspaper annals of the
North, as a prison for the Union soldiers captured in the long struggle
for the city.

Far to the west, higher shafts of Hollywood Cemetery gleam among the
trees; and the rapids, dancing down in the sunlight, break away into a
broader sheet of foam around its point. Except, perhaps, "Bonnie
Venture" (_Buona Ventura_), a