f the late Town-Crier in bell-metal, with the
inscription, "VOX ET PRAETEREA NIHIL," as a comprehensive tribute to
oratorical powers in general. _He_, at least, never betrayed his
clients. As it is, there is no end to it. We are to set up Horatius Vir
in effigy for inventing the Normal Schoolmaster, and by-and-by we shall
be called on to do the same ill-turn for Elihu Mulciber for getting
uselessly learned (as if any man had ideas enough for twenty languages!)
without any schoolmaster at all. We are the victims of a droll
antithesis. Daniel would not give in to Nebuchadnezzar's taste in
statuary, and we are called on to fall down and worship an image of
Daniel which the Assyrian monarch would have gone to grass again sooner
than have it in his back-parlor. I do not think lions are agreeable,
especially the shaved-poodle variety one is so apt to encounter;--I met
one once at an evening party. But I would be thrown into a den of them
rather than sleep in the same room with that statue. Posterity will
think we cut pretty figures indeed in the monumental line! Perhaps there
is a gleam of hope and a symptom of convalescence in the fact that the
Prince of Wales, during his late visit, got off without a single speech.
The cheerful hospitalities of Mount Auburn were offered to him, as to
all distinguished strangers, but nothing more melancholy. In his case I
doubt the expediency of the omission. Had we set a score or two of
orators on him and his suite, it would have given them a more
intimidating notion of the offensive powers of the country than West
Point and all the Navy-Yards put together.

In the name of our common humanity, consider, too, what shifts our
friends in the sculpin line (as we should call them in Chesumpscot) are
put to for originality of design, and what the country has to pay for
it. The Clark Mills (that turns out equestrian statues as the Stark
Mills do calico-patterns) has pocketed fifty thousand dollars for making
a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind-legs. For twenty-five cents I
have seen a man at the circus do something more wonderful,--make a very
living bay horse dance a redowa round the amphitheatre on his (it occurs
to me that _hind-legs_ is indelicate) posterior extremities to the
wayward music of an out-of-town (_Scotice_, out-o'-toon) band. Now, I
will make a handsome offer to the public. I propose for twenty-five
thousand dollars to suppress my design for an equestrian statue of a
distin