guished general officer as he _would have_ appeared at the Battle
of Buena Vista. This monument is intended as a weathercock to crown the
new dome of the Capitol at Washington. By this happy contrivance, the
horse will be freed from the degrading necessity of touching the earth
at all,--thus distancing Mr. Mills by two feet in the race for
originality. The pivot is to be placed so far behind the middle of the
horse, that the statue, like its original, will always indicate which
way the wind blows by going along with it. The inferior animal I have
resolved to model from a spirited saw-horse in my own collection. In
this way I shall combine two striking advantages. The advocates of the
Ideal in Art cannot fail to be pleased with a charger which embodies, as
it were, merely the abstract notion or quality, Horse, and the attention
of the spectator will not be distracted from the principal figure. The
material to be pure brass. I have also in progress an allegorical group
commemorative of Governor Wise. This, like-Wise, represents only a
potentiality. I have chosen, as worthy of commemoration, the moment when
and the method by which the Governor meant to seize the Treasury at
Washington. His Excellency is modelled in the act of making one of his
speeches. Before him a despairing reporter kills himself by falling on
his own steel pen; a broken telegraph-wire hints at the weight of the
thoughts to which it has found itself inadequate; while the Army and
Navy of the United States are conjointly typified in a horse-marine who
flies headlong with his hands pressed convulsively over his ears. I
think I shall be able to have this ready for exhibition by the time Mr.
Wise is nominated for the Presidency,--certainly before he is elected.
The material to be plaster, made of the shells of those oysters with
which Virginia shall have paid her public debt. It may be objected, that
plaster is not durable enough for verisimilitude, since bronze itself
could hardly be expected to outlast one of the Governor's speeches. But
it must be remembered that his mere effigy cannot, like its prototype,
have the pleasure of hearing itself talk; so that to the mind of the
spectator the oratorical despotism is tempered with some reasonable hope
of silence. This design, also, is intended only _in terrorem_, and will
be suppressed for an adequate consideration.

I find one comfort, however, in the very hideousness of our statues. The
fear of what the sculp