In 1808 Jefferson made Benjamin Henry Latrobe supervising architect of what we now call the old Capitol, being the central portion of the present building.

He constructed the original Senate Chamber, now the Supreme Court Room, on the plan of the old Greek theater, the general outline of which it yet retains. The House (now Statuary Hall) also had a decidedly Grecian aspect. It was finished in 1811. Statuary Hall is semicircular in shape, and has a vaulted roof. Its ornamentation is not yet completed. This is right. It would not be well to occupy all the space in one generation. We need the perspective of time to know that which will be of permanent interest to the world.

Here Clay presided, here Webster spoke, and here Adams stood for the right of petition and for the abolition of human slavery. What pictures these scenes would make! A plate in the floor southwest of the center marks the spot in the House where John Quincy Adams fell stricken with paralysis. In a room opening from the Hall is a memorial bust, whose inscription reads: "John Quincy Adams, who, after fifty years of public service, the last sixteen in yonder Hall, was summoned to die in this room February 23 1848."

The room has special acoustic qualities which in early days occasioned much trouble. A whisper scarcely audible to the ear into which it is breathed is distinctly heard in another part of the hall. It is one of the most remarkable whispering galleries in the world, and its peculiar properties, accidentally discovered, produced no end of disturbances before they were fully understood. Their effect has been much modified by a recent change in the ceiling.

Each State is now permitted to place in Statuary Hall two statues of its most renowned sons.

Virginia has Washington and Jefferson. Think of that! New Hampshire has Daniel Webster, who made these walls echo with his thrilling, patriotic sentences, and John Stark, of Bunker Hill fame, who cried: "See those men? They are the redcoats! Before night they are ours, or Molly Stark will be a widow!"

Pennsylvania has Robert Fulton, the inventor, and John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, the preacher, Major-General in the Revolution. He was also Senator and Member of Congress. New York has Robert R. Livingston, of the Continental Congress, and Alexander Hamilton. The latter was Washington's Secretary of the Treasury during both of his Presidential terms. He had much to do with securing a good financial system for the new government. His pathetic death enhanced his fame and ruined Burr; but under the search-light of history one can not help wondering had Burr been killed and Hamilton survived that duel, would the halo of the latter have faded? The statue of Hamilton is one of the best in the Hall. It was made in Rome by Horatio Stone.

The Illinois memorial is the famous Vinnie Ream statue of Lincoln. I wish, because it was done by a woman, that I could like it, but it is weak and unworthy. In every line of his strong, patriotic face lived the gospel of everlasting hope. This figure might well stand for one vanquished in the race. (Was Jesus vanquished? Was Paul? Was Luther? Was Lincoln?)

There is a small bust of Lincoln, by Mrs. Ames, which approaches nearer the true ideal of the great apostle of Liberty.

Illinois is further represented by James Shields, Senator. It would seem that men like Washington and Lincoln, who were the product of national influences, should be venerated as representatives of the nation rather than of individual States.

Missouri is represented by Frank Blair and Thomas H. Benton; Vermont, by Jacob Collamer and Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga; Oregon, by Edward Dickinson Baker, whose fine statue is by Horatio Stone.

Jacques Marquette (by G. Trentanore), in the garb of a Catholic priest, represents Wisconsin. Ohio has President Garfield and William Allen.

Roger Sherman and John Trumbull represent Connecticut, and Rhode Island memorializes Roger Williams and General Nathanael Greene, of Revolutionary fame—the former, in his quaint sixteenth century garb, standing as well for religious freedom as for the State which he founded.

Massachusetts presents Samuel Adams's statue, by Annie Whitney, and John Winthrop's, by R. S. Greenough. What a goodly company they are, those New England heroes!^[2]

Will Kansas have the courage to place there the statue of John Brown, of Osawatomie? He yet is a type of that unconventional State, which regards no precedent, follows no pattern; that State which, in a blind way, is striving to put the Ten Commandments on top and to uphold the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, no difference what man or what party goes down in the strife; that State of which Whittier truthfully said:

A brave fight the State has made against fraud. The fight is yet on; but who doubts that the truth of God "shall yet prevail," and who would better stand for such a people than one who went down in that fight with the "martyr's aureole" around his grizzled head?

Much, of course, must be left untold here; but it is hoped that what has been said will create a desire to see and learn more of those whom the State and the nation has here honored.