a head to judge, can gaze upon the imposing and beautiful statues 

 of Columbus and the Indian Girl, without emotions of admiration 

 and delight. The artist has conveyed most happily in stone the 

 attributes o dignity, enthusiasm, firmness, and genius, with which 

 we associate the character and person of the Great Navigator. 

 He has completed the poetical and historical eloquence of the group 

 by lending to the face, figure, and position of the admiring, shrink- 

 ing, curious, and artless inhabitant of the newly discovered world, 

 an expression in lineament, limb, and attitude, which cannot be 

 surpassed in felicity and beauty. I leave to others, who have more 

 time and space than myself, to venture upon a detailed criticism of 

 this chef d'ceuvre, and shall be content for the present with con- 

 gratulating the country that we possess at the metropolis of the 

 Union sculpture so superior and beautiful as the productions of 

 Persico and Greenough. May this be but the beginning of a well 

 sustained and directed patronage of artists, native and foreign, on 

 the part of our Government, and merit, such as that of the two 

 distinguished sculptors alluded to particularly, meet with flattering 

 and honorable reward! 



Before I take my final leave of the public, I may be excused for 

 inserting a compliment to the resident inhabitants of the metropo- 

 lis, which will, I trust, fall pleasantly and gratefully on the ears of 

 those in honor of whom it was penned, and make them ambitious 

 of ever proving themselves worthy of the flattering tribute of the 

 writer : " It may be fashionable," says the correspondent of the 

 New York Aurora, " nay, it may be excellent republican taste, to 

 i jeer and deride our National Capital, a city consecrated to Liberty 

 i and hallowed by the name of ' the Father of his Country,' but 



* to me Washington has a thousand charms. I love its people. It 



* is true they are not rich, neither are they numerous ; but they 



* have the frank, hospitable character of their noble Maryland and 



* Virginia ancestors ; and though at times, and at all times, the vice 

 ' and pollution, the heartlessness and villany, the turpitude and 

 ' sycophancy of all the rest of the Union, pour into it in immeasu- 



* rable streams, still, in despite of all this, the native and resident po- 

 1 pulation of Washington, on the score of public and private mo- 

 ' rals, may safely challenge competition with the proudest and 



* most lauded cities of America and the world." 



I have now done, and if perchance these lucubrations produce 



