Among the mysteries of this mysterious city, take the following: Soon after my return from New York, I went all alone into the monumental square, east of the capitol, to discover what a certain low ill-looking shanty contained. On entering the building, I saw a statue of _Jupiter Tonans_, easing himself, without a shirt on his back, holding a thunderbolt in his right hand! Every wrinkle and every feature of his face, and his Roman dress, without a shirt, and coated with dust, proved to me at a glance of the eye, in a moment, that some Italian had either stolen and brought off the original statue, or he had exactly copied it; and that some one had placed it here, for the purpose of setting up the worship of Jupiter here at the seat of the national government! And this in a christian country, in this nineteenth century! Until I saw this statue here standing, I did suppose that christianity, in her onward march, from the banks of the Jordan to our farthest West, had overthrown the pagan religion, and had erected the cross wherever Jupiter Tonans and his kindred gods had once stood. After examining the statue of this heathen deity, I looked, and behold it stood on a granite rock, inscribed: “WASHINGTON!” That Washington was well represented by a block of granite, I was not prepared either to affirm or deny, but that any one could with any sort of propriety introduce into this square, the worship of Rome’s old pagan gods, I do deny, and will maintain my denial on substantial grounds of correct taste. The old story of Jupiter Tonans, if my memory serves me, after having read it forty-four years ago, for the last time, I believe is this. Some Roman emperor, perhaps Augustus, was being carried along in a litter, when one of his bearers was instantly killed by lightning. The emperor, from a sense of gratitude to “The Thunderer,” for sparing his own life, promised to erect, and finally did erect a temple, dedicated to “the thundering Jupiter” and placed his statue in it, in the very act of darting his deadly bolt. Who would have thought that that statue would have been transported here, and erected for the adoration of the pagans in this christian country? Paganism in Washington, in the nineteenth century! Why not forthwith get up lectures and send around beggars to crave money in order to stop its further progress?