To say that Congress ought not to encourage ingenious foreign artists at all, would be contrary to our feelings and to all our history, but our own artists should have a preference, all other things being equal. And I do not say, that our artists may not with great propriety go to Europe and there study the best labors of the best artists. But let our Americans carry with them American hearts, and return to us untinged with European feelings, and not be imbued either with the ideas of paganism. Washington clad in a Roman dress, instead of his American uniform! Daniel Boone dressed in a toga, instead of his Western hunting shirt! An American Indian in a toga, fighting a battle in a personal contest, instead of his being clad in his simple breech clout! Why such sights are presented to us here, is a mystery--a mystery of Washington city which I cannot unfold to the reader. So of the pedestal of a bust of Mr. Jefferson, resting on the heads of infants, whose mouths are wide open, rendered so apparently by the pressure on the top of their skulls. Whose absurd taste produced these abortions? To mingle paganism with the ideas of christianity in our statues and in our architecture, is in bad taste, especially in this age. Within about three hundred years after the death of the Founder of our religion, against the superstition of Jews and pagans, against the ridicule of their wits and the reasonings of their sages, against the craft of their politicians, the power of their kings and the prowess of their armies, against the axe, the cross and the stake, christianity ascended the imperial throne, and waved her broad banner in triumph over the palace of the Cæsars. Her march and conquests extended to every part of the then civilized world. The idols and all the gods of paganism fell down prostrate, before the onward march of christianity, and who will now, set up these idols _here_, for the worship of Americans? Away then with these gods and goddesses--away with Mercury and his rod, with Minerva and Venus and Cupid, they are blemishes, not beauties, they are pagan and not christian, barbarous and not civilized signs of the times. We want a Congress sufficiently christian to overthrow these idol gods, and all idol worship in the capitol. The ancient Greeks and Romans have long since gone down to their graves, and even their gods have perished from off the face of the earth. Why dig them up and bring them here to imbue the minds of our youth with pagan ideas?