We pass through the private corridor looking from the Speaker’s room out into the grand colonnaded vestibule opening upon the great portico of the south extension. These twenty-four columns and forty pilasters have blossomed from native soil. Athens, Pompeii, Rome, are left out at last, and looking up to these flowering capitals we see corn-leaves, tobacco, and magnolias budding and blooming from their marble crowns. Every column, every pilaster bears a magnolia, each of a different form, all from casts of the natural flower. And far below, beneath the Representatives’ Hall, there is a row of monolithic columns formed of the tobacco and thistle. It is above the marble staircase opposite, leading to the ladies’ gallery, that we see painted on the wall covering the entire landing, the great painting of Leutze, representing the “Advance of Civilization;” “Westward the Star of Empire takes its way”—is its motto. At the first glance it presents a scene of inextricable confusion. It is an emigrant train caught and tangled in one of the highest passes of the Rocky Mountains. Far backward spread the Eastern Plains; far onward stretches the Beulah of promise, fading at last in the far horizon. The great wagons struggling upward, tumbling downward from mountain precipice into mountain gorge, hold under their shaking covers every type of westward moving human life. Here is the mother sitting in the wagon-front, her blue eyes gazing outward, wistfully and far, the baby lying on her lap; one wants to touch the baby’s head, it looks so alive and tender and shelterless in all that dust and turmoil of travel. A man on horseback carries his wife, her head upon his shoulder. Who that has ever seen it will forget her sick look and the mute appeal in the suffering eyes. Here is the bold hunter with his racoon cap, the pioneer boy on horseback, a coffee-pot and cup dangling at his saddle, and oxen—such oxen! it seems as if their friendly noses must touch us; they seem to be feeling out for our hand as we pass up to the gallery. Here is the young man, the old man, and far aloft stands the advance guard fastening on the highest and farthest pinnacle the flag of the United States. Confusing, disappointing perhaps, at first glance, this painting asserts itself more and more in the soul the oftener and the longer you gaze. Already the swift, smooth wheels of the railway, the shriek of the whistle, and the rush of the engine have made its story history. But it is the history of our past—the story of the heroic West. It is one of a thousand which should line the walls of the Capitol, feeding the hearts of the American people to the latest generation with the memory of our forefathers, showing by what toilsome ways they followed the Star of Empire and made the paths of civilization smooth for their children’s feet. CHAPTER X. OUTSIDE THE CAPITOL.