The Famous Bronze Doors—The Capitol Grounds—Statue of Washington Criticised—Peculiar Position for “the Father of his Country”—Horace Greenough’s Defence of the Statue—Picturesque Scenery Around the Capitol—The City and Suburbs—The Public Reservation—The Smithsonian Institution—The Potomac and the Hights of Arlington. We come back to the grand vestibule of the southern wing, to the flowering magnolias, tobacco and corn-leaves of the marble capitals, and pass out to the great portico. This is one of the famous bronze doors designed by Rogers, and cast in Munich. How heavy, slow, and still, its swing! The other opens and closes upon the central door of the north wing, leading to the vestibule of the Senate. Here, from the portico we look out upon the eastern grounds of the Capitol in the unsullied panoply of a June morning, across the closely shorn grass, the borders of roses and beds of flowers, through the vista of maples with their green arcade of light and shadow, to the august form of George Washington sitting in the centre of the grounds in a lofty cerule chair mounted on a pedestal of granite twelve feet high. This is the grandest and most criticised work of art about the Capitol. The form being nude to the waist and the right arm outstretched, it is a current vulgar joke that he is reaching out his hand for his clothes which are on exhibition in a case at the Patent Office. It is true that a sense of personal discomfort seems to emanate from the drapery—or lack of it—and the _posé_ of this colossal figure. George Washington with his right arm outstretched, his left forever holding up a Roman sword, half naked, yet sitting in a chair, beneath bland summer skies, within a veiling screen of tender leaves is a much more comfortable looking object than when the winds and rains and snows of winter beat upon his unsheltered head and uncovered form. This statue was designed in imitation of the antique statue of Jupiter Tonans. The ancients made their statues of Jupiter naked above and draped below as being visible to the gods but invisible to men. But the average American citizen, being accustomed to seeing the Father of his country decently attired in small clothes, naturally receives a shock at first beholding him in next to no clothes at all. It is impossible for him to reconcile a Jupiter in sandals with the stately George Washington in knee-breeches and buckled shoes. The spirit of the statue, which is ideal, militates against the spirit of the land which is utilitarian if not commonplace.