Arrival of a Solitary Lady—“The Pantheon of America”—Il Penserosa—Milton’s Ideal—Dirty Condition of the House of Representatives—The Goddess of Melancholy—Vinnie Ream’s Statue of Lincoln—Its Grand Defects—Necessary Qualifications for a Sculptor—The Bust of Lincoln by Mrs. Ames—General Greene and Roger Williams—Barbarous Garments of Modern Times—Statues of Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman—Bust of Kosciusko—Pulling His Nose—Alexander Hamilton—Fate of Senator Burr—Statue of Baker—His Last Speech Prophetic—The Glory of a Patriotic Example—The Lesson which Posterity Learns—Horatio Stone, the Sculptor—Washington’s Statue at Richmond—Neglected Condition of the Capitol Statuary—Curious Clock—Grotesque Plaster Image of Liberty—Webster—Clay—Adams—The Pantheon at Rome—The French Pantheon—Bar-Maid Goddess—Dirty Customs of M. C’s—Future Glory of America. A solitary lady has arrived in the old Hall of the House of Representatives; or, as Senator Anthony eloquently calls it, “the Pantheon of America.” “Considering her age,” (as women sweetly say of each other,) “she looks quite young.” What her precise age may be, I am as unable to tell you as that of any other of my friends. The daughter of Saturn and Vesta, we may, at least, conclude that she has lived long enough to look older than she does. Her name is “Il Penserosa,” and, “to judge by appearances,” she seems to have flourished about twenty-five of our mortal years. Yet Milton sung of her in his youth, before an unruly wife and three disobedient daughters, (who perversely wished to understand the alphabet which they read to their blind father,) had made him crabbed and loftily sour towards women—Milton sung of this maid who has but lately arrived in Washington: “Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure, All in a robe of darkest grain Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of cypress lawn, Over thy decent shoulders drawn; Come, but keep thy wonted state With even step and musing gait, And looks commercing with the skies, Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.”