Some of the best-known statues in the city have attracted as much attention by their travels as by their artistic qualities. One of these is Greenough’s colossal marble presentment of George Washington, which visitors to the Capitol ten years ago will recall as standing in the open space facing the main east portico. Greenough was in Italy in 1835, when it was ordered, and spent eight years on its production. It shows Washington seated, nude to the waist, and below that draped in a flowing robe. It weighed, when finished, twelve tons without a pedestal, and required twenty-two yoke of oxen to haul from Florence to Genoa. Peasants who saw it on the way took it for the image of some mighty saint, and dropped upon their knees and crossed themselves as it passed. The man-of-war which was waiting for it at Genoa had no hatchway large enough to take it in, so a merchant vessel had to be chartered for its voyage to America. Arrived at the Capitol, where it was intended to stand in the center of the rotunda, it could not be squeezed through the doors, and the masonry had to be cut away. Then it was discovered that it was causing the floor to settle, and a lot of shoring had to be done in the crypt underneath. Finally, as it was not suited to its place, the masonry around the doorway was ripped out again, and the statue was set up in the plaza, where it remained till 1908, the sport of rains and frosts and souvenir-maniacs, when it took what every one hopes will be its last journey--to the National Museum. The original purpose of Congress was to have a “pedestrian statue” costing, all told, five thousand dollars. What has eventuated is Washington’s head set on a torso of Jupiter Tonans, costing, with all its traveling expenses, more than fifty thousand dollars. Another peregrinating statue is that of Thomas Jefferson, which stands to-day against the east wall of the rotunda. In 1833 it occupied the center of this room. When Greenough’s Washington was brought in, Jefferson was removed to the Library of Congress, which was then housed in the rooms of the west front of the Capitol. In 1850 it was carried up to the White House and planted in the middle of the north garden. It held that site for twenty-four years and then came back to the rotunda, from which there is no reason to think it will be moved again.