The national Capitol; its architecture, art and history . entre ofthe rotundo of the Capitol :the head to be a copyof Houdons Washington,and the accessories to beleft to the judgment ofthe artist. The Secretary of State immediatelyaddressed a letter of in-structions to Greenough for carrying the resolution into effect. The contractitself with the artist was made under the act of July 14th, which appropriated$5,000 to enable the President of the United States to contract with askilful artist to execute, in marble, a pedestrian statue of George Washington,to be placed in the centre of the rotund
The national Capitol; its architecture, art and history . entre ofthe rotundo of the Capitol :the head to be a copyof Houdons Washington,and the accessories to beleft to the judgment ofthe artist. The Secretary of State immediatelyaddressed a letter of in-structions to Greenough for carrying the resolution into effect. The contractitself with the artist was made under the act of July 14th, which appropriated$5,000 to enable the President of the United States to contract with askilful artist to execute, in marble, a pedestrian statue of George Washington,to be placed in the centre of the rotundo of the Capitol. The question as to what constituted a pedestrian statue was popularlymooted at the time. The artist evidently disregarded the controversy, if he would be better. Fecit would be better Latin than faciebat; while a decidedly preferablearrangement of words would be ad exemplum Libertatis magnum nee sine ipsa dura-turum—great and not destined without it to endure. The one thing absolutelywrong, as it seems, is istuJ, which should be GREENOUGH S WASHINGTON 76 The National Capitol was at all aware of it, and followed the bent of his own desire ; and theauthorities themselves accepted without question the undraped RomanWashington enthroned in a chair of state in fulfilment of a contract which,as well as the act of September 9, 1841, making the final appropriation,expressly called for a pedestrian statue. The statue, which weighs nearly twenty-one tons, was chiseled in its completion, the difficulty of bringing it safely to America arose ;and by a resolution passed May 27, 1840, the Secretary of the Navy was au-thorized to take immediate measures for its transportation and erection in theNational Capitol. Commodore Hull was sent with a vessel of war to take iton board, but when he found it would be necessary to rip up her decks inorder to place the cumbersome burden in the hold, he demurred. A merchant-man, the American ship Sea, Captain Delano,
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