We are the victims of a droll antithesis. Daniel would not give in to
Nebuchadnezzar's taste in statuary, and we are called on to fall down
and worship an image of Daniel which the Assyrian monarch would have
gone to grass again sooner than have it in his back-parlor. I do not
think lions are agreeable, especially the shaved-poodle variety one is
so apt to encounter;--I met one once at an evening party. But I would be
thrown into a den of them rather than sleep in the same room with that
statue. Posterity will think we cut pretty figures indeed in the
monumental line! Perhaps there is a gleam of hope and a symptom of
convalescence in the fact that the Prince of Wales, during his late
visit, got off without a single speech. The cheerful hospitalities of
Mount Auburn were offered to him, as to all distinguished strangers, but
nothing more melancholy. In his case I doubt the expediency of the
omission. Had we set a score or two of orators on him and his suite, it
would have given them a more intimidating notion of the offensive powers
of the country than West Point and all the Navy Yards put together.
In the name of our common humanity, consider, too, what shifts our
friends in the sculpin line (as we should call them in Chesumpscot) are
put to for originality of design, and what the country has to pay for
it. The Clark Mills (that turns out equestrian statues as the Stark
Mills do calico-patterns) has pocketed fifty thousand dollars for making
a very dead bronze horse stand on his hind legs.
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