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.
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