Читать книгу Ten Years in Washington: Inside Life and Scenes in Our National Capital as a Woman Sees Them - Mary Clemmer - Страница 19

Table of Contents

The Caaba of Liberty—The Centre of a Nation’s Hopes—Stirring Reminiscences of the Capitol—History Written in Stone—Patriotic Expression of Charles Sumner—Ruskin’s Views of Ornament—Building “for all Time”—“This our Fathers Did for Us”—The Parthenon and the Capitol Compared—The Interest of Humanity—A Secret Charm for a Thoughtful Mind—An Idea of Equality—The Destiny of the Stars and Stripes—A Mother’s Ambition—Recollections of the War—The Dying Soldier—“The Republic will not Perish.”

The Capitol of his country should be the Mecca of the American. It is his Capitol, and his country’s, through such extreme cost, that he should make pilgrimages hither to behold with his own eyes the Caaba of Liberty. This august building should gather and concentrate within its walls the holy love of country.

In our vast land the passion of nationality has become too much diffused. It has been broken into the narrower love bestowed upon a single State. It has been bruised by faction. It has been broken by anarchy. But within the walls of the Capitol, every State in the Union holds its memories, and garners its hopes. Every hall and corridor, every arch and alcove, every painting and marble is eloquent with the history of its past, and the prophecy of its future. The torch of revolution flamed in sight, yet never reached this beloved Capitol. Its unscathed walls are the trophies of victorious war; its dome is the crown of triumphant freemen; its unfilled niches and perpetually growing splendor foretell the grandeur of its final consummation. Remembering this, with what serious thought and care should this great national work progress:

“The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,

And groined the aisles of ancient Rome,

Wrought with a sad sincerity.”

Let no poor artist, no insincere spirit, assume to decorate a building in whose walls and ornaments a great nation will embody and perpetuate its most precious history. The brain that designs, the hand that executes for the Capitol, works not for to-day, but for all time. It was with a profound consciousness, not only of what this building is, but of all that it must yet be to the American people, that Charles Sumner, that profound lover of beauty, said, with so much feeling: “Surely this edifice, so beautiful and interesting, should not be opened to the rude experiment of untried talent. It ought not to receive, in the way of ornamentation, anything which is not a work of art.” In every future work added to the Capitol, let the significant words of Ruskin, the great art critic, be remembered:

“There should not be a single ornament put upon a great civic building, without an intellectual intention. Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things to come. There is no action nor art whose majesty we may not measure by this test. Therefore, when we build a public building, let us think that we build it for ever. Let us remember that a time is to come when men will say: ‘See, this our fathers did for us.’ ”

Phidias created the Parthenon. Beneath his eyes it slowly blossomed, the consummated flower of Hellenic art. It has never been granted to another one man to create a perfect building which should be at once the marvel and the model of all time. Many architects have wrought upon the American Capitol, and there are discrepancies in its proportions wherein we trace the conflict of their opposing idiosyncrasies. We see places where their contending tastes met and did not mingle, where the harmony and sublimity which each sought was lost. We see frescoed fancies and gilded traceries which tell no story; we see paintings which mean nothing but glare. But a human interest attaches itself to every form of noble building. Its very defects the more endear it to us, for, above all else, these are human. We love our Capitol, not that it is perfect, but because, being faulty, it still is great, and worthy of our reverence. Its wondrous possibilities, its inadequate fulfilment, its very incompleteness, but make it nearer kin to ourselves. Like the friend tantalizingly and delightfully faulty, its many shaded humanity is full of varied charm. It has all the secret ways of a profound nature. We fancy that we know it altogether, that we could never be lost in its labyrinths; yet we are constantly finding passages that we dreamed not of, and confronting shut and silent doors which we may not enter. But the deeper we penetrate into its recesses, the more positively we are pervaded by its nobleness, and the more conscious we become of its magnitude and its magnificence.

No matter how we condemn certain proportions of the Capitol, it grows upon the soul and imagination more and more, as does every great object in art or nature. Beside, the Capitol is vastly more than an object of mere personal attachment to be measured by a narrow individual standard. To every American citizen it is the majestic symbol of the majesty of his land. You may be lowly and poor. You may not own the cottage which shelters you, nor the scanty acres which you till. Your power may not cross your own door-step; yet these historic statues and paintings, these marble corridors, these soaring walls, this mighty dome, are yours. The highest man in the nation owns nothing here which does not belong equally to you. The Goddess of Liberty, gazing down from her shield, bestows no right upon the lofty which she does not extend equally to the lowliest of her sons.

The temple of Pallas Athena, the stones of Venice, the mighty mementos of a mightier Mexico do not tell to any human gazer one-half so grand a story as the Capitol of America will yet proclaim to the pilgrim of later ages. In far-off time I see it stand forth the conqueror of the forgetfulness and the indifference of men. A solemn teacher, with stern, watchful, yet silent sympathy, it will impart to a proud people the profound lesson of their past. A loving mother, it will hold before her living children the sacred faces of her dead for the emulation, the reverence, the love, of all who came after. In its halls will stand the sculptured forms of famed men, and of women great in goodness, great in devotion, great in true motherhood. Through sight and sympathy, through the inspiration of grand example, the living woman as she lays her moulding hand upon the budding heart and tender brain of the boy-man, will rise to the true dignity of the wife and mother of the Republic.

With psychical sight we see what the Capitol will one day be, to later generations; by our own heart-throbs, we know what it is to ourselves. Strength and depth are in its foundations, power and sublimity in its dome, and these are ours. Its mighty masses of gleaming marble, all veined with azure; its Corinthian capitals, flowering at the top like a palm in nature; its tutelary statue of freedom, are joys to our eyes forever. Serene Mother of our liberties, she watches always and never wearies. When the whole land lay in shadow, when the blood of her sons ran in rivers, when her heart was pierced nigh unto death, in moveless calm she held her steadfast shield; and gazing into her eyes, through the dimness of tears, we read the promise of peace. No matter where darkness fell, she bore the sunlight upon her crest. The dying statesman asked to be lifted up that his eyes might behold her last. The soldier, who gave his all, to perish in her name, watched for the sight of her from afar, and beheld her first with the shout of joy. When the slow river bore him back wounded from battle, he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of Freedom on the dome, and looking up, was content to know that he was dying for her sake.

Factions will fight and fall. Political parties will struggle and destroy each other. The passions of men are but the waves which beat and break on her feet. Above, beyond them all Freedom lives for evermore. Because she lives, Truth and Justice must survive, and the Republic will not perish.