the Endowments of the Hero the Virtues of the Patriot, and exerting both in establishing the Liberties of his Country, has rendered his Name dear to his Fellow Citizens, and given the World an immortal Example of true Glory.”

This inscription was written by James Madison. On the day when this resolution was adopted, the General Assembly also voted an address to General Washington, and a joint committee of the two houses was appointed to prepare one and present it. The committee, with Mr. Madison at the head, waited upon Washington, at Mount Vernon, a few days afterward, presented the address, and received the following reply:

"GENTLEMEN :-With feelings which are more easy to be conceived than expressed, I meet and reciprocate the congratulations of the representatives of this commonwealth on the final establishment of peace.

'Nothing can add more to the pleasure which arises from a conscious discharge of public trust, than the approbation of one's country. To have been so happy, under a vicissitude of fortune, amidst the difficult and trying scenes of an arduous conflict, as to meet this, is, in my mind, to have attained the highest honor; and the consideration of it, in my present peaceful retirement, will heighten all my domestic joys, and constitute my greatest felicity.

"I should have been truly wanting in duty, and must have frustrated the great and important object for which we resorted to arms, if, seduced by a temporary regard for fame, I had suffered the paltry love of it to interfere with my country's welfare; the interest of which was the only inducement which carried me into the field, or permitted the sacred rights of civil

authority, though but for a moment, to be violated and infringed by a power meant originally to rescue and confirm them.

"For those rewards and blessings which you have invoked. for me in this world, and for the fruition of that happiness which you pray for in that which is to come, you have, gentlemen, all my thanks and all my gratitude. I wish I could insure them to you, and the state you represent, a hundredfold."

Benjamin Harrison was governor of Virginia when the General Assembly requested the executive to take measures for procuring a statue of Washington; and a little more than a month after the date of that resolution, he wrote to Doctor Franklin and Mr. Jefferson, then in Paris, on the subject, requesting them to attend to the matter, and acquainting them that he had ordered Mr. Peale to send them a full-length portrait of the general, to be used as a model for the sculptor.

The only method by which a perfect likeness of the great patriot might be secured, was to have the artist make a model from the living face; and Messrs. Franklin and Jefferson accordingly engaged Houdon, a portrait sculptor, then without a rival in the world, to go to America for the purpose. Houdon was a small, active, and exceedingly industrious Frenchman; careful and prudent, and disposed to make an excellent bargain for himself. "The terms," Mr. Jefferson wrote, "are twenty-five thousand livres [about $4,620], one thousand English guineas (the English guinea being worth twenty-five livres), for the statue and pedestal. Besides this, we pay his expenses going and returning, which we expect will be

between four and five thousand livres; and if he dies on the voyage, we pay his family ten thousand livres. This latter proposition was disagreeable to us; but he has a father, mother, and sisters, who have no resource but in his labor; and he is himself one of the best men in the world." To insure the state against loss in case of his death, Mr. Jefferson, through Mr. Adams, procured an insurance upon Houdon's life, in London, at an additional expense of five hundred livres, or about ninety-two dollars.

It was more than a year after the order for the statue was given before Houdon arrived. He came over in the same vessel that brought Doctor Franklin home. On the 20th of September, 1785, the Doctor gave Houdon a letter of introduction to Washington, and, at the same time, he wrote to the general to apprise him of the sculptor's arrival. Washington immediately wrote to Houdon, saying, "It will give me pleasure, sir, to welcome you to this seat of my retirement; and whatever I have or can procure that is necessary to your purposes, or convenient and agreeable to your wishes, you must freely command, as inclination to oblige you will be among the last things in which I shall be deficient, either on your arrival or during your stay."

Houdon arrived at Mount Vernon on the 3d of October, furnished with all necessary materials for making a bust of Washington. He remained there a fortnight, and made, on the living face of our illustrious Friend, a plaster mould, preparatory for the clay impression, which was then modelled into the form of a bust, and immediately, before it could shrink from drying, moulded and cast in plaster, to be afterward copied in marble, in Paris. That clay model was left at

HOUDON'S BUST OF WASHINGTON.

Mount Vernon, where it may be seen upon a bracket in the library, white-washed, so as to resemble marble or plaster of Paris.

In the presence of Mr. Madison, Houdon made exact measurements of the person of Washington, and with ample memoranda concerning costume, et cetera, he returned to France. The statue was not completed until 1789, when to the inscription upon the pedestal were added the words: "Done in the year of CHRIST one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, and in the year of the commonwealth, twelve."

Houdon's statue stands in the rotunda of the capitol at Richmond. It is of fine Italian marble, size of life. The costume is the military dress of the Revolution. The right