Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

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ment and realization. The other sculptures of the Capitol have
been executed by foreign artists; but the names of Greenough,
of Powers, of Crawford, of Mills, and a long list of others, both
in painting and sculpture, indicate that the day has gone by
when we must depend on Europe for our works of art.
As wealth, intelligence, and refinement become more and more
diffused among the people, they demand a more liberal expenditure
from their representatives, as is seen by the large appropriations
made at the last session of Congress for the enlargement of the
Capitol and the extension of the public grounds. The grounds
about the Capitol,disproportionate to its original size, would still
less accord with its increased dimensions. The open waste,
therefore, lying between the Capitol, the President's house, and
the Potomac, is about to be converted into a National Park upon
a plan proposed by Mr. Downing, to whom we already owe such
a national debt of gratitude for the taste and elegance he has introduced into the architecture of country residences. His name
is synonymous, not only in this country, but abroad, with whatever is tasteful, beautiful, and correct in landscape gardening and
rural architecture, and the country can have no better guarantee
of the excellency of the plan than to know that he conceived
and is to execute it.1 The area contains about one hundred and
fifty acres, and the principal entrance is to be through a superb
marble gateway, in the form of a triumphal arch, which is to
stand at the western side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and which
will form one of the most striking features that meet the eye of
a stranger on entering the city. From this entrance a series of
carriage-drives, forty feet wide, crossing the canal by a suspension bridge, will lead, in gracefully curved lines, beneath lofty
shade-trees, through the whole park to the gate at the other ex 1 Since this paragraph was written a frightful calamity, so fresh in
the minds of the community that it need not be designated, has deprived
the country of the invaluable services of Mr. Downing. Standing, as
he did, alone in his profession, without a rival or a competitor, his death,
at the early age of thirty-seven, has left a vacancy that we seek in vain
to fill. Although so young, he has exerted an unbounded influence on
the public taste, and there is scarcely a town or village in our country
that has not some monument of his genius.
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