455. ARCHITECTURE, Virginia Capitol.—[further continued].
Pray try if you can effect
the stopping of this work. * * * The loss will
be only of the laying the bricks already laid,
or a part of them. The bricks themselves
will do again for the interior walls, and one
side wall and one end wall may remain,
as they will answer equally well for our plan.
This loss is not to be weighed against the saving
of money which will arise, against the comfort
of laying out the public money for something
honorable, the satisfaction of seeing an object
and proof of national good taste, and the regret
and mortification of erecting a monument of
our barbarism, which will be loaded with execrations
as long as it shall endure.—
To James Madison. Washington ed. i, 433.
(P.
1785)
