left the enclosure of the wooden coffins into which they were first packed for importation. They sleep in the awful silence and darkness of the most dismal chamber in the whole gray building. They sleep, and the dust thickens upon their faces; and sometimes in the dead waste and middle of the night they do converse dismally together. They represent Faiths not worshiped under the old régime, Hopes that had failed, and Charities that would have been scorned; Virtues that had fled, or had hidden themselves in lonesome places; Saintly Personages[1] who could not in those days have received respect; and Great Statesmen, perhaps, whose marble faces would have blushed into Egyptian granite, could they have seen that which was, but will never be again. And Radi-
- ↑ We might be mistaken, perhaps, in regard to the symbolic character of some of the Custom-House statues; for no living man of this generation hath a memory sufficiently strong to remember the day of their coming or the description which accompanied them.
