with a temporary madness, and have to be cared for till the fit
passes.

Inside the Capitol too there is much to detain you: the vast
fireproof library of Congress; the legislative halls; the marble room,
wainscoted in mirrors, where you can see the Senators slide between
the pillars accompanied by the multiplying train of not one but a
hundred shadows, and where you can wonder to your heart's content
what a room lined with looking-glass has to do with legislation; the
storied bronze doors, and the bronze staircases hidden away in the
dark, in and out the intricacies of whose balustrades all manner of
forest-life is cast--the deer bounding beneath the branches, and the
birds fluttering over their nests, which the serpent slides along to
rifle. In the older portion of the building is the national order of
architecture designed by Jefferson, the columns of which are clustered
cornstalks, and in whose capitals the acanthus leaf is pushed aside
by the curling tobacco. The lower corridors, too, are pictured
with representations of our natural history in bird and flower and
fruit--far fitter decoration than the swarming cherubs and cupids and
numberless unwarrantable little Loves that tumble about on the other
walls, intrude themselves on battle-scenes, and hover round the
appalling frescoes of Liberty, Law, Legislation and Religion in the
President's room, after a fashion that would be too free and easy for
the villa of Lucullus, but which is not altogether discordant with the
splendid leprosy of gilding with which the whole interior is infected;
which is to be seen oozing from the caissons overhead in huge
stalactites, damasked in broad sheets on the paneling, glaring in
lattice-work, bosses, scrolls and frets, and trickling everywhere over
the efflorescence of the plaster decorations. There are two or three
committee-rooms, likewise, very elaborately, though very questionably,