very slight variations. Jefferson says of it: "Here I am gazing whole hours at the Maison Quarrée like a lover at his mistress."
The corner-stone was laid in 1785, and on October 19, 1789, eight years to the day after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, the Legislature convened in it.
The Capitol is full of memories of bygone days. Here were debated and adopted the famous resolutions of 1798-99, drafted by James Madison as the true interpretation of the Federal compact. Here sat the convention of 1829-30, of which Marshall, Madison, Monroe and John Randolph of Roanoke were members, the convention of 1851, which enlarged the right of suffrage and, ten years later, the body which adopted the Act of Secession. Here, in 1862, met the congress of the Confederate States of America, which sat until April, 1865, when it adjourned—"Not sine die indeed, yet never to meet again."
In the rotunda of the Capitol is the most valuable marble in America, Houdon's statue of Washington, modelled from life. Virginia had voted this statue to him May 15, 1784, and Madison penned the inscription which appears on the pedestal:
