Columbia Phoenix

The New State Capitol.

The new State Capitol presented a very conspicuous mark to the enemy's cannon on Lexington heights, yet fortunately sustained but little injury--none, indeed, which cannot be easily repaired. Five shots struck the front, yet none of them did any serious damage, except one. This shattered the ornamented sill and balusters of one of the corridors of the principal floor. Another shell injured a fluted column on the centre projection. Two shots hit the interior of the brick arch over the Eastern front centre window, and two other shots struck and slightly scaled off the granite jamb division of the same treble centre window in the Eastern front. When in possession, these barbarians tried, in a petty manner, to deface and defile as much as they could. They wrote their names in pencil on the marble, as ambitious of distinction in malice as Mawworm was in humility--giving their companies and regiments, and sometimes coupling appropriately foul comments with their signatures, thus addressed to posterity. They seem to have found considerable sport in their practice, with brick-bats, or fragments of rocks, as sharp-shooters; and making the fine bronze statue of Washington their mark, they won various successes against his face, breast and legs. Sundry bruises and abrasions are to be found upon the head and front, and a part of his cane has been carried away among their spolia opima. The finely sculptured oak leaf decorations of the marble door pilasters at the main entrance door of the principal floor over the Northern front, as well as the ornaments of the soffit of that door, have been seriously defaced. The beaks of the eagles, in the panels above, and to the right and left of that doorway, as also the lower portions of the fasces on each side of the same, have been beaten out. The corner, or groin stones, and basement cornice at the South-western corner of the building, were also damaged to some extent by the fire from the adjacent old State House building. But all the injuries to the structure were insignificant in comparison with that which was done to the finished and raw material within the precinct--the wrought and rude marble, granite, iron and machinery; the work completed in these materials, and which has been accumulating for the last four years in yard and work-shop--in all this, our loss has been very great. There were destroyed among the accumulations forty beautifully sculptured Corinthian capitals, designed for the two large porticoes of the edifice, and wrought in our own beautiful native granite: the Corinthian capitals wrought in Italian marble for the great marble hall and stair-cases on the principal floor in the interior; all the polished shafts, in Tennessee and Italian marble, for the latter; and nearly all the marble work and pavements for the whole building in Tennessee and Italian marble--together with the granite balustrade and railings surmounting the main building and for the surrounding terrace. To these, add the destruction of hundreds of immense unwrought blocks of granite and marble of every description--machinery, tools; the sculptor's atelier and work shops, containing all the models and some of the unfinished statues meant for the main gable field or tympanum of the Northern front; the original models of the medallion portraits of Hayne and McDuffie, and one of the latest and best-casts of the head of Calhoun. But one small store-house remains uninjured throughout the premises, containing some finished marble work, the monolith granite columns of the main porticoes, and some completed work for the main cornice of the structure. The total pecuniary loss to the State, in the damage thus done to the new capitol, and to the material designed for it, including tools, instruments, models, &c., can fall very little short of one million of dollars in specie.