The Daily Dispatch

THE DAILY DISPATCH
The circulation of the Daily Dispatch exceeds considerably that of all the Daily papers of Richmond combined.

RICHMOND, VA
TUESDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 20. 1853.

A few days since we had the pleasure of seeing the exquisite cast of Houdon's Statue of Washington, just completed by Mr. Hubbard. It will be recollected that several weeks ago a very perfect copy in plaster was shivered into fragments by being thrown from its pedestal just as Mr. Hubard was about shipping it for exhibition at the Crystal Palace. Since that time, Mr. Hubard has most industriously applied himself to taking another from his moulds, and the result has been the very beautiful and imposing facsimile of the original, which will be forwarded we understand. this evening by the Steamer Jamestown.

We wish all our citizens could have had an opportunity of seeing this work, before it was boxed up for transmission to New York, as we are satisfied it would have given them very great delight and enabled them to place a proper value upon Mr. Hubard's labors, which have been attended with very considerable difficulty and expense for many months.

The cast will occupy a conspicuous and most eligible position in the wing of the Palace devoted to the Fine Arts and we shall be greatly disappointed in our expectations if it is not pronounced the most interesting object in the whole collection.- It will nobly represent Virginia in the building. and will entirely make amends for the hideous desecration of the figure of Washington, which has been permitted there in the colossal caricature of him by the Baron Marochetti.

We rejoice at the success that has crowned Mr. Hubard's efforts to obtain an exact copy of Houdon's magnificent Statue, because we have for many years been haunted by the apprehension that this invaluable treasure would be some night destroyed by the burning of the capitol.

A suggestion was made three or four years since. before the commissioners had decided upon the plan for the Monument, by the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, who took a great interest in the Statue and had a lithograph of it executed in London, that in the selection of the plan, reference should be had to a suitable shrine for the Statue, where it might be preserved for all time; but no attention was paid to this suggestion, and a subsequent effort made in the Legislature to have a separate building erected for it in another portion of the Capitol grounds, failed through the rejection of the Bill in the Senate.

The Statue is therefore yet exposed to destruction. by fire, but should it be destroyed, the loss will not be irreparable since Mr. Hubard has taken so faithful a mould of it.

We hope Mr Hubard will receive numerous orders for this Statue. which he will be prepared to supply in plaster, marble or bronze, it being his intention, we understand, to erect in this City a foundry for making castings in bronze.

Every State in the Union ought to possess a copy of this work, which is the only likeness of any sort that now exists of Washington, of any pretension to accuracy. Stuart's picture is no likeness, owing to the fact that at the time Washington sat for it, he had just undergone the insertion of a set of false teeth which a bungling dentist had put in such a manner as to change altogether the expression of his countenance.

Mr. Hubard has also completed a noble bust of Washington from Houdon's Statue, which we think even better for a deviation from the original in representing Washington in citizen's dress.

We are glad to learn that the cast which will be shipped this evening, has been made more than usually strong by iron rods through each of the limbs, and that there is little fear that it will not be safely deposited in the Crystal Palace, in the perfect condition in which we saw it.