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The National Hall of Statuary in the south wing of the capitol, the former hall of the House of Representatives, is said to have been modeled after the theater at Athens. It is a fine semi-circle of 95 or 96 feet chord, and 60 feet height, with floor of blue and white marbles, in octagons. It is surrounded by a line of 26 columns of the beautiful variegated breccia, or pudding-stone, called Potomac marble (from the now exhausted quarry at the great falls of that river, some 20 miles above Washington), 28 feet high, in three sections; 8 feet 4 inches in circumference, resting on bases of sandstone, capitals of Carrara marble, cut in Italy, making the height 32 feet. Eight of these noble columns form a loggia under the south gallery, with two windows on each side the corridor; high up on the north are small square and circular windows that lighted the gallery which it is proposed soon to remove; but the hall is lighted from above, by the south dome, or rather,