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FLORENCE.
*Her modest attitude is partly what unmakes her as the heathen
goddess, and softens her into woman. On account of the skill with
which the statue has been restored, she is just as whole as when she left
the hands of the sculptor. One cannot think of her as a senseless image,
but as a being that lives to gladden the world, incapable of decay or
death ; as young and fair as she was three thousand years ago, and still
to be young and fair as long as a beautiful thought shall require physical
embodiment. —Hawthorne.
«The goddess loves in stone, and fills
The air around with beauty ; we inhale
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils
Part of its immortality ; the veil
Of heaven is half undrawn ; within the pale
We stand, and in that form and face behold
What Mind can make, when Nature’s self would fail ;
And to the sond idolaters of old
Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould.
We gaze and turn away, and know not where,
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart
Reels with its fulness ; there —for ever there-Chain’d -
to the chariot of triumphal Art,
We stand as captives and would not depart.’—Byron.
2. Lottatori, or Wrestlers.
•Two youthful figures are wrestling with the utmost might of a
physical strength that has been trained in gymnastic exercise. Both
are so ingeniously entwined in each other that the group is beautifully
constructed, and yet the two figures are everywhere distinctlyseparable.
The one thrown down seems for the moment to have the worst of it,
though not to such an extent that the issue is already decided. On the
contrary, the uncertainty of the result keeps the spectator in the same
suspense as in similar scenes in the gymnasium. Art has here admirably -
transformed into marble one of those scenes which the Palaestra
daily afforded to the attentive observer. —Lübke.
3. L’Arrotino, the Slave whetting his knife.
4 The Apollino.
•The god is conceived in the supple form of youth, and exhibits the
same position of easy rest and self-indulgence which characterises
several works by Praxiteles. The left arm, which probably held the
bow, is supported against the stem of a tree, and the right arm is resting
on the head. The figure thus acquires an extremely finely felt contrast
in its whole outline and produces the effect of almost dreamy ease.
Lübke.
*It is difficult to conceive anything more delicately beautiful than the
Ganymede ; but the spirit-like lightness, the softness, the flowing per¬
