p576-020 CHAPTER I. MIRIAM, HILDA, KENYON, DONATELLO.

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Four individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad
to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one of
the saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at
Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the
staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and
most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking
into his death-swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous,
the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all
famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining
in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal
life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow
with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in
which they lay buried for centuries. Here, likewise, is
seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as it was two thousand
years ago) of the Human Soul, with its choice of
Innocence or Evil close at hand, in the pretty figure of a

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child, clasping a dove to her bosom, but assaulted by a
snake.

From one of the windows of this saloon, we may see a
flight of broad stone steps, descending alongside the antique
and massive foundation of the Capitol, towards the
battered triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, right below.
Farther on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate
Forum, (where Roman washerwomen hang out their linen
to the sun,) passing over a shapeless confusion of modern
edifices, piled rudely up with ancient brick and stone, and
over the domes of Christian churches, built on the old
pavements of heathen temples, and supported by the very
pillars that once upheld them. At a distance beyond —
yet but a little way, considering how much history is
heaped into the intervening space — rises the great sweep
of the Coliseum, with the blue sky brightening through
its upper tier of arches. Far off, the view is shut in by
the Alban mountains, looking just the same, amid all this
decay and change, as when Romulus gazed thitherward
over his half-finished wall.

We glance hastily at these things — at this bright sky,
and those blue, distant mountains, and at the ruins, Etruscan,
Roman, Christian, venerable with a threefold antiquity,
and at the company of world-famous statues in the
saloon — in the hope of putting the reader into that state
of feeling which is experienced oftenest at Rome. It is
a vague sense of ponderous remembrances; a perception
of such weight and density in a bygone life, of which
this spot was the centre, that the present moment is
pressed down or crowded out, and our individual affairs

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and interests are but half as real here as elsewhere.
Viewed through this medium, our narrative — into which
are woven some airy and unsubstantial threads, intermixed
with others, twisted out of the commonest stuff of
human existence — may seem not widely different from
the texture of all our lives.

Side by side with the massiveness of the Roman Past,
all matters that we handle or dream of now-a-days look
evanescent and visionary alike.

It might be that the four persons whom we are seeking
to introduce, were conscious of this dreamy character of
the present, as compared with the square blocks of granite
wherewith the Romans built their lives. Perhaps it even
contributed to the fanciful merriment which was just now
their mood. When we find ourselves fading into shadows
and unrealities, it seems hardly worth while to be
sad, but rather to laugh as gaily as we may, and ask little
reason wherefore.

Of these four friends of ours, three were artists, or
connected with art; and, at this moment, they had been
simultaneously struck by a resemblance between one of
the antique statues, a well-known masterpiece of Grecian
sculpture, and a young Italian, the fourth member of
their party.

“You must needs confess, Kenyon,” said a dark-eyed
young woman, whom her friends called Miriam, “that
you never chiselled out of marble, nor wrought in clay, a
more vivid likeness than this, cunning a bust-maker as
you think yourself. The portraiture is perfect in character,
sentiment, and feature. If it were a picture, the

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resemblance might be half illusive and imaginary; but
here, in this Pentelic marble, it is a substantial fact, and
may be tested by absolute touch and measurement. Our
friend Donatello is the very Faun of Praxiteles. Is it
not true, Hilda?”

“Not quite — almost — yes, I really think so,” replied
Hilda, a slender, brown-haired, New England girl, whose
perceptions of form and expression were wonderfully
clear and delicate. “If there is any difference between
the two faces, the reason may be, I suppose, that the
Faun dwelt in woods and fields, and consorted with
his like; whereas, Donatello has known cities a little, and
such people as ourselves. But the resemblance is very
close, and very strange.”

“Not so strange,” whispered Miriam, mischievously;
“for no Faun in Arcadia was ever a greater simpleton
than Donatello. He has hardly a man's share of wit,
small as that may be. It is a pity there are no longer
any of this congenial race of rustic creatures for our
friend to consort with!”

“Hush, naughty one!” returned Hilda. “You are
very ungrateful, for you well know he has wit enough to
worship you, at all events.”

“Then the greater fool he!” said Miriam, so bitterly
that Hilda's quiet eyes were somewhat startled.

“Donatello, my dear friend,” said Kenyon, in Italian,
“pray gratify us all by taking the exact attitude of this
statue.”

The young man laughed, and threw himself into the
position in which the statue has been standing for two or

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three thousand years. In truth, allowing for the difference
of costume, and if a lion's skin could have been substituted
for his modern talma, and a rustic pipe for his
stick, Donatello might have figured perfectly as the marble
Faun, miraculously softened into flesh and blood.

“Yes; the resemblance is wonderful,” observed Kenyon,
after examining the marble and the man with the
accuracy of a sculptor's eye. “There is one point,
however, or, rather, two points, in respect to which our
friend Donatello's abundant curls will not permit us
to say whether the likeness is carried into minute detail.”

And the sculptor directed the attention of the party to
the ears of the beautiful statue which they were contemplating.

But we must do more than merely refer to this exquisite
work of art; it must be described, however inadequate
may be the effort to express its magic peculiarity
in words.

The Faun is the marble image of a young man, leaning
his right arm on the trunk or stump of a tree; one
hand hangs carelessly by his side; in the other he holds
the fragment of a pipe, or some such sylvan instrument
of music. His only garment — a lion's skin, with the
claws upon his shoulder — falls half way down his back,
leaving the limbs and entire front of the figure nude.
The form, thus displayed, is marvellously graceful, but
has a fuller and more rounded outline, more flesh, and
less of heroic muscle than the old sculptors were wont to
assign to their types of masculine beauty. The

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character of the face corresponds with the figure; it is most
agreeable in outline and feature, but rounded and somewhat
voluptuously developed, especially about the throat
and chin; the nose is almost straight, but very slightly
curves inward, thereby acquiring an indescribable charm
of geniality and humor. The mouth, with its full yet
delicate lips, seems so nearly to smile outright, that it
calls forth a responsive smile. The whole statue — unlike
anything else that ever was wrought in that severe
material of marble — conveys the idea of an amiable and
sensual creature, easy, mirthful, apt for jollity, yet not
incapable of being touched by pathos. It is impossible
to gaze long at this stone image without conceiving a
kindly sentiment towards it, as if its substance were
warm to the touch, and imbued with actual life. It
comes very close to some of our pleasantest sympathies.

Perhaps it is the very lack of moral severity, of any
high and heroic ingredient in the character of the Faun,
that makes it so delightful an object to the human eye
and to the frailty of the human heart. The being here
represented is endowed with no principle of virtue, and
would be incapable of comprehending such; but he
would be true and honest by dint of his simplicity. We
should expect from him no sacrifice or effort for an
abstract cause; there is not an atom of martyr's stuff in
all that softened marble; but he has a capacity for strong
and warm attachment, and might act devotedly through
its impulse, and even die for it at need. It is possible,
too, that the Faun might be educated through the medium
of his emotions, so that the coarser animal portion of his

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nature might eventually be thrown into the background,
though never utterly expelled.

The animal nature, indeed, is a most essential part of
the Faun's composition; for the characteristics of the
brute creation meet and combine with those of humanity
in this strange yet true and natural conception of antique
poetry and art. Praxiteles has subtly diffused throughout
his work that mute mystery which so hopelessly perplexes
us whenever we attempt to gain an intellectual or
sympathetic knowledge of the lower orders of creation.
The riddle is indicated, however, only by two definite
signs; these are the two ears of the Faun, which are leaf-shaped,
terminating in little peaks, like those of some
species of animals. Though not so seen in the marble,
they are probably to be considered as clothed in fine,
downy fur. In the coarser representations of this class
of mythological creatures, there is another token of brute
kindred, — a certain caudal appendage; which, if the
Faun of Praxiteles must be supposed to possess it at all,
is hidden by the lion's skin that forms his garment. The
pointed and furry ears, therefore, are the sole indications
of his wild, forest nature.

Only a sculptor of the finest imagination, the most delicate
taste, the sweetest feeling, and the rarest artistic
skill — in a word, a sculptor and a poet too — could have
first dreamed of a Faun in this guise, and then have succeeded
in imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in
marble. Neither man nor animal, and yet no monster;
but a being in whom both races meet on friendly ground!
The idea grows coarse as we handle it, and hardens in

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our grasp. But, if the spectator broods long over the
statue, he will be conscious of its spell; all the pleasantness
of sylvan life, all the genial and happy characteristics
of creatures that dwell in woods and fields, will seem
to be mingled and kneaded into one substance, along with
the kindred qualities in the human soul. Trees, grass,
flowers, woodland streamlets, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated
man! The essence of all these was compressed
long ago, and still exists within that discolored marble
surface of the Faun of Praxiteles.

And, after all, the idea may have been no dream, but
rather a poet's reminiscence of a period when man's affinity
with nature was more strict, and his fellowship with
every living thing more intimate and dear.

p576-028 CHAPTER II. THE FAUN.

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“Donatello,” playfully cried Miriam, “do not leave
us in this perplexity! Shake aside those brown curls,
my friend, and let us see whether this marvellous resemblance
extends to the very tips of the ears. If so, we
shall like you all the better!”

“No, no, dearest signorina,” answered Donatello, laughing,
but with a certain earnestness. “I entreat you to
take the tips of my ears for granted.” As he spoke, the
young Italian made a skip and jump, light enough for a
veritable faun; so as to place himself quite beyond the
reach of the fair hand that was outstretched, as if to settle
the matter by actual examination. “I shall be like a
wolf of the Apennines,” he continued, taking his stand on
the other side of the Dying Gladiator, “if you touch my
ears ever so softly. None of my race could endure it.
It has always been a tender point with my forefathers
and me.”

He spoke in Italian, with the Tuscan rusticity of accent,
and an unshaped sort of utterance, betokening that
he must heretofore have been chiefly conversant with
rural people.

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“Well, well,” said Miriam, “your tender point — your
two tender points, if you have them — shall be safe, so
far as I am concerned. But how strange this likeness is,
after all! and how delightful, if it really includes the
pointed ears! Oh, it is impossible, of course,” she continued,
in English, “with a real and commonplace young
man like Donatello; but you see how this peculiarity defines
the position of the Faun; and, while putting him
where he cannot exactly assert his brotherhood, still disposes
us kindly towards the kindred creature. He is not
supernatural, but just on the verge of nature, and yet
within it. What is the nameless charm of this idea,
Hilda? You can feel it more delicately than I.”

“It perplexes me,” said Hilda, thoughtfully, and shrinking
a little; “neither do I quite like to think about it.”

“But, surely,” said Kenyon, “you agree with Miriam
and me, that there is something very touching and impressive
in this statue of the Faun. In some long-past
age, he must really have existed. Nature needed, and
still needs, this beautiful creature; standing betwixt man
and animal, sympathizing with each, comprehending the
speech of either race, and interpreting the whole existence
of one to the other. What a pity that he has forever
vanished from the hard and dusty paths of life, —
unless,” added the sculptor, in a sportive whisper, “Donatello
be actually he!”

“You cannot conceive how this fantasy takes hold of
me,” responded Miriam, between jest and earnest. “Imagine,
now, a real being, similar to this mythic Faun;
how happy, how genial, how satisfactory would be his life,

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enjoying the warm, sensuous, earthy side of nature; revelling
in the merriment of woods and streams; living as
our four-footed kindred do, — as mankind did in its innocent
childhood; before sin, sorrow, or morality itself had
ever been thought of! Ah! Kenyon, if Hilda and you
and I — if I, at least, — had pointed ears! For I suppose
the Faun had no conscience, no remorse, no burthen
on the heart, no troublesome recollections of any sort;
no dark future either.”

“What a tragic tone was that last, Miriam!” said the
sculptor; and, looking into her face, he was startled to
behold it pale and tear-stained. “How suddenly this
mood has come over you!”

“Let it go as it came,” said Miriam, “like a thundershower
in this Roman sky. All is sunshine again, you
see!”

Donatello's refractoriness as regarded his ears had evidently
cost him something, and he now came close to
Miriam's side, gazing at her with an appealing air, as if
to solicit forgiveness. His mute, helpless gesture of entreaty
had something pathetic in it, and yet might well
enough excite a laugh, so like it was to what you may see
in the aspect of a hound when he thinks himself in fault
or disgrace. It was difficult to make out the character of
this young man. So full of animal life as he was, so joyous
in his deportment, so handsome, so physically well
developed, he made no impression of incompleteness, of
maimed or stinted nature. And yet, in social intercourse,
these familiar friends of his habitually and instinctively
allowed for him, as for a child or some other lawless

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thing, exacting no strict obedience to conventional rules,
and hardly noticing his eccentricities enough to pardon
them. There was an indefinable characteristic about
Donatello that set him outside of rules.

He caught Miriam's hand, kissed it, and gazed into her
eyes without saying a word. She smiled, and bestowed
on him a little careless caress, singularly like what one
would give to a pet dog when he puts himself in the way
to receive it. Not that it was so decided a caress either,
but only the merest touch, somewhere between a pat and
a tap of the finger; it might be a mark of fondness, or
perhaps a playful pretence of punishment. At all events,
it appeared to afford Donatello exquisite pleasure; insomuch
that he danced quite round the wooden railing that
fences in the Dying Gladiator.

“It is the very step of the Dancing Faun,” said Miriam
apart to Hilda. “What a child, or what a simpleton,
he is! I continually find myself treating Donatello as if
he were the merest unfledged chicken; and yet he can
claim no such privileges in the right of his tender age;
for he is at least — how old should you think him,
Hilda?”

“Twenty years, perhaps,” replied Hilda, glancing at
Donatello; “but, indeed, I cannot tell; hardly so old, on
second thoughts, or possibly older. He has nothing to
do with time, but has a look of eternal youth in his face.”

“All underwitted people have that look,” said Miriam,
scornfully.

“Donatello has certainly the gift of eternal youth, as
Hilda suggests,” observed Kenyon, laughing; “for,

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judging by the date of this statue, which, I am more and
more convinced, Praxiteles carved on purpose for him, he
must be at least twenty-five centuries old, and he still
looks as young as ever.”

“What age have you, Donatello?” asked Miriam.

“Signorina, I do not know,” he answered; “no great
age, however; for I have only lived since I met you.”

“Now, what old man of society could have turned a
silly compliment more smartly than that!” exclaimed
Miriam. “Nature and art are just at one sometimes.
But what a happy ignorance is this of our friend Donatello!
Not to know his own age! It is equivalent to being
immortal on earth. If I could only forget mine!”

“It is too soon to wish that,” observed the sculptor;
“you are scarcely older than Donatello looks.”

“I shall be content, then,” rejoined Miriam, “if I could
only forget one day of all my life.” Then she seemed to
repent of this allusion, and hastily added, “A woman's
days are so tedious that it is a boon to leave even one of
them out of the account.”

The foregoing conversation had been carried on in a
mood in which all imaginative people, whether artists or
poets, love to indulge. In this frame of mind, they sometimes
find their profoundest truths side by side with the
idlest jest, and utter one or the other, apparently without
distinguishing which is the most valuable, or assigning any
considerable value to either. The resemblance between
the marble Faun and their living companion had made a
deep, half-serious, half-mirthful impression on these three
friends, and had taken them into a certain airy region,

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lifting up, as it is so pleasant to feel them lifted, their
heavy earthly feet from the actual soil of life. The world
had been set afloat, as it were, for a moment, and relieved
them for just so long of all customary responsibility for
what they thought and said.

It might be under this influence — or, perhaps, because
sculptors always abuse one another's works — that Kenyon
threw in a criticism upon the Dying Gladiator.

“I used to admire this statue exceedingly,” he remarked,
“but, latterly, I find myself getting weary and
annoyed that the man should be such a length of time
leaning on his arm in the very act of death. If he is so
terribly hurt, why does he not sink down and die without
further ado? Flitting moments, imminent emergencies,
imperceptible intervals between two breaths, ought not to
be encrusted with the eternal repose of marble; in any
sculptural subject, there should be a moral standstill,
since there must of necessity be a physical one. Otherwise,
it is like flinging a block of marble up into the air,
and by some trick or enchantment, causing it to stick
there. You feel that it ought to come down, and are
dissatisfied that it does not obey the natural law.”

“I see,” said Miriam, mischievously, “you think that
sculpture should be a sort of fossilizing process. But, in
truth, your frozen art has nothing like the scope and freedom
of Hilda's and mine. In painting there is no similar
objection to the representation of brief snatches of time;
perhaps, because a story can be so much more fully told
in picture, and buttressed about with circumstances that
give it an epoch. For instance, a painter never would

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have sent down yonder Faun out of his far antiquity,
lonely and desolate, with no companion to keep his simple
heart warm.”

“Ah, the Faun!” cried Hilda, with a little gesture of
impatience; “I have been looking at him too long; and
now, instead of a beautiful statue, immortally young, I
see only a corroded and discolored stone. This change is
very apt to occur in statues.”

“And a similar one in pictures, surely,” retorted the
sculptor. “It is the spectator's mood that transfigures
the Transfiguration itself. I defy any painter to move
and elevate me without my own consent and assistance.”

“Then you are deficient of a sense,” said Miriam.

The party now strayed onward from hall to hall of that
rich gallery, pausing here and there, to look at the multitude
of noble and lovely shapes, which have been dug up
out of the deep grave in which old Rome lies buried. And,
still, the realization of the antique Faun, in the person of
Donatello, gave a more vivid character to all these marble
ghosts. Why should not each statue grow warm with
life! Antinous might lift his brow, and tell us why he is
forever sad. The Lycian Apollo might strike his lyre;
and, at the first vibration, that other Faun in red marble,
who keeps up a motionless dance, should frisk gayly forth,
leading yonder Satyrs, with shaggy goat-shanks, to clatter
their little hoofs upon the floor, and all join hands with
Donatello! Bacchus, too, a rosy flush diffusing itself
over his time-stained surface, could come down from his
pedestal, and offer a cluster of purple grapes to Donatello's
lips; because the god recognizes him as the

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woodland elf who so often shared his revels. And here, in
this sarcophagus, the exquisitely carved figures might assume
life, and chase one another round its verge with that
wild merriment which is so strangely represented on those
old burial coffers; though still with some subtle allusion
to death, carefully veiled, but forever peeping forth amid
emblems of mirth and riot.

As the four friends descended the stairs, however, their
play of fancy subsided into a much more sombre mood; a
result apt to follow upon such exhilaration as that which
had so recently taken possession of them.

“Do you know,” said Miriam, confidentially to Hilda,
“I doubt the reality of this likeness of Donatello to the
Faun, which we have been talking so much about? To
say the truth, it never struck me so forcibly as it did Kenyon
and yourself, though I gave in to whatever you were
pleased to fancy, for the sake of a moment's mirth and
wonder.”

“I was certainly in earnest, and you seemed equally
so,” replied Hilda, glancing back at Donatello, as if to reassure
herself of the resemblance. “But faces change so
much, from hour to hour, that the same set of features
has often no keeping with itself; to an eye, at least, which
looks at expression more than outline. How sad and
sombre he has grown, all of a sudden!”

“Angry too, methinks! nay, it is anger much more
than sadness,” said Miriam. “I have seen Donatello in
this mood once or twice before. If you consider him
well, you will observe an odd mixture of the bull-dog, or
some other equally fierce brute, in our friend's

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composition; a trait of savageness hardly to be expected in such
a gentle creature as he usually is. Donatello is a very
strange young man. I wish he would not haunt my footsteps
so continually.”

“You have bewitched the poor lad,” said the sculptor
laughing. “You have a faculty of bewitching people,
and it is providing you with a singular train of followers.
I see another of them behind yonder pillar; and it is his
presence that has aroused Donatello's wrath.”

They had now emerged from the gateway of the
palace; and partly concealed by one of the pillars of the
portico, stood a figure such as may often be encountered
in the streets and piazzas of Rome, and nowhere else.
He looked as if he might just have stepped out of a picture,
and, in truth, was likely enough to find his way into
a dozen pictures; being no other than one of those living
models, dark, bushy-bearded, wild of aspect and attire,
whom artists convert into saints or assassins, according as
their pictorial purposes demand.

“Miriam,” whispered Hilda, a little startled, “it is your
model!”

p576-037 CHAPTER III. SUBTERRANEAN REMINISCENCES.

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Miriam's model has so important a connection with
our story, that it is essential to describe the singular mode
of his first appearance, and how he subsequently became
a self-appointed follower of the young female artist. In
the first place, however, we must devote a page or two to
certain peculiarities in the position of Miriam herself.

There was an ambiguity about this young lady, which,
though it did not necessarily imply anything wrong, would
have operated unfavorably as regarded her reception in
society, anywhere but in Rome. The truth was, that nobody
knew anything about Miriam, either for good or evil.
She had made her appearance without introduction, had
taken a studio, put her card upon the door, and showed
very considerable talent as a painter in oils. Her fellow-professors
of the brush, it is true, showered abundant
criticisms upon her pictures, allowing them to be well
enough for the idle half-efforts of an amateur, but lacking
both the trained skill and the practice that distinguish the
works of a true artist.

Nevertheless, be their faults what they might, Miriam's

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pictures met with good acceptance among the patrons of
modern art. Whatever technical merit they lacked, its
absence was more than supplied by a warmth and passionateness,
which she had the faculty of putting into her
productions, and which all the world could feel. Her
nature had a great deal of color, and, in accordance with
it, so likewise had her pictures.

Miriam had great apparent freedom of intercourse;
her manners were so far from evincing shyness, that it
seemed easy to become acquainted with her, and not difficult
to develop a casual acquaintance into intimacy.
Such, at least, was the impression which she made, upon
brief contact, but not such the ultimate conclusion of those
who really sought to know her. So airy, free, and affable
was Miriam's deportment towards all who came within
her sphere, that possibly they might never be conscious
of the fact; but so it was, that they did not get on, and
were seldom any farther advanced into her good graces
to-day than yesterday. By some subtle quality, she kept
people at a distance, without so much as letting them
know that they were excluded from her inner circle.
She resembled one of those images of light, which conjurors
evoke and cause to shine before us, in apparent
tangibility, only an arm's length beyond our grasp: we
make a step in advance, expecting to seize the illusion,
but find it still precisely so far out of our reach. Finally,
society began to recognize the impossibility of getting
nearer to Miriam, and gruffly acquiesced.

There were two persons, however, whom she appeared
to acknowledge as friends in the closer and truer sense of

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the word; and both of these more favored individuals did
credit to Miriam's selection. One was a young American
sculptor, of high promise and rapidly increasing celebrity;
the other, a girl of the same country, a painter like Miriam
herself, but in a widely different sphere of art. Her
heart flowed out towards these two; she requited herself
by their society and friendship (and especially by Hilda's)
for all the loneliness with which, as regarded the rest of
the world, she chose to be surrounded. Her two friends
were conscious of the strong, yearning grasp which Miriam
laid upon them, and gave her their affection in full measure;
Hilda, indeed, responding with the fervency of a
girl's first friendship, and Kenyon with a manly regard,
in which there was nothing akin to what is distinctively
called love.

A sort of intimacy subsequently grew up between these
three friends and a fourth individual; it was a young
Italian, who, casually visiting Rome, had been attracted
by the beauty which Miriam possessed in a remarkable
degree. He had sought her, followed her, and insisted,
with simple perseverance, upon being admitted at least to
her acquaintance; a boon which had been granted, when
a more artful character, seeking it by a more subtle mode
of pursuit, would probably have failed to obtain it. This
young man, though anything but intellectually brilliant,
had many agreeable characteristics which won him the
kindly and half-contemptuous regard of Miriam and her
two friends. It was he whom they called Donatello, and
whose wonderful resemblance to the Faun of Praxiteles
forms the key-note of our narrative.

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Such was the position in which we find Miriam some
few months after her establishment at Rome. It must
be added, however, that the world did not permit her to
hide her antecedents without making her the subject of a
good deal of conjecture; as was natural enough, considering
the abundance of her personal charms, and the degree
of notice that she attracted as an artist. There were
many stories about Miriam's origin and previous life,
some of which had a very probable air, while others were
evidently wild and romantic fables. We cite a few, leaving
the reader to designate them either under the probable
or the romantic head.

It was said, for example, that Miriam was the daughter
and heiress of a great Jewish banker, (an idea perhaps
suggested by a certain rich Oriental character in her
face,) and had fled from her paternal home to escape a
union with a cousin, the heir of another of that golden
brotherhood; the object being, to retain their vast accumulation
of wealth within the family. Another story
hinted, that she was a German princess, whom, for reasons
of state, it was proposed to give in marriage either
to a decrepit sovereign, or a prince still in his cradle.
According to a third statement, she was the offspring of a
Southern American planter, who had given her an elaborate
education and endowed her with his wealth; but the
one burning drop of African blood in her veins so affected
her with a sense of ignominy, that she relinquished all,
and fled her country. By still another account she was
the lady of an English nobleman; and, out of mere love
and honor of art, had thrown aside the splendor of her

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

rank, and come to seek a subsistence by her pencil in a
Roman studio.

In all the above cases, the fable seemed to be instigated
by the large and bounteous impression which Miriam invariably
made, as if necessity and she could have nothing
to do with one another. Whatever deprivations she underwent
must needs be voluntary. But there were other
surmises, taking such a commonplace view as that Miriam
was the daughter of a merchant or financier, who had
been ruined in a great commercial crisis; and, possessing
a taste for art, she had attempted to support herself by
the pencil, in preference to the alternative of going out as
governess.

Be these things how they might, Miriam, fair as she
looked, was plucked up out of a mystery, and had its
roots still clinging to her. She was a beautiful and attractive
woman, but based, as it were, upon a cloud, and all
surrounded with misty substance; so that the result was
to render her sprite-like in her most ordinary manifestations.
This was the case even in respect to Kenyon and
Hilda, her especial friends. But such was the effect of
Miriam's natural language, her generosity, kindliness, and
native truth of character, that these two received her as a
dear friend into their hearts, taking her good qualities as
evident and genuine, and never imagining that what was
hidden must be therefore evil.

We now proceed with our narrative.

The same party of friends, whom we have seen at the
sculpture gallery of the Capitol, chanced to have gone
together, some months before, to the catacomb of St.

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

Calixtus. They went joyously down into that vast tomb,
and wandered by torchlight through a sort of dream, in
which reminiscences of church-aisles and grimy cellars —
and chiefly the latter — seemed to be broken into fragments,
and hopelessly intermingled. The intricate passages
along which they followed their guide had been
hewn, in some forgotten age, out of a dark-red, crumbly
stone. On either side were horizontal niches, where, if
they held their torches closely, the shape of a human
body was discernible in white ashes, into which the entire
mortality of a man or woman had resolved itself. Among
all this extinct dust, there might perchance be a thigh-bone,
which crumbled at a touch; or possibly a skull,
grinning at its own wretched plight, as is the ugly and
empty habit of the thing.

Sometimes their gloomy pathway tended upward, so
that, through a crevice, a little daylight glimmered down
upon them, or even a streak of sunshine peeped into a
burial niche; then again, they went downward by gradual
descent, or by abrupt, rudely hewn steps, into deeper and
deeper recesses of the earth. Here and there the narrow
and tortuous passages widened somewhat, developing
themselves into small chapels; which once, no doubt, had
been adorned with marble-work and lighted with everburning
lamps and tapers. All such illumination and
ornament, however, had long since been extinguished and
stript away; except, indeed, that the low roofs of a few
of these ancient sites of worship were covered with dingy
stucco, and frescoed with scriptural scenes and subjects, in
the dreariest stage of ruin.

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

In one such chapel, the guide showed them a low arch,
beneath which the body of St. Cecilia had been buried
after her martyrdom, and where it lay till a sculptor saw
it, and rendered it forever beautiful in marble.

In a similar spot they found two sarcophagi, one containing
a skeleton, and the other a shrivelled body, which
still wore the garments of its former lifetime.

“How dismal all this is!” said Hilda, shuddering. “I
do not know why we came here, nor why we should stay
a moment longer.”

“I hate it all!” cried Donatello, with peculiar energy.
“Dear friends, let us hasten back into the blessed daylight!”

From the first, Donatello had shown little fancy for the
expedition; for, like most Italians, and in especial accordance
with the law of his own simple and physically happy
nature, this young man had an infinite repugnance to
graves and skulls, and to all that ghastliness which the
Gothic mind loves to associate with the idea of death.
He shuddered, and looked fearfully round, drawing nearer
to Miriam, whose attractive influence alone had enticed
him into that gloomy region.

“What a child you are, poor Donatello!” she observed,
with the freedom which she always used towards him.
“You are afraid of ghosts!”

“Yes, signorina; terribly afraid!” said the truthful
Donatello.

“I also believe in ghosts,” answered Miriam, “and
could tremble at them, in a suitable place. But these
sepulchres are so old, and these skulls and white ashes so

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

very dry, that methinks they have ceased to be haunted.
The most awful idea connected with the catacombs is
their interminable extent, and the possibility of going
astray into this labyrinth of darkness, which broods
around the little glimmer of our tapers.”

“Has any one ever been lost here?” asked Kenyon
of the guide.

“Surely, signor; one, no longer ago than my father's
time,” said the guide; and he added, with the air of a
man who believed what he was telling, “but the first that
went astray here was a pagan of old Rome, who hid himself
in order to spy out and betray the blessed saints, who
then dwelt and worshipped in these dismal places. You
have heard the story, signor? A miracle was wrought
upon the accursed one; and, ever since (for fifteen centuries
at least), he has been groping in the darkness, seeking
his way out of the catacomb.”

“Has he ever been seen?” asked Hilda, who had
great and tremulous faith in marvels of this kind.

“These eyes of mine never beheld him, signorina; the
saints forbid!” answered the guide. “But it is well
known that he watches near parties that come into the
catacomb, especially if they be heretics, hoping to lead
some straggler astray. What this lost wretch pines for,
almost as much as for the blessed sunshine, is a companion
to be miserable with him.”

“Such an intense desire for sympathy indicates something
amiable in the poor fellow, at all events,” observed
Kenyon.

They had now reached a larger chapel than those

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

heretofore seen; it was of a circular shape, and though hewn
out of the solid mass of red sandstone, had pillars, and a
carved roof, and other tokens of a regular architectural
design. Nevertheless, considered as a church, it was exceedingly
minute, being scarcely twice a man's stature in
height, and only two or three paces from wall to wall;
and while their collected torches illuminated this one,
small, consecrated spot, the great darkness spread all
round it, like that immenser mystery which envelops our
little life, and into which friends vanish from us, one by
one.

“Why, where is Miriam?” cried Hilda.

The party gazed hurriedly from face to face, and became
aware that one of their party had vanished into the
great darkness, even while they were shuddering at the
remote possibility of such a misfortune.

p576-046 CHAPTER IV. THE SPECTRE OF THE CATACOMB.

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

“Surely, she cannot be lost!” exclaimed Kenyon.
“It is but a moment since she was speaking.”

“No, no!” said Hilda, in great alarm. “She was
behind us all; and it is a long while since we have heard
her voice!”

“Torches! torches!” cried Donatello, desperately. “I
will seek her, be the darkness ever so dismal!”

But the guide held him back, and assured them all,
that there was no possibility of assisting their lost companion,
unless by shouting at the very top of their voices.
As the sound would go very far along these close and
narrow passages, there was a fair probability that Miriam
might hear the call, and be able to retrace her steps.

Accordingly, they all — Kenyon with his bass voice;
Donatello with his tenor; the guide with that high and
hard Italian cry, which makes the streets of Rome so
resonant; and Hilda with her slender scream, piercing
farther than the united uproar of the rest — began to
shriek, halloo, and bellow, with the utmost force of their
lungs. And, not to prolong the reader's suspense, (for we

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

do not particularly seek to interest him in this scene, telling
it only on account of the trouble and strange entanglement
which followed,) they soon heard a responsive
call, in a female voice.

“It was the signorina!” cried Donatello, joyfully.

“Yes; it was certainly dear Miriam's voice,” said
Hilda. “And here she comes! Thank Heaven! Thank
Heaven!”

The figure of their friend was now discernible by her
own torchlight, approaching out of one of the cavernous
passages. Miriam came forward, but not with the eagerness
and tremulous joy of a fearful girl, just rescued from
a labyrinth of gloomy mystery. She made no immediate
response to their inquiries and tumultuous congratulations;
and, as they afterwards remembered, there was
something absorbed, thoughtful, and self-concentrated in
her deportment. She looked pale, as well she might, and
held her torch with a nervous grasp, the tremor of which
was seen in the irregular twinkling of the flame. This
last was the chief perceptible sign of any recent agitation
or alarm.

“Dearest, dearest Miriam,” exclaimed Hilda, throwing
her arms about her friend, “where have you been straying
from us? Blessed be Providence, which has rescued
you out of that miserable darkness!”

“Hush, dear Hilda!” whispered Miriam, with a
strange little laugh. “Are you quite sure that it was
Heaven's guidance which brought me back. If so, it
was by an odd messenger, as you will confess. See;
there he stands.”

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

Startled at Miriam's words and manner, Hilda gazed
into the duskiness whither she pointed, and there beheld
a figure standing just on the doubtful limit of obscurity,
at the threshold of the small, illuminated chapel. Kenyon
discerned him at the same instant, and drew nearer with
his torch; although the guide attempted to dissuade him,
averring that, once beyond the consecrated precincts of
the chapel, the apparition would have power to tear him
limb from limb. It struck the sculptor, however, when
he afterwards recurred to these circumstances, that the
guide manifested no such apprehension on his own account
as he professed on behalf of others; for he kept
pace with Kenyon as the latter approached the figure,
though still endeavoring to restrain him.

In fine, they both drew near enough to get as good a
view of the spectre as the smoky light of their torches,
struggling with the massive gloom, could supply.

The stranger was of exceedingly picturesque, and even
melodramatic aspect. He was clad in a voluminous
cloak, that seemed to be made of a buffalo's hide, and a
pair of those goat-skin breeches, with the hair outward,
which are still commonly worn by the peasants of the
Roman Campagna. In this garb, they look like antique
Satyrs; and, in truth, the Spectre of the Catacomb might
have represented the last survivor of that vanished race,
hiding himself in sepulchral gloom, and mourning over
his lost life of woods and streams.

Furthermore, he had on a broad-brimmed, conical hat,
beneath the shadow of which a wild visage was indistinctly
seen, floating away, as it were, into a dusky

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

wilderness of moustache and beard. His eyes winked, and
turned uneasily from the torches, like a creature to whom
midnight would be more congenial than noonday.

On the whole, the spectre might have made a considerable
impression on the sculptor's nerves, only that he was
in the habit of observing similar figures, almost every
day, reclining on the Spanish steps, and waiting for some
artist to invite them within the magic realm of picture.
Nor, even thus familiarized with the stranger's peculiarities
of appearance, could Kenyon help wondering to see
such a personage, shaping himself so suddenly out of the
void darkness of the catacomb.

“What are you?” said the sculptor, advancing his
torch nearer. “And how long have you been wandering
here?”

“A thousand and five hundred years!” muttered the
guide, loud enough to be heard by all the party. “It is
the old pagan phantom that I told you of, who sought to
betray the blessed saints!”

“Yes; it is a phantom!” cried Donatello, with a shudder.
“Ah, dearest signorina, what fearful thing has
beset you, in those dark corridors!”

“Nonsense, Donatello,” said the sculptor. “The man
is no more a phantom than yourself. The only marvel
is, how he comes to be hiding himself in the catacomb.
Possibly, our guide might solve the riddle.”

The spectre himself here settled the point of his tangibility,
at all events, and physical substance, by approaching
a step nearer, and laying his hand on Kenyon's arm.

“Inquire not what I am, nor wherefore I abide in the

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

darkness,” said he, in a hoarse, harsh voice, as if a great
deal of damp were clustering in his throat. “Henceforth,
I am nothing but a shadow behind her footsteps. She
came to me when I sought her not. She has called me
forth, and must abide the consequences of my reappearance
in the world.”

“Holy Virgin! I wish the signorina joy of her prize,”
said the guide, half to himself. “And in any case, the
catacomb is well rid of him.”

We need follow the scene no farther. So much is
essential to the subsequent narrative, that, during the
short period while astray in those tortuous passages,
Miriam had encountered an unknown man, and led him
forth with her, or was guided back by him, first into the
torchlight, thence into the sunshine.

It was the further singularity of this affair, that the
connection, thus briefly and casually formed, did not
terminate with the incident that gave it birth. As if her
service to him, or his service to her, whichever it might
be, had given him an indefeasible claim on Miriam's
regard and protection, the Spectre of the Catacomb never
long allowed her to lose sight of him, from that day forward.
He haunted her footsteps with more than the
customary persistency of Italian mendicants, when once
they have recognized a benefactor. For days together,
it is true, he occasionally vanished, but always reappeared,
gliding after her through the narrow streets, or
climbing the hundred steps of her staircase and sitting at
her threshold.

Being often admitted to her studio, he left his features,

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

or some shadow or reminiscence of them, in many of her
sketches and pictures. The moral atmosphere of these
productions was thereby so influenced, that rival painters
pronounced it a case of hopeless mannerism, which would
destroy all Miriam's prospects of true excellence in art.

The story of this adventure spread abroad, and made
its way beyond the usual gossip of the Forestieri, even
into Italian circles, where, enhanced by a still potent spirit
of superstition, it grew far more wonderful than as above
recounted. Thence, it came back among the Anglo-Saxons,
and was communicated to the German artists,
who so richly supplied it with romantic ornaments and
excrescences, after their fashion, that it became a fantasy
worthy of Tieck or Hoffmann. For nobody has any conscience
about adding to the improbabilities of a marvellous
tale.

The most reasonable version of the incident, that could
anywise be rendered acceptable to the auditors, was substantially
the one suggested by the guide of the catacomb,
in his allusion to the legend of Memmius. This man, or
demon, or man-demon, was a spy during the persecutions
of the early Christians, probably under the Emperor
Diocletian, and penetrated into the catacomb of St. Calixtus,
with the malignant purpose of tracing out the hidingplaces
of the refugees. But, while he stole craftily
through those dark corridors, he chanced to come upon a
little chapel, where tapers were burning before an altar
and a crucifix, and a priest was in the performance of his
sacred office. By divine indulgence, there was a single
moment's grace allowed to Memmius, during which, had

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

he been capable of Christian faith and love, he might
have knelt before the cross, and received the holy light
into his soul, and so have been blest forever. But he
resisted the sacred impulse. As soon, therefore, as that
one moment had glided by, the light of the consecrated
tapers, which represent all truth, bewildered the wretched
man with everlasting error, and the blessed cross itself
was stamped as a seal upon his heart, so that it should
never open to receive conviction.

Thenceforth, this heathen Memmius has haunted the
wide and dreary precincts of the catacomb, seeking, as
some say, to beguile new victims into his own misery;
but, according to other statements, endeavoring to prevail
on any unwary visitor to take him by the hand, and guide
him out into the daylight. Should his wiles and entreaties
take effect, however, the man-demon would remain
only a little while above ground. He would gratify his
fiendish malignity by perpetrating signal mischief on his
benefactor, and perhaps bringing some old pestilence or
other forgotten and long-buried evil on society; or, possibly,
teaching the modern world some decayed and dusty
kind of crime, which the antique Romans knew; and
then would hasten back to the catacomb, which, after so
long haunting it, has grown his most congenial home.

Miriam herself, with her chosen friends, the sculptor
and the gentle Hilda, often laughed at the monstrous
fictions that had gone abroad in reference to her adventure.
Her two confidants (for such they were, on all
ordinary subjects) had not failed to ask an explanation of
the mystery, since undeniably a mystery there was, and

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

one sufficiently perplexing itself, without any help from
the imaginative faculty. And, sometimes responding to
their inquiries with a melancholy sort of playfulness,
Miriam let her fancy run off into wilder fables than any
which German ingenuity or Italian superstition had contrived.

For example, with a strange air of seriousness over all
her face, only belied by a laughing gleam in her dark
eyes, she would aver that the spectre (who had been an
artist in his mortal lifetime) had promised to teach her a
long lost, but invaluable secret of old Roman fresco-painting.
The knowledge of this process would place Miriam
at the head of modern art; the sole condition being
agreed upon, that she should return with him into his
sightless gloom, after enriching a certain extent of stuccoed
wall with the most brilliant and lovely designs.
And what true votary of art would not purchase unrivalled
excellence, even at so vast a sacrifice!

Or, if her friends still solicited a soberer account,
Miriam replied, that, meeting the old infidel in one of the
dismal passages of the catacomb, she had entered into
controversy with him, hoping to achieve the glory and
satisfaction of converting him to the Christian faith. For
the sake of so excellent a result, she had even staked her
own salvation against his, binding herself to accompany
him back into his penal gloom, if, within a twelvemonth's
space, she should not have convinced him of the errors
through which he had so long groped and stumbled. But,
alas! up to the present time, the controversy had gone
direfully in favor of the man-demon; and Miriam (as

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

she whispered in Hilda's ear) had awful forebodings, that,
in a few more months, she must take an eternal farewell
of the sun!

It was somewhat remarkable, that all her romantic
fantasies arrived at this selfsame dreary termination; it
appeared impossible for her even to imagine any other
than a disastrous result from her connection with her illomened
attendant.

This singularity might have meant nothing, however,
had it not suggested a despondent state of mind, which
was likewise indicated by many other tokens. Miriam's
friends had no difficulty in perceiving that, in one way or
another, her happiness was very seriously compromised.
Her spirits were often depressed into deep melancholy.
If ever she was gay, it was seldom with a healthy cheerfulness.
She grew moody, moreover, and subject to fits
of passionate ill-temper; which usually wreaked itself on
the heads of those who loved her best. Not that Miriam's
indifferent acquaintances were safe from similar outbreaks
of her displeasure, especially if they ventured upon any
allusion to the model. In such cases, they were left with
little disposition to renew the subject, but inclined, on the
other hand, to interpret the whole matter as much to her
discredit as the least favorable coloring of the facts would
allow.

It may occur to the reader, that there was really no
demand for so much rumor and speculation in regard to
an incident, which might well enough have been explained
without going many steps beyond the limits of
probability. The spectre might have been merely a

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

Roman beggar, whose fraternity often harbor in stranger
shelters than the catacombs; or one of those pilgrims,
who still journey from remote countries to kneel and
worship at the holy sites, among which these haunts of
the early Christians are esteemed especially sacred. Or,
as was perhaps a more plausible theory, he might be a
thief of the city, a robber of the Campagna, a political
offender, or an assassin, with blood upon his hand; whom
the negligence or connivance of the police allowed to take
refuge in those subterranean fastnesses, where such outlaws
have been accustomed to hide themselves from a far
antiquity downward. Or he might have been a lunatic,
fleeing instinctively from man, and making it his dark
pleasure to dwell among the tombs, like him whose awful
cry echoes afar to us from Scripture times.

And, as for the stranger's attaching himself so devotedly
to Miriam, her personal magnetism might be allowed
a certain weight in the explanation. For what remains,
his pertinacity need not seem so very singular to those
who consider how slight a link serves to connect these
vagabonds of idle Italy with any person that may have
the ill-hap to bestow charity, or be otherwise serviceable
to them, or betray the slightest interest in their fortunes.

Thus little would remain to be accounted for, except
the deportment of Miriam herself; her reserve, her
brooding melancholy, her petulance, and moody passion.
If generously interpreted, even these morbid symptoms
might have sufficient cause in the stimulating and exhausting
influences of an imaginative art, exercised by a
delicate young woman, in the nervous and unwholesome

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

atmosphere of Rome. Such, at least, was the view of
the case which Hilda and Kenyon endeavored to impress
on their own minds, and impart to those whom their
opinions might influence.

One of Miriam's friends took the matter sadly to heart.
This was the young Italian. Donatello, as we have seen,
had been an eye-witness of the stranger's first appearance,
and had ever since nourished a singular prejudice
against the mysterious, dusky, death-scented apparition.
It resembled not so much a human dislike or hatred, as
one of those instinctive, unreasoning antipathies which
the lower animals sometimes display, and which generally
prove more trustworthy than the acutest insight into
character. The shadow of the model, always flung into
the light which Miriam diffused around her, caused no
slight trouble to Donatello. Yet he was of a nature so
remarkably genial and joyous, so simply happy, that he
might well afford to have something subtracted from his
comfort, and make tolerable shift to live upon what remained.

p576-057 CHAPTER V. MIRIAM'S STUDIO.

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

The courtyard and staircase of a palace built three
hundred years ago, are a peculiar feature of modern
Rome, and interest the stranger more than many things
of which he has heard loftier descriptions. You pass
through the grand breadth and height of a squalid entrance-way,
and perhaps see a range of dusky pillars,
forming a sort of cloister round the court, and in the
intervals, from pillar to pillar, are strewn fragments of
antique statues, headless and legless torsos, and busts that
have invariably lost — what it might be well if living
men could lay aside in that unfragrant atmosphere — the
nose. Bas-reliefs, the spoil of some far older palace, are
set in the surrounding walls, every stone of which has
been ravished from the Coliseum, or any other imperial
ruin which earlier barbarism had not already levelled
with the earth. Between two of the pillars, moreover,
stands an old sarcophagus without its lid, and with
all its more prominently projecting sculptures broken
off; perhaps it once held famous dust, and the bony
framework of some historic man, although now only a

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

receptacle for the rubbish of the courtyard, and a half-worn
broom.

In the centre of the court, under the blue Italian sky,
and with the hundred windows of the vast palace gazing
down upon it, from four sides, appears a fountain. It
brims over from one stone basin to another, or gushes
from a Naiad's urn, or spirts its many little jets from
the mouths of nameless monsters, which were merely grotesque
and artificial when Bernini, or whoever was their
unnatural father, first produced them; but now the
patches of moss, the tufts of grass, the trailing maidenhair,
and all sorts of verdant weeds that thrive in the
cracks and crevices of moist marble, tell us that Nature
takes the fountain back into her great heart, and cherishes
it as kindly as if it were a woodland spring. And,
hark, the pleasant murmur, the gurgle, the plash! You
might hear just those tinkling sounds from any tiny waterfall
in the forest, though here they gain a delicious pathos
from the stately echoes that reverberate their natural language.
So the fountain is not altogether glad, after all
its three centuries of play!

In one of the angles of the courtyard, a pillared doorway
gives access to the staircase, with its spacious breadth
of low, marble steps, up which, in former times, have gone
the princes and cardinals of the great Roman family who
built this palace. Or they have come down, with still
grander and loftier mien, on their way to the Vatican or
the Quirinal, there to put off their scarlet hats in exchange
for the triple crown. But, in fine, all these illustrious
personages have gone down their hereditary

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

staircase for the last time, leaving it to be the thoroughfare of
ambassadors, English noblemen, American millionnaires,
artists, tradesmen, washerwomen, and people of every
degree; all of whom find such gilded and marble-panelled
saloons as their pomp and luxury demand, or such homely
garrets as their necessity can pay for, within this one
multifarious abode. Only, in not a single nook of the
palace (built for splendor, and the accommodation of a
vast retinue, but with no vision of a happy fireside or
any mode of domestic enjoyment) does the humblest or
the haughtiest occupant find comfort.

Up such a staircase, on the morning after the scene at
the sculpture gallery, sprang the light foot of Donatello.
He ascended from story to story, passing lofty doorways,
set within rich frames of sculptured marble, and climbing
unweariedly upward, until the glories of the first piano
and the elegance of the middle height were exchanged
for a sort of Alpine region, cold and naked in its aspect.
Steps of rough stone, rude wooden balustrades, a brick
pavement in the passages, a dingy whitewash on the walls;
these were here the palatial features. Finally, he paused
before an oaken door, on which was pinned a card, bearing
the name of Miriam Schaefer, artist in oils. Here
Donatello knocked, and the door immediately fell somewhat
ajar; its latch having been pulled up by means of a
string on the inside. Passing through a little anteroom,
he found himself in Miriam's presence.

“Come in, wild Faun,” she said, “and tell me the latest
news from Arcady!”

The artist was not just then at her easel, but was

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

busied with the feminine task of mending a pair of
gloves.

There is something extremely pleasant, and even touching—
at least, of very sweet, soft, and winning effect —
in this peculiarity of needle-work, distinguishing women
from men. Our own sex is incapable of any such by-play
aside from the main business of life; but women — be
they of what earthly rank they may, however gifted with
intellect or genius, or endowed with awful beauty — have
always some little handiwork ready to fill the tiny gap of
every vacant moment. A needle is familiar to the fingers
of them all. A queen, no doubt, plies it on occasion;
the woman-poet can use it as adroitly as her pen; the
woman's eye, that has discovered a new star, turns from
its glory to send the polished little instrument gleaming
along the hem of her kerchief, or to darn a casual fray in
her dress. And they have greatly the advantage of us
in this respect. The slender thread of silk or cotton
keeps them united with the small, familiar, gentle interests
of life, the continually operating influences of which
do so much for the health of the character, and carry off
what would otherwise be a dangerous accumulation of
morbid sensibility. A vast deal of human sympathy runs
along this electric line, stretching from the throne to the
wicker-chair of the humblest seamstress, and keeping high
and low in a species of communion with their kindred
beings. Methinks it is a token of healthy and gentle
characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments
love to sew; especially as they are never more
at home with their own hearts than while so occupied.

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

And when the work falls in a woman's lap, of its own
accord, and the needle involuntarily ceases to fly, it is a
sign of trouble, quite as trustworthy as the throb of the
heart itself. This was what happened to Miriam. Even
while Donatello stood gazing at her, she seemed to have
forgotten his presence, allowing him to drop out of her
thoughts, and the torn glove to fall from her idle fingers.
Simple as he was, the young man knew by his sympathies
that something was amiss.

“Dear lady, you are sad,” said he, drawing close to
her.

“It is nothing, Donatello,” she replied, resuming her
work: “yes; a little sad, perhaps; but that is not strange
for us people of the ordinary world, especially for women.
You are of a cheerfuller race, my friend, and know nothing
of this disease of sadness. But why do you come
into this shadowy room of mine?”

“Why do you make it so shadowy?” asked he.

“We artists purposely exclude sunshine, and all but a
partial light,” said Miriam, “because we think it necessary
to put ourselves at odds with nature before trying to
imitate her. That strikes you very strangely, does it
not? But we make very pretty pictures sometimes, with
our artfully arranged lights and shadows. Amuse yourself
with some of mine, Donatello, and by and by I shall
be in the mood to begin the portrait we were talking
about.”

The room had the customary aspect of a painter's
studio; one of those delightful spots that hardly seem to
belong to the actual world, but rather to be the outward

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

type of a poet's haunted imagination, where there are
glimpses, sketches, and half-developed hints of beings and
objects grander and more beautiful than we can anywhere
find in reality. The windows were closed with shutters,
or deeply curtained, except one, which was partly open to
a sunless portion of the sky, admitting only from high
upward that partial light which, with its strongly marked
contrast of shadow, is the first requisite towards seeing
objects pictorially. Pencil-drawings were pinned against
the wall or scattered on the tables. Unframed canvases
turned their backs on the spectator, presenting only a
blank to the eye, and churlishly concealing whatever
riches of scenery or human beauty Miriam's skill had depicted
on the other side.

In the obscurest part of the room Donatello was half
startled at perceiving duskily a woman with long dark
hair, who threw up her arms with a wild gesture of tragic
despair, and appeared to beckon him into the darkness
along with her.

“Do not be afraid, Donatello,” said Miriam, smiling to
see him peering doubtfully into the mysterious dusk.
“She means you no mischief, nor could perpetrate any if
she wished it ever so much. It is a lady of exceedingly
pliable disposition; now a heroine of romance, and now
a rustic maid; yet all for show; being created, indeed,
on purpose to wear rich shawls and other garments in a
becoming fashion. This is the true end of her being,
although she pretends to assume the most varied duties
and perform many parts in life, while really the poor puppet
has nothing on earth to do. Upon my word, I am

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

satirical unawares, and seem to be describing nine women
out of ten in the person of my lay-figure. For most
purposes she has the advantage of the sisterhood. Would
I were like her!”

“How it changes her aspect,” exclaimed Donatello,
“to know that she is but a jointed figure. When my
eyes first fell upon her, I thought her arms moved, as if
beckoning me to help her in some direful peril.”

“Are you often troubled with such sinister freaks of
fancy?” asked Miriam. “I should not have supposed it.”

“To tell you the truth, dearest signorina,” answered
the young Italian, “I am apt to be fearful in old, gloomy
houses, and in the dark. I love no dark or dusky corners,
except it be in a grotto, or among the thick green leaves
of an arbor, or in some nook of the woods, such as I
know many in the neighborhood of my home. Even
there, if a stray sunbeam steal in, the shadow is all the
better for its cheerful glimmer.”

“Yes; you are a Faun, you know,” said the fair artist,
laughing at the remembrance of the scene of the day before.
“But the world is sadly changed now-a-days; grievously
changed, poor Donatello, since those happy times
when your race used to dwell in the Arcadian woods,
playing hide-and-seek with the nymphs in grottoes and
nooks of shrubbery. You have reappeared on earth some
centuries too late.”

“I do not understand you now,” answered Donatello,
looking perplexed; “only, signorina, I am glad to have
my lifetime while you live; and where you are, be it in
cities or fields, I would fain be there too.”

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

“I wonder whether I ought to allow you to speak in
this way,” said Miriam, looking thoughtfully at him.
“Many young women would think it behoved them to be
offended. Hilda would never let you speak so, I dare
say. But he is a mere boy,” she added, aside, “a simple
boy, putting his boyish heart to the proof on the first
woman whom he chances to meet. If yonder lay-figure
had had the luck to meet him first, she would have smitten
him as deeply as I.”

“Are you angry with me?” asked Donatello, dolorously.

“Not in the least,” answered Miriam, frankly giving
him her hand. “Pray look over some of these sketches
till I have leisure to chat with you a little. I hardly
think I am in spirits enough to begin your portrait to-day.”

Donatello was as gentle and docile as a pet spaniel; as
playful, too, in his general disposition, or saddening with
his mistress's variable mood like that or any other kindly
animal which has the faculty of bestowing its sympathies
more completely than men or women can ever do. Accordingly,
as Miriam bade him, he tried to turn his attention
to a great pile and confusion of pen-and-ink sketches
and pencil-drawings which lay tossed together on a table.
As it chanced, however, they gave the poor youth little
delight.

The first that he took up was a very impressive sketch,
in which the artist had jotted down her rough ideas for a
picture of Jael driving the nail through the temples of
Sisera It was dashed off with remarkable power, and

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

showed a touch or two that were actually life-like and
death-like, as if Miriam had been standing by when Jael
gave the first stroke of her murderous hammer, or as if
she herself were Jael, and felt irresistibly impelled to
make her bloody confession in this guise.

Her first conception of the stern Jewess had evidently
been that of perfect womanhood, a lovely form, and a
high, heroic face of lofty beauty; but, dissatisfied either
with her own work or the terrible story itself, Miriam
had added a certain wayward quirk of her pencil, which
at once converted the heroine into a vulgar murderess.
It was evident that a Jael like this would be sure to
search Sisera's pockets as soon as the breath was out of
his body.

In another sketch she had attempted the story of
Judith, which we see represented by the old masters so
often, and in such various styles. Here, too, beginning
with a passionate and fiery conception of the subject in all
earnestness, she had given the last touches in utter scorn,
as it were, of the feelings which at first took such powerful
possession of her hand. The head of Holofernes
(which by the by had a pair of twisted moustaches, like
those of a certain potentate of the day) being fairly cut
off, was screwing its eyes upward and twirling its features
into a diabolical grin of triumphant malice, which it flung
right in Judith's face. On her part, she had the startled
aspect that might be conceived of a cook if a calf's head
should sneer at her when about to be popped into the
dinner-pot.

Over and over again, there was the idea of woman,

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

acting the part of a revengeful mischief towards man.
It was, indeed, very singular to see how the artist's imagination
seemed to run on these stories of bloodshed, in
which woman's hand was crimsoned by the stain; and
how, too, — in one form or another, grotesque or sternly
sad, — she failed not to bring out the moral, that woman
must strike through her own heart to reach a human life,
whatever were the motive that impelled her.

One of the sketches represented the daughter of Herodias
receiving the head of John the Baptist in a charger.
The general conception appeared to be taken from Bernardo
Luini's picture, in the Uffizzi gallery at Florence;
but Miriam had imparted to the saint's face a look of
gentle and heavenly reproach, with sad and blessed eyes
fixed upward at the maiden; by the force of which miraculous
glance, her whole womanhood was at once awakened
to love and endless remorse.

These sketches had a most disagreeable effect on Donatello's
peculiar temperament. He gave a shudder; his
face assumed a look of trouble, fear, and disgust; he
snatched up one sketch after another, as if about to tear
it in pieces. Finally, shoving away the pile of drawings,
he shrank back from the table and clasped his hands over
his eyes.

“What is the matter, Donatello?” asked Miriam, looking
up from a letter which she was now writing. “Ah!
I did not mean you to see those drawings. They are
ugly phantoms that stole out of my mind; not things that
I created, but things that haunt me. See! here are some
trifles that perhaps will please you better.”

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

She gave him a portfolio, the sketches in which indicated
a happier mood of mind, and one, it is to be
hoped, more truly characteristic of the artist. Supposing
neither of these classes of subject to show anything of her
own individuality, Miriam had evidently a great scope of
fancy, and a singular faculty of putting what looked like
heart into her productions. The latter sketches were
domestic and common scenes, so finely and subtilely idealized
that they seemed such as we may see at any moment,
and everywhere; while still there was the indefinable
something added, or taken away, which makes all the difference
between sordid life and an earthly paradise. The
feeling and sympathy in all of them were deep and true.
There was the scene, that comes once in every life, of the
lover winning the soft and pure avowal of bashful affection
from the maiden, whose slender form half leans
towards his arm, half shrinks from it, we know not which.
There was wedded affection in its successive stages,
represented in a series of delicately conceived designs,
touched with a holy fire, that burned from youth to age
in those two hearts, and gave one identical beauty to the
faces, throughout all the changes of feature.

There was a drawing of an infant's shoe, half worn
out, with the airy print of the blessed foot within; a thing
that would make a mother smile or weep out of the very
depths of her heart; and yet an actual mother would not
have been likely to appreciate the poetry of the little
shoe, until Miriam revealed it to her. It was wonderful,
the depth and force with which the above, and other kindred
subjects were depicted, and the profound significance

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

which they often acquired. The artist, still in her fresh
youth, could not probably have drawn any of these dear
and rich experiences from her own life; unless, perchance,
that first sketch of all, the avowal of maiden affection,
were a remembered incident, and not a prophecy.
But it is more delightful to believe, that, from first to last,
they were the productions of a beautiful imagination, dealing
with the warm and pure suggestions of a woman's
heart, and thus idealizing a truer and lovelier picture of
the life that belongs to woman, than an actual acquaintance
with some of its hard and dusty facts could have inspired.
So considered, the sketches intimated such a
force and variety of imaginative sympathies as would
enable Miriam to fill her life richly with the bliss and
suffering of womanhood, however barren it might individually
be.

There was one observable point, indeed, betokening
that the artist relinquished, for her personal self, the happiness
which she could so profoundly appreciate for
others. In all those sketches of common life, and the
affections that spiritualize it, a figure was portrayed
apart; now it peeped between the branches of a shrubbery,
amid which two lovers sat; now it was looking
through a frosted window, from the outside, while a young
wedded pair sat at their new fireside, within; and once it
leaned from a chariot, which six horses were whirling onward
in pomp and pride, and gazed at a scene of humble
enjoyment by a cottage-door. Always it was the same
figure, and always depicted with an expression of deep
sadness; and in every instance, slightly as they were

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

brought out, the face and form had the traits of Miriam's
own.

“Do you like these sketches better, Donatello?” asked
Miriam.

“Yes,” said Donatello, rather doubtfully.

“Not much, I fear,” responded she, laughing. “And
what should a boy like you — a Faun, too — know about
the joys and sorrows, the intertwining light and shadow,
of human life? I forgot that you were a Faun. You
cannot suffer deeply; therefore you can but half enjoy.
Here, now, is a subject which you can better appreciate.”

The sketch represented merely a rustic dance, but with
such extravagance of fun as was delightful to behold;
and here there was no drawback, except that strange sigh
and sadness which always come when we are merriest.

“I am going to paint the picture in oils,” said the artist;
“and I want you, Donatello, for the wildest dancer
of them all. Will you sit for me, some day? — or, rather,
dance for me?”

“Oh! most gladly, signorina!” exclaimed Donatello.
“See; it shall be like this.”

And forthwith he began to dance, and flit about the
studio, like an incarnate sprite of jollity, pausing at last on
the extremity of one toe, as if that were the only portion
of himself, whereby his frisky nature could come in contact
with the earth. The effect in that shadowy chamber,
whence the artist had so carefully excluded the sunshine,
was as enlivening as if one bright ray had contrived to
shimmer in and frolic around the walls, and finally rest
just in the centre of the floor.

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

“That was admirable!” said Miriam, with an approving
smile. “If I can catch you on my canvas, it will be
a glorious picture; only I am afraid you will dance out
of it, by the very truth of the representation, just when I
shall have given it the last touch. We will try it one of
these days. And now, to reward you for that jolly exhibition,
you shall see what has been shown to no one
else.”

She went to her easel, on which was placed a picture
with its back turned towards the spectator. Reversing
the position, there appeared the portrait of a beautiful
woman, such as one sees only two or three, if even so
many times, in all a lifetime; so beautiful, that she seemed
to get into your consciousness and memory, and could
never afterwards be shut out, but haunted your dreams,
for pleasure or for pain; holding your inner realm as a
conquered territory, though without deigning to make herself
at home there.

She was very youthful, and had what was usually
thought to be a Jewish aspect; a complexion in which
there was no roseate bloom, yet neither was it pale; dark
eyes, into which you might look as deeply as your glance
would go, and still be conscious of a depth that you had
not sounded, though it lay open to the day. She had
black, abundant hair, with none of the vulgar glossiness
of other women's sable locks; if she were really of Jewish
blood, then this was Jewish hair, and a dark glory such
as crowns no Christian maiden's head. Gazing at this
portrait, you saw what Rachel might have been, when
Jacob deemed her worth the wooing seven years, and

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

seven more; or perchance she might ripen to be what
Judith was, when she vanquished Holofernes with her
beauty, and slew him for too much adoring it.

Miriam watched Donatello's contemplation of the picture,
and seeing his simple rapture, a smile of pleasure
brightened on her face, mixed with a little scorn; at least,
her lips curled and her eyes gleamed, as if she disdained
either his admiration or her own enjoyment of it.

“Then you like the picture, Donatello?” she asked.

“Oh, beyond what I can tell!” he answered. “So
beautiful! — so beautiful!”

“And do you recognize the likeness?”

“Signora,” exclaimed Donatello, turning from the picture
to the artist, in astonishment that she should ask the
question, “the resemblance is as little to be mistaken as
if you had bent over the smooth surface of a fountain, and
possessed the witchcraft to call forth the image that you
made there! It is yourself!”

Donatello said the truth; and we forbore to speak
descriptively of Miriam's beauty earlier in our narrative,
because we foresaw this occasion to bring it perhaps more
forcibly before the reader.

We know not whether the portrait were a flattered
likeness; probably not, regarding it merely as the delineation
of a lovely face; although Miriam, like all self-painters,
may have endowed herself with certain graces which
other eyes might not discern. Artists are fond of painting
their own portraits; and, in Florence, there is a
gallery of hundreds of them, including the most illustrious,
in all of which there are autobiographical characteristics,

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

so to speak; traits, expressions, loftinesses, and amenities,
which would have been invisible, had they not been
painted from within. Yet their reality and truth are
none the less. Miriam, in like manner, had doubtless
conveyed some of the intimate results of her heart-knowledge
into her own portrait, and perhaps wished to try
whether they would be perceptible to so simple and natural
an observer as Donatello.

“Does the expression please you?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Donatello, hesitatingly; “if it would only
smile so like the sunshine as you sometimes do. No, it is
sadder than I thought at first. Cannot you make yourself
smile a little, signorina?”

“A forced smile is uglier than a frown,” said Miriam,
a bright, natural smile breaking out over her face, even
as she spoke.

“Oh! catch it now!” cried Donatello, clapping his
hands. “Let it shine upon the picture! There! it has
vanished already! And you are sad again, very sad;
and the picture gazes sadly forth at me, as if some evil
had befallen it in the little time since I looked last.”

“How perplexed you seem, my friend!” answered
Miriam. “I really half believe you are a Faun, there is
such a mystery and terror for you in these dark moods,
which are just as natural as daylight to us people of ordinary
mould. I advise you, at all events, to look at other
faces with those innocent and happy eyes, and never
more to gaze at mine!”

“You speak in vain,” replied the young man, with a
deeper emphasis than she had ever before heard in his

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

voice; “shroud yourself in what gloom you will, I must
needs follow you.”

“Well, well, well,” said Miriam, impatiently: “but
leave me now; for, to speak plainly, my good friend, you
grow a little wearisome. I walk this afternoon in the
Borghese grounds. Meet me there, if it suits your pleasure.”

p576-074 CHAPTER VI. THE VIRGIN'S SHRINE.

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

After Donatello had left the studio, Miriam herself
came forth, and taking her way through some of the intricacies
of the city, entered what might be called either a
widening of a street, or a small piazza. The neighborhood
comprised a baker's oven, emitting the usual fragrance
of sour bread; a shoe shop; a linen-draper's shop;
a pipe and cigar shop; a lottery office; a station for
French soldiers, with a sentinel pacing in front; and a
fruit stand, at which a Roman matron was selling the
dried kernels of chestnuts, wretched little figs, and some
bouquets of yesterday. A church, of course, was near at
hand, the façade of which ascended into lofty pinnacles,
whereon were perched two or three winged figures of
stone, either angelic or allegorical, blowing stone trumpets
in close vicinity to the upper windows of an old
and shabby palace. This palace was distinguished by
a feature not very common in the architecture of Roman
edifices; that is to say, a mediæval tower, square,
massive, lofty, and battlemented and machicolated at the
summit.

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

At one of the angles of the battlements stood a shrine
of the Virgin, such as we see everywhere at the streetcorners
of Rome, but seldom or never, except in this solitary
instance, at a height above the ordinary level of
men's views and aspirations. Connected with this old
tower and its lofty shrine, there is a legend which we
cannot here pause to tell; but for centuries a lamp has
been burning before the Virgin's image, at noon, at midnight,
and at all hours of the twenty-four, and must be kept
burning forever, as long as the tower shall stand; or else
the tower itself, the palace, and whatever estate belongs
to it, shall pass from its hereditary possessor, in accordance
with an ancient vow, and become the property of the
Church.

As Miriam approached, she looked upward, and saw —
not, indeed, the flame of the never-dying lamp, which
was swallowed up in the broad sunlight that brightened
the shrine — but a flock of white doves, skimming, fluttering,
and wheeling about the topmost height of the
tower, their silver wings flashing in the pure transparency
of the air. Several of them sat on the ledge of the
upper window, pushing one another off by their eager
struggle for this favorite station, and all tapping their
beaks and flapping their wings tumultuously against the
panes; some had alighted in the street, far below, but
flew hastily upward, at the sound of the window being
thrust ajar, and opening in the middle, on rusty hinges, as
Roman windows do.

A fair young girl, dressed in white, showed herself at
the aperture for a single instant, and threw forth as much

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

as her two small hands could hold of some kind of food,
for the flock of eleemosynary doves. It seemed greatly
to the taste of the feathered people; for they tried to
snatch beakfuls of it from her grasp, caught it in the air,
and rushed downward after it upon the pavement.

“What a pretty scene this is,” thought Miriam, with a
kindly smile, “and how like a dove she is herself, the
fair, pure creature! The other doves know her for a
sister, I am sure.”

Miriam passed beneath the deep portal of the palace,
and turning to the left, began to mount flight after flight
of a staircase, which, for the loftiness of its aspiration,
was worthy to be Jacob's ladder, or, at all events, the
staircase of the Tower of Babel. The city bustle, which
is heard even in Rome, the rumble of wheels over the
uncomfortable paving-stones, the hard harsh cries reechoing
in the high and narrow streets, grew faint and died
away; as the turmoil of the world will always die, if we
set our faces to climb heavenward. Higher, and higher
still; and now, glancing through the successive windows
that threw in their narrow light upon the stairs, her view
stretched across the roofs of the city, unimpeded even by
the stateliest palaces. Only the domes of churches ascend
into this airy region, and hold up their golden crosses on
a level with her eye; except, that, out of the very heart
of Rome, the column of Antoninus thrusts itself upward,
with St. Paul upon its summit, the sole human form that
seems to have kept her company.

Finally, the staircase came to an end; save that, on
one side of the little entry where it terminated, a flight

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

of a dozen steps gave access to the roof of the tower and
the legendary shrine. On the other side was a door, at
which Miriam knocked, but rather as a friendly announcement
of her presence than with any doubt of hospitable
welcome; for, awaiting no response, she lifted the latch
and entered.

“What a hermitage you have found for yourself, dear
Hilda!” she exclaimed. “You breathe sweet air, above
all the evil scents of Rome; and even so, in your maiden
elevation, you dwell above our vanities and passions, our
moral dust and mud, with the doves and the angels for
your nearest neighbors. I should not wonder if the
Catholics were to make a saint of you, like your name-sake
of old; especially as you have almost avowed yourself
of their religion, by undertaking to keep the lamp
alight before the Virgin's shrine.”

“No, no, Miriam!” said Hilda, who had come joyfully
forward to greet her friend. “You must not call me a
Catholic. A Christian girl — even a daughter of the
Puritans — may surely pay honor to the idea of divine
Womanhood, without giving up the faith of her forefathers.
But how kind you are to climb into my dove-cote!”

“It is no trifling proof of friendship, indeed,” answered
Miriam; “I should think there were three hundred stairs
at least.”

“But it will do you good,” continued Hilda. “A
height of some fifty feet above the roofs of Rome gives
me all the advantages that I could get from fifty miles of
distance. The air so exhilarates my spirits, that

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

sometimes I feel half inclined to attempt a flight from the
top of my tower, in the faith that I should float upward.”

“Oh, pray don't try it!” said Miriam, laughing. “If
it should turn out that you are less than an angel, you
would find the stones of the Roman pavement very hard;
and if an angel, indeed, I am afraid you would never
come down among us again.”

This young American girl was an example of the freedom
of life which it is possible for a female artist to enjoy
at Rome. She dwelt in her tower, as free to descend into
the corrupted atmosphere of the city beneath, as one of
her companion doves to fly downward into the street; —
all alone, perfectly independent, under her own sole guardianship,
unless watched over by the Virgin, whose shrine
she tended; doing what she liked, without a suspicion
or a shadow upon the snowy whiteness of her fame.
The customs of artist life bestow such liberty upon the
sex, which is elsewhere restricted within so much narrower
limits; and it is perhaps an indication that, whenever
we admit women to a wider scope of pursuits and
professions, we must also remove the shackles of our
present conventional rules, which would then become an
insufferable restraint on either maid or wife. The system
seems to work unexceptionably in Rome; and in many
other cases, as in Hilda's, purity of heart and life are
allowed to assert themselves, and to be their own proof
and security, to a degree unknown in the society of other
cities.

Hilda, in her native land, had early shown what was

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

pronounced by connoisseurs a decided genius for the pictorial
art. Even in her school days — still not so very
distant — she had produced sketches that were seized
upon by men of taste, and hoarded as among the choicest
treasures of their portfolios; scenes delicately imagined,
lacking, perhaps, the reality which comes only from a
close acquaintance with life, but so softly touched with
feeling and fancy that you seemed to be looking at
humanity with angels' eyes. With years and experience
she might be expected to attain a darker and more forcible
touch, which would impart to her designs the relief
they needed. Had Hilda remained in her own country
it is not improbable that she might have produced original
works worthy to hang in that gallery of native art which,
we hope, is destined to extend its rich length through
many future centuries. An orphan, however, without
near relatives, and possessed of a little property, she had
found it within her possibilities to come to Italy; that
central clime, whither the eyes and the heart of every
artist turn, as if pictures could not be made to glow in
any other atmosphere, as if statues could not assume
grace and expression save in that land of whitest marble.

Hilda's gentle courage had brought her safely over
land and sea; her mild, unflagging perseverance had
made a place for her in the famous city, even like a
flower that finds a chink for itself, and a little earth to
grow in, on whatever ancient wall its slender roots may
fasten. Here she dwelt, in her tower, possessing a friend
or two in Rome, but no home companion except the flock

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

of doves, whose cote was in a ruinous chamber contiguous
to her own. They soon became as familiar with the fair-haired
Saxon girl as if she were a born sister of their
brood; and her customary white robe bore such an analogy
to their snowy plumage that the confraternity of
artists called Hilda the Dove, and recognized her aërial
apartment as the Dove-cote. And while the other doves
flew far and wide in quest of what was good for them,
Hilda likewise spread her wings, and sought such ethereal
and imaginative sustenance as God ordains for creatures
of her kind.

We know not whether the result of her Italian studies,
so far as it could yet be seen, will be accepted as a good
or desirable one. Certain it is, that, since her arrival in
the pictorial land, Hilda seemed to have entirely lost the
impulse of original design, which brought her thither.
No doubt the girl's early dreams had been of sending
forms and hues of beauty into the visible world out of
her own mind; of compelling scenes of poetry and history
to live before men's eyes, through conceptions and
by methods individual to herself. But more and more,
as she grew familiar with the miracles of art that enrich
so many galleries in Rome, Hilda had ceased to consider
herself as an original artist. No wonder that this change
should have befallen her. She was endowed with a deep
and sensitive faculty of appreciation; she had the gift of
discerning and worshipping excellence in a most unusual
measure. No other person, it is probable, recognized so
adequately, and enjoyed with such deep delight, the pictorial
wonders that were here displayed. She saw — no,

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not saw, but felt — through and through a picture; she
bestowed upon it all the warmth and richness of a woman's
sympathy; not by any intellectual effort, but by this
strength of heart, and this guiding light of sympathy, she
went straight to the central point, in which the master
had conceived his work. Thus, she viewed it, as it were,
with his own eyes, and hence her comprehension of any
picture that interested her was perfect.

This power and depth of appreciation depended partly
upon Hilda's physical organization, which was at once
healthful and exquisitely delicate; and, connected with
this advantage, she had a command of hand, a nicety and
force of touch, which is an endowment separate from pictorial
genius, though indispensable to its exercise.

It has probably happened in many other instances, as
it did in Hilda's case, that she ceased to aim at original
achievement in consequence of the very gifts which so
exquisitely fitted her to profit by familiarity with the
works of the mighty old masters. Reverencing these
wonderful men so deeply, she was too grateful for all
they bestowed upon her, too loyal, too humble, in their
awful presence, to think of enrolling herself in their
society. Beholding the miracles of beauty which they
had achieved, the world seemed already rich enough in
original designs, and nothing more was so desirable as to
diffuse those selfsame beauties more widely among mankind.
All the youthful hopes and ambitions, the fanciful
ideas which she had brought from home, of great pictures
to be conceived in her feminine mind, were flung aside,
and, so far as those most intimate with her could discern,

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relinquished without a sigh. All that she would henceforth
attempt — and that most reverently, not to say
religiously — was to catch and reflect some of the glory
which had been shed upon canvas from the immortal pencils
of old.

So Hilda became a copyist: in the Pinacotheca of the
Vatican, in the galleries of the Pamfili-Doria palace, the
Borghese, the Corsini, the Sciarra, her easel was set up
before many a famous picture of Guido, Domenichino,
Raphael, and the devout painters of earlier schools than
these. Other artists and visitors from foreign lands beheld
the slender, girlish figure in front of some world-known
work, absorbed, unconscious of everything around
her, seeming to live only in what she sought to do. They
smiled, no doubt, at the audacity which led her to dream
of copying those mighty achievements. But, if they
paused to look over her shoulder, and had sensibility
enough to understand what was before their eyes, they
soon felt inclined to believe that the spirits of the old
masters were hovering over Hilda, and guiding her delicate
white hand. In truth, from whatever realm of bliss
and many-colored beauty those spirits might descend, it
would have been no unworthy errand to help so gentle
and pure a worshipper of their genius in giving the last
divine touch to her repetitions of their works.

Her copies were indeed marvellous. Accuracy was
not the phrase for them; a Chinese copy is accurate.
Hilda's had that evanescent and ethereal life — that flitting
fragrance, as it were, of the originals — which it is
as difficult to catch and retain as it would be for a sculptor

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to get the very movement and varying color of a living
man into his marble bust. Only by watching the efforts
of the most skilful copyists — men who spend a lifetime,
as some of them do, in multiplying copies of a single picture—
and observing how invariably they leave out just
the indefinable charm that involves the last, inestimable
value, can we understand the difficulties of the task which
they undertake.

It was not Hilda's general practice to attempt reproducing
the whole of a great picture, but to select some
high, noble, and delicate portion of it, in which the spirit
and essence of the picture culminated: the Virgin's celestial
sorrow, for example, or a hovering angel, imbued with
immortal light, or a saint with the glow of heaven in his
dying face — and these would be rendered with her whole
soul. If a picture had darkened into an indistinct shadow
through time and neglect, or had been injured by cleaning,
or retouched by some profane hand, she seemed to
possess the faculty of seeing it in its pristine glory. The
copy would come from her hands with what the beholder
felt must be the light which the old master had left upon
the original in bestowing his final and most ethereal touch.
In some instances even (at least, so those believed who
best appreciated Hilda's power and sensibility,) she had
been enabled to execute what the great master had
conceived in his imagination, but had not so perfectly
succeeded in putting upon canvas; a result surely not
impossible when such depth of sympathy as she possessed
was assisted by the delicate skill and accuracy of her
slender hand. In such cases the girl was but a finer

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instrument, a more exquisitely effective piece of mechanism,
by the help of which the spirit of some great departed
painter now first achieved his ideal, centuries after his
own earthly hand, that other tool, had turned to dust.

Not to describe her as too much a wonder, however,
Hilda, or the Dove, as her well-wishers half laughingly
delighted to call her, had been pronounced by good judges
incomparably the best copyist in Rome. After minute
examination of her works, the most skilful artists declared
that she had been led to her results by following precisely
the same process step by step through which the original
painter had trodden to the development of his idea.
Other copyists — if such they are worthy to be called —
attempt only a superficial imitation. Copies of the old
masters in this sense are produced by thousands; there
are artists, as we have said, who spend their lives in
painting the works, or perhaps one single work of one
illustrious painter over and over again: thus they convert
themselves into Guido machines, or Raphaelic machines.
Their performances, it is true, are often wonderfully deceptive
to a careless eye; but working entirely from the
outside, and seeking only to reproduce the surface, these
men are sure to leave out that indefinable nothing, that
inestimable something, that constitutes the life and soul
through which the picture gets its immortality. Hilda
was no such machine as this; she wrought religiously,
and therefore wrought a miracle.

It strikes us that there is something far higher and
nobler in all this, in her thus sacrificing herself to the
devout recognition of the highest excellence in art, than

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there would have been in cultivating her not inconsiderable
share of talent for the production of works from her
own ideas. She might have set up for herself, and won
no ignoble name; she might have helped to fill the
already crowded and cumbered world with pictures, not
destitute of merit, but falling short, if by ever so little,
of the best that has been done; she might thus have
gratified some tastes that were incapable of appreciating
Raphael. But this could be done only by lowering the
standard of art to the comprehension of the spectator.
She chose the better and loftier and more unselfish part,
laying her individual hopes, her fame, her prospects of
enduring remembrance, at the feet of those great departed
ones, whom she so loved and venerated; and therefore
the world was the richer for this feeble girl.

Since the beauty and glory of a great picture are confined
within itself, she won out that glory by patient faith
and self-devotion, and multiplied it for mankind. From
the dark, chill corner of a gallery — from some curtained
chapel in a church, where the light came seldom and
aslant — from the prince's carefully guarded cabinet,
where not one eye in thousands was permitted to behold
it — she brought the wondrous picture into daylight, and
gave all its magic splendor for the enjoyment of the
world. Hilda's faculty of genuine admiration is one of
the rarest to be found in human nature; and let us try to
recompense her in kind by admiring her generous self-surrender,
and her brave, humble magnanimity in choosing
to be the handmaid of those old magicians, instead of
a minor enchantress within a circle of her own.

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