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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.

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