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About this period, Miriam seems to have been goaded
by a weary restlessness, that drove her abroad on any
errand or none. She went one morning to visit Kenyon
in his studio, whither he had invited her to see a new
statue, on which he had staked many hopes, and which
was now almost completed in the clay. Next to Hilda,
the person for whom Miriam felt most affection and confidence
was Kenyon; and in all the difficulties that beset
her life, it was her impulse to draw near Hilda for feminine
sympathy, and the sculptor for brotherly counsel.

Yet it was to little purpose that she approached the
edge of the voiceless gulf between herself and them.
Standing on the utmost verge of that dark chasm, she
might stretch out her hand, and never clasp a hand of
theirs; she might strive to call out, “Help, friends!
help!” but, as with dreamers when they shout, her voice
would perish inaudibly in the remoteness that seemed
such a little way. This perception of an infinite, shivering
solitude, amid which we cannot come close enough to
human beings to be warmed by them, and where they

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turn to cold, chilly shapes of mist, is one of the most
forlorn results of any accident, misfortune, crime, or
peculiarity of character, that puts an individual ajar with
the world. Very often, as in Miriam's case, there is an
insatiable instinct that demands friendship, love, and intimate
communion, but is forced to pine in empty forms;
a hunger of the heart, which finds only shadows to feed
upon.

Kenyon's studio was in a cross-street, or, rather, an
ugly and dirty little lane, between the Corso and the Via
della Ripetta; and though chill, narrow, gloomy, and
bordered with tall and shabby structures, the lane was
not a whit more disagreeable then nine tenths of the
Roman streets. Over the door of one of the houses was
a marble tablet, bearing an inscription, to the purport
that the sculpture-rooms within had formerly been occupied
by the illustrious artist Canova. In these precincts
(which Canova's genius was not quite of a character
to render sacred, though it certainly made them
interesting) the young American sculptor had now established
himself.

The studio of a sculptor is generally but a rough and
dreary-looking place, with a good deal the aspect, indeed,
of a stone-mason's workshop. Bare floors of brick or
plank, and plastered walls; an old chair or two, or perhaps
only a block of marble (containing, however, the
possibility of ideal grace within it) to sit down upon;
some hastily scrawled sketches of nude figures on the
whitewash of the wall. These last are probably the
sculptor's earliest glimpses of ideas that may hereafter

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be solidified into imperishable stone, or perhaps may
remain as impalpable as a dream. Next there are a few
very roughly modelled little figures in clay or plaster,
exhibiting the second stage of the idea as it advances
towards a marble immortality; and then is seen the exquisitely
designed shape of clay, more interesting than
even the final marble, as being the intimate production of
the sculptor himself, moulded throughout with his loving
hands, and nearest to his imagination and heart. In the
plaster-cast, from this clay model, the beauty of the statue
strangely disappears, to shine forth again with pure, white
radiance, in the precious marble of Carrara. Works
in all these stages of advancement, and some with the
final touch upon them, might be found in Kenyon's
studio.

Here might be witnessed the process of actually chiselling
the marble, with which (as it is not quite satisfactory
to think) a sculptor, in these days, has very little to do.
In Italy, there is a class of men whose merely mechanical
skill is perhaps more exquisite than was possessed by the
ancient artificers, who wrought out the designs of Praxiteles;
or, very possibly, by Praxiteles himself. Whatever
of illusive representation can be effected in marble,
they are capable of achieving, if the object be before
their eyes. The sculptor has but to present these men
with a plaster-cast of his design, and a sufficient block of
marble, and tell them that the figure is imbedded in the
stone, and must be freed from its encumbering superfluities;
and, in due time, without the necessity of his touching
the work with his own finger, he will see before him

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the statue that is to make him renowned. His creative
power has wrought it with a word.

In no other art, surely, does genius find such effective
instruments, and so happily relieve itself of the drudgery
of actual performance; doing wonderfully nice things by
the hands of other people, when it may be suspected they
could not always be done by the sculptor's own. And
how much of the admiration which our artists get for
their buttons and buttonholes, their shoeties, their neckcloths, —
and these, at our present epoch of taste, make a
large share of the renown, — would be abated, if we were
generally aware that the sculptor can claim no credit for
such pretty performances, as immortalized in marble!
They are not his work, but that of some nameless machine
in human shape.

Miriam stopped an instant in an antechamber, to look
at a half-finished bust, the features of which seemed to be
struggling out of the stone; and, as it were, scattering
and dissolving its hard substance by the glow of feeling
and intelligence. As the skilful workman gave stroke
after stroke of the chisel with apparent carelessness, but
sure effect, it was impossible not to think that the outer
marble was merely an extraneous environment; the human
countenance within its embrace must have existed
there since the limestone ledges of Carrara were first
made. Another bust was nearly completed, though still
one of Kenyon's most trustworthy assistants was at work,
giving delicate touches, shaving off an impalpable something,
and leaving little heaps of marble-dust to attest it.

“As these busts in the block of marble,” thought

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Miriam, “so does our individual fate exist in the limestone of
time. We fancy that we carve it out; but its ultimate
shape is prior to all our action.”

Kenyon was in the inner room, but, hearing a step in
the antechamber, he threw a veil over what he was at
work upon, and came out to receive his visitor. He was
dressed in a gray blouse, with a little cap on the top of
his head; a costume which became him better than the
formal garments which he wore, whenever he passed out
of his own domians. The sculptor had a face which,
when time had done a little more for it, would offer a
worthy subject for as good an artist as himself; features
finely cut, as if already marble; an ideal forehead, deeply
set eyes, and a mouth much hidden in a light-brown
beard, but apparently sensitive and delicate.

“I will not offer you my hand,” said he; “it is grimy
with Cleopatra's clay.”

“No; I will not touch clay; it is earthy and human,”
answered Miriam. “I have come to try whether there is
any calm and coolness among your marbles. My own
art is too nervous, too passionate, too full of agitation, for
me to work at it whole days together, without intervals of
repose. So, what have you to show me?”

“Pray look at everything here,” said Kenyon. “I
love to have painters see my work. Their judgment is
unprejudiced, and more valuable than that of the world
generally, from the light which their own art throws on
mine. More valuable, too, than that of my brother
sculptors, who never judge me fairly — nor I them, perhaps.”

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To gratify him, Miriam looked round at the specimens
in marble or plaster, of which there were several in the
room, comprising originals or casts of most of the designs
that Kenyon had thus far produced. He was still too
young to have accumulated a large gallery of such things.
What he had to show were chiefly the attempts and experiments,
in various directions, of a beginner in art,
acting as a stern tutor to himself, and profiting more by
his failures than by any successes of which he was yet
capable. Some of them, however, had great merit; and,
in the pure, fine glow of the new marble, it may be, they
dazzled the judgment into awarding them higher praise
than they deserved. Miriam admired the statue of a
beautiful youth, a pearl-fisher, who had got entangled in
the weeds at the bottom of the sea, and lay dead among
the pearl-oysters, the rich shells, and the sea-weeds, all of
like value to him now.

“The poor young man has perished among the prizes
that he sought,” remarked she. “But what a strange
efficacy there is in death! If we cannot all win pearls,
it causes an empty shell to satisfy us just as well. I like
this statue, though it is too cold and stern in its moral
lesson; and, physically, the form has not settled itself into
sufficient repose.”

In another style, there was a grand, calm head of Milton,
not copied from any one bust or picture, yet more
authentic than any of them, because all known representations
of the poet had been profoundly studied, and
solved in the artist's mind. The bust over the tomb in
Grey Friars Church, the original miniatures and pictures,

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wherever to be found, had mingled each its special truth
in this one work; wherein, likewise, by long persual and
deep love of the Paradise Lost, the Comus, the Lycidas,
and L'Allegro, the sculptor had succeeded even better
than he knew, in spiritualizing his marble with the poet's
mighty genius. And this was a great thing to have
achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones and
dust of Milton were like those of any other dead man.

There were also several portrait-busts, comprising those
of two or three of the illustrious men of our own
country, whom Kenyon, before he left America, had
asked permission to model. He had done so, because he
sincerely believed that, whether he wrought the busts in
marble or bronze, the one would corrode and the other
crumble, in the long lapse of time, beneath these great
men's immortality. Possibly, however, the young artist
may have under-estimated the durability of his material.
Other faces there were, too, of men who (if the brevity
of their remembrance, after death, can be argued from
their little value in life) should have been represented in
snow rather than marble. Posterity will be puzzled what
to do with busts like these, the concretions and petrifactions
of a vain self-estimate; but will find, no doubt, that
they serve to build into stone walls, or burn into quicklime,
as well as if the marble had never been blocked
into the guise of human heads.

But it is an awful thing, indeed, this endless endurance,
this almost indestructibility, of a marble bust! Whether
in our own case, or that of other men, it bids us sadly
measure the little, little time, during which our lineaments

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are likely to be of interest to any human being. It is
especially singular that Americans should care about perpetuating
themselves in this mode. The brief duration
of our families, as a hereditary household, renders it next
to a certainty that the great-grandchildren will not know
their father's grandfather, and that half a century hence,
at farthest, the hammer of the auctioneer will thump its
knock-down blow against his blockhead, sold at so much
for the pound of stone! And it ought to make us shiver,
the idea of leaving our features to be a dusty-white ghost
among strangers of another generation, who will take our
nose between their thumb and fingers (as we have seen
men do by Cæsar's), and infallibly break it off, if they can
do so without detection!

“Yes,” said Miriam, who had been revolving some
such thoughts as the above, “it is a good state of mind
for mortal man, when he is content to leave no more definite
memorial than the grass, which will sprout kindly
and speedily over his grave, if we do not make the spot
barren with marble. Methinks, too, it will be a fresher
and better world, when it flings off this great burden of
stony memories, which the ages have deemed it a piety to
heap upon its back.”

“What you say,” remarked Kenyon, “goes against my
whole art. Sculpture, and the delight which men naturally
take in it, appear to me a proof that it is good to
work with all time before our view.”

“Well, well,” answered Miriam, “I must not quarrel
with you for flinging your heavy stones at poor Posterity;
and, to say the truth, I think you are as likely to hit the

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mark as anybody. These busts, now, much as I seem to
scorn them, make me feel as if you were a magician.
You turn feverish men into cool, quiet marble. What
a blessed change for them! Would you could do as
much for me!”

“Oh, gladly!” cried Kenyon, who had long wished to
model that beautiful and most expressive face. “When
will you begin to sit?”

“Poh! that was not what I meant,” said Miriam.
“Come, show me something else.”

“Do you recognize this?” asked the sculptor.

He took out of his desk a little old-fashioned ivory
coffer, yellow with age; it was richly carved with antique
figures and foliage; and had Kenyon thought fit to say
that Benvenuto Cellini wrought this precious box, the
skill and elaborate fancy of the work would by no means
have discredited his word, nor the old artist's fame. At
least, it was evidently a production of Benvenuto's school
and century, and might once have been the jewel-case of
some grand lady at the court of the De' Medici.

Lifting the lid, however, no blaze of diamonds was disclosed,
but only, lapped in fleecy cotton, a small, beautifully-shaped
hand, most delicately sculptured in marble. Such
loving care and nicest art had been lavished here, that
the palm really seemed to have a tenderness in its very
substance. Touching those lovely fingers — had the jealous
sculptor allowed you to touch — you could hardly
believe that a virgin warmth would not steal from them
into your heart.

“Ah, this is very beautiful!” exclaimed Miriam, with

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a genial smile. “It is as good in its way as Loulie's
hand with its baby-dimples, which Powers showed me at
Florence, evidently valuing it as much as if he had
wrought it out of a piece of his great heart. As good as
Harriet Hosmer's clasped hands of Browning and his
wife, symbolizing the individuality and heroic union of
two high, poetic lives! Nay, I do not question that it is
better than either of those, because you must have
wrought it passionately, in spite of its maiden palm and
dainty finger-tips.”

“Then you do recognize it?” asked Kenyon.

“There is but one right hand on earth that could have
supplied the model,” answered Miriam; “so small and
slender, so perfectly symmetrical, and yet with a character
of delicate energy. I have watched it a hundred
times at its work; but I did not dream that you had won
Hilda so far! How have you persuaded that shy maiden
to let you take her hand in marble?”

“Never! She never knew it!” hastily replied Kenyon,
anxious to vindicate his mistress's maidenly reserve.
“I stole it from her. The hand is a reminiscence. After
gazing at it so often, and even holding it once for an instant
when Hilda was not thinking of me, I should be
a bungler indeed, if I could not now reproduce it to something
like the life.”

“May you win the original one day!” said Miriam,
kindly.

“I have little ground to hope it,” answered the sculptor,
despondingly; “Hilda does not dwell in our mortal atmosphere;
and gentle and soft as she appears, it will be

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as difficult to win her heart as to entice down a white
bird from its sunny freedom in the sky. It is strange,
with all her delicacy and fragility, the impression she
makes of being utterly sufficient to herself. No; I shall
never win her. She is abundantly capable of sympathy,
and delights to receive it, but she has no need of love.”

“I partly agree with you,” said Miriam. “It is a mistaken
idea, which men generally entertain, that nature
has made women especially prone to throw their whole
being into what is technically called love. We have, to
say the least, no more necessity for it than yourselves;
only we have nothing else to do with our hearts. When
women have other objects in life, they are not apt to fall
in love. I can think of many women distinguished in art,
literature, and science, — and multitudes whose hearts and
minds find good employment in less ostentatious ways,—
who lead high, lonely lives, and are conscious of no
sacrifice so far as your sex is concerned.”

“And Hilda will be one of these!” said Kenyon,
sadly; “the thought makes me shiver for myself, and —
and for her, too.”

“Well,” said Miriam, smiling, “perhaps she may sprain
the delicate wrist which you have sculptured to such perfection.
In that case you may hope. These old masters
to whom she has vowed herself, and whom her slender
hand and woman's heart serve so faithfully, are your only
rivals.”

The sculptor sighed as he put away the treasure of
Hilda's marble hand into the ivory coffer, and thought
how slight was the possibility that he should ever feel

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responsive to his own the tender clasp of the original.
He dared not even kiss the image that he himself had
made; it had assumed its share of Hilda's remote and
shy divinity.

“And now,” said Miriam, “show me the new statue
which you asked me hither to see.”

p576-162

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