tol. The largest collection of these was a
commission from Mr. Edward King of Newport, and among them were
busts of Ariadne, Demosthenes, and Cicero, and a facsimile of the
'Dying Gladiator' which Mr. King presented to the Redwood Library
of Newport.

* * * * *

"During his first winter in Rome he was permitted by the
authorities to make a cast of a mutilated bust of Cicero which had
long lain in the Vatican. A critic writing from Rome in 1857 says
of this bust of Cicero: 'Mr. Akers obtained permission to take a
cast from it; he then restored the eye, brow, and ears, and
modelled a neck and bust for it in accordance with the temperament
shown by the nervous and rather thin face. He has succeeded
admirably. It is the very head of the Vatican, yet without the
scars of envious time, and sits gracefully on human shoulders,
instead of being rolled awkwardly back upon a shelf.' This bust is
unlike the portrait which so long passed for Cicero's, but has been
identified by means of a medal which was struck by the Magnesians
in honor of the great orator during his consulate, and is now the
authorized portrait of Cicero. The finest of Paul Akers's creations
executed during his stay in Rome are 'St. Elizabeth of Hungary,'
which represents the princess at the moment the roses have fallen
to the ground; 'Una and the Lion,' an illustration of the line in
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,'--

'Still while she slept he kept both watch and ward;'

the head of Milton and the 'Pearl Diver.' The 'Pearl Diver,' now
owned by the city of Portland, represents a youth stretched upon a
sea-worn rock and wrapped in eternal sleep. The arms are thrown
above the head, and about the waist is a net containing
pearl-bearing shells for which he has risked his life. There is no
trace of suffering; all is subdued to beauty. It is death
represented as the ancients conceived it, the act of the
torch-reverting god. This youth, who has lost his life at the
moment when all that for which he had dared was within his grasp,
suggests Paul Akers's own untimely death on the eve of his
triumph."

It was from his Roman studio that Mr. Akers wrote to a friend:--

"Yesterday Browning called. He looked a long time at my Milton, and
said it was Milton, the man-