red and
imperfect image may still make a very respectable appearance in the eyes
of those who have not seen the original."

"More than that," rejoined Hilda; "for there is a class of spectators
whose sympathy will help them to see the perfect through a mist of
imperfection. Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures
or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or
artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness."

"You, Hilda, are yourself the only critic in whom I have much faith,"
said Kenyon. "Had you condemned Cleopatra, nothing should have saved
her."

"You invest me with such an awful responsibility," she replied, "that I
shall not dare to say a single word about your other works."

"At least," said the sculptor, "tell me whether you recognize this
bust?"

He pointed to a bust of Donatello. It was not the one which Kenyon had
begun to model at Monte Beni, but a reminiscence of the Count's face,
wrought under the influence of all the sculptor's knowledge of his
history, and of his personal and hereditary character. It stood on a
wooden pedestal, not nearly finished, but with fine white dust and small
chips of marble scattered about it, and itself incrusted all round with
the white, shapeless substance of the block. In the midst appeared
the features, lacking sharpness, and very much resembling a fossil
countenance,--but we have already used this simile, in reference to
Cleopatra, with the accumulations of long-past ages clinging to it.

And yet, strange to say, the face had an expression, and a more
recognizable one than Kenyon had succeeded in putting into the
clay model at Monte Beni. The reader is probably acquainted with
Thorwaldsen's three-fold analogy,--the clay model, the Life; the plaster
cast, the Death; and the sculptured marble, the Resurrection,--and
it seemed to be made good by the spirit that was kindling up these
imperfect features, like a lambent flame.

"I was not quite sure, at first glance, that I knew the face," observed
Hilda; "the likeness surely is not a striking one. There is a good
deal of external resemblance, still, to the features of the Faun of
Praxiteles, between whom and Donatello, you know, we once insisted that
there was a perfect twin-brotherhood. But the expression is now so very
different!"

"What do you take it to be?" asked the sculptor.

"I hardly know how to define it," she answered. "But it has an effect