To give any idea by mere words of the spirit of this
performance is impossible. It is the half figure of a peri-like girl,
with tresses swaying in the higher air, with butterfly wings, arms and
drapery gracefully disposed, and all the parts uniting to impress you
with a sense of upward, soaring motion! There is a divine beauty about
the face reflected from a brighter world. Sculptured in pure white
marble, it seems a very soul just escaped from its prison house of clay,
and, listening to those 'sounds seraphic,' bearing away to the great
Beyond.

While gazing on this airy sprite, the beholder feels an exhilarating
influence steal over him, and involuntarily there goes up from his
heart, like incense, that yearning prayer:

'So grant me, God, from every care,
And stain of passion free,
Aloft through virtue's purer air
To hold my course to Thee!'

We cannot speak separately of his 'Morning and Evening,' 'Immortality,'
'Sleeping Peri,' his statue and bas-relief of 'Faith,' busts, and other
works, which are grouped in odd companionship about his studio. But the
'Indian Girl' and 'White Captive,' the crowning achievements of Palmer's
genius, and the ones that give a thoroughly American character to his
reputation, demand an elaborate consideration--not to explain their
merits, but to show what materials for art exist in our history, when
appropriated by the master's hand.

Romance and poetry have not often been successful in treating of the
character and customs of our aborigines, for the elements of true
heroism in the savage nature are so exceptional and few, that the red
man is a very poor subject for the higher manifestations of art. Cooper
and Longfellow alone have come back from this field with the trophies of
praise. But Palmer, with a striking originality and a subtle perception
of spiritual influences, sees in the effect of Christianity on the
'untutored mind' of the Indian, a theme to inspire his plastic clay. So
from this idea he evolves the 'Indian Girl,' standing in an attitude of
perfect repose, holding in her right hand a crucifix, on which her eyes
are bent pensively in a sweet, absorbing reverie, which shuts out the
consciousness of the external world. In the other hand, which hangs
listlessly by her side, she barely touches rather than holds a bunch of
feathers, evidently gathered to adorn her person, and which she forgets
in the contemplation of the story of the Cross. The artist supposes