e peaceful Demeter, the patroness of
agriculture, peace, marriage, and Arachne, the mortal who was the most
skilful of spinners; for he is both a grain dealer and owner of spinning
factories. The best Demeter is to be placed in the Alexandrian temple of
the goddess, to whose priestesses you belong; the less successful one
in your own house in the city, but whose Demeter is destined for the
sanctuary, I repeat, is now virtually decided. Myrtilus will add this
prize to the others, and grant me with all his heart the one for the
Arachne. The subject, at any rate, is better adapted to my art than to
his, and so I should be tolerably certain of my cause. Yet my anxiety
about the verdict of the judges remains, for surely you know how much
the majority are opposed to my tendency. I, and the few Alexandrians
who, following me, sacrifice beauty to truth, swim against the stream
which bears you, Myrtilus, and those who are on your side, smoothly
along. I know that you do it from thorough conviction, but with
other acknowledged great artists and our judges, you, too, demand
beauty--always beauty. Am I right, or wrong? Is not any one who refuses
to follow in the footsteps left by the ancients of Athens as certain of
condemnation as the convicted thief or murderer? But I will not follow
the lead of the Athenians, inimitably great though they are in their
own way, because I would fain be more than the ancients of Ilissus: a
disciple and an Alexandrian."

"The never-ending dispute," Myrtilus answered his fellow-artist, with a
cordiality in which, nevertheless, there was a slight accent of pity.

"Surely you know it, Daphne. To me the ideal and its embodiment
within the limits of the natural, according to the models of Phidias,
Polycletus, and Myron is the highest goal, but he and his co-workers
seek objects nearer at hand."

"Or rather we found them," cried Hermon, interrupting his companion
with angry positiveness. "The city of Alexandria, which is growing with
unprecedented vigour, is their home. There, the place to which every
race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is
throbbing. There, whoever does not run with the rest is run over; there,
but one thing is important--actual life. Science has undertaken to
fathom it, and the results which it gains with measures and numbers is
of a different value and more lasting than that which the idle sport of
the intellects of the older philosophers obtained. But ar