rred to above. Palmer, the noble master
and teacher of the sculptor who created this bust, had done many things
entirely outside of the old ring-fence, had made himself famous by them;
but this, on some accounts, seemed to us the chief, because the most
audacious of all. What did it represent? Simply an old, worn,
peril-tried, battle-scarred man, who had fought grislies and
Indians,--walked leagues with his canoe on his back,--camped under
snow-peaks,--dined on his rifle's market,--had nothing but his heroic
pluck, patience, and American individuality, to fascinate people,--and
now, under a rough fur cap of his own making, showed a face without a
line that was Greek in it, and said to Launt Thompson, "Make me, if you
dare!"

What we then admired in "The Old Trapper" we now admire in Miss Hosmer's
"Zenobia."

* * * * *

There now stands on exhibition in this country one of the finest
examples of the spirit which animates our best American artists in their
selection of ideals, and their execution of them on the catholic
principle.

Miss Hosmer has not thought it necessary to color her statue, because
she knew that the utmost capability of sculpture is the expression of
form,--that, had she colored it, she would have brought it into
competition with a Nature entirely beyond her in mere details, and made
it a doll instead of a statue. Neither has she made it a travel-stained
woman with a carpet-bag, because in history all mean details melt away,
and we see its actors at great distances like the Athene, and because
our whole idea of Zenobia is this:--

_A Queen led in Chains._

Neither has she made her Zenobia a Greek woman, because she was a
Palmyrene. What she has made her is this:--

_Our idea of Zenobia won from Romance and History._

This Zenobia is a queen. She is proud as she was when she sat in
pillared state, under gorgeous canopies, with a hundred slaves at her
beck, and a devoted people within reach of her couriers. She does not
tremble or swerve, though she has her head down. That head is bowed only
because she is a woman, and she will not give the look of love to the
man who has forced her after him. Her lip has no weakness in it. She is
a _lady_, and knows that there is something higher than joy or pain.
Miss Hosmer has evidently believed nothing of the legends to the effect
that she did swerve afterward, else she could not have put that noble
soul in her heroin