daughters, there the other children, further off, Apollo
and Artemis, sees how each stands, moves, looks, sees the convulsed
features, the rumpled garments, the fear, the pain, the anger, the
hopelessness, the pitilessness. He takes three planks, nails together
their extremities: this is the gable of the temple, the triangular
cavity or box into which he must fit his group; then, with thumb and
fingers, roughly moulds a certain number of clay puppets, places them in
the triangular box, removes them, alters them, replaces them, takes them
out once more, throws some away, elaborates others; works for hours,
days, weeks, till we return to his workshop, and find a number of
models, tiny moulded dolls in the plank triangle; large statuettes,
half-finished, roughly-worked heads--drawings, perhaps, of parts of the
group. And we examine it all. It is the rudiment of the Niobe group. But
see: of all those things which we saw in our fancy, which the artist,
being an artist, must have seen with infinitely more completeness
and clearness, only a portion has here been reproduced. Of all the
movements and gestures there remain but a very few: the convulsions, the
writhings, and grimacings are gone; there is no trampling, no clutching,
no howling, no grimacing, there are no quivering limbs, or disembowelled
bodies. Why so? Ask the artist. Because, he will answer, all those
movements and gestures were radically ugly; because all that howling and
grimacing in agony entirely ruined the beauty of the features; because
the situation could not be adequately represented, except to the utter
detriment of the form. Hence, of all the movements and gestures which
had presented themselves to his inner vision, at the first mention of
the story of Niobe, the artist has rejected those which were at all
detrimental to the beauty of the form, and accepted those others which
were conducive thereto. He has cast aside a whole portion of the real
appearance of the event, because it interfered with his, perhaps
unspoken and unformulated, but instinctively imperious artistic aim:
to create beautiful form.

But this is not all. He has left out something else which was a most
essential, nay, an all important part of his first mental vision of the
scene. He has actually left out--guess what--some son or daughter of
Niobe?--has run counter to the tradition of the seven girls and seven
boys?--oh, in comparison, that would be nothing. He has actually and
absolute