see the picture
also--some kings, and possibly queens, seated on gorgeous thrones,
engaged in the festive occupation of grinding bones! Oh, I degrade the
subject, do I? Nonsense! The term is a stilted affectation, perhaps
never better applied than to Mrs. Browning's descriptive spasms. Still,
she was undoubtedly a poet. She wrote many beautiful subjective poems,
but she wrote much that was not poetry, and which suggests only a
deranged nervous system. I have a friend who maintains from her writings
that she never loved, that she did not know what passion meant. However
this may be, the author of the sonnet commencing--

Go from me! Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow,

deserves immortality.

But to return to Mr. Hart's studio. One of the most remarkable things I
saw in Florence was this artist's invention to reduce certain details of
sculpture to a mechanical process. This machine at first sight struck me
as a queer kind of ancient armor. In brief, the subject is placed in
position, when the front part of this armor, set on some kind, of hinge,
swings round before him, and the sculptor makes measurements by means of
numberless long metal needles, which are so arranged as to run in and
touch the subject: A stationary mark is placed where the needle touches,
and then I think it is pulled back. So the artist goes on, until some
hundreds of measurements are made, if necessary, when the process is
finished and the subject is released. How these measurements are made to
serve the artist in modeling the statue I cannot very well describe, but
I understood that by their aid Mr. Hart had modeled a bust from life in
the incredible space of two days! I further understood that Mr. Hart's
portrait-busts are remarkable for their correct likeness, which of
course they must be if they are mathematically correct in their
proportions. Many of the artists in Florence have the bad taste to make
sport of this machine; but if Mr. Hart's portrait-busts are what they
have the reputation of being, this sport is only a mask for jealousy.
Mr. Hart is extremely sensitive to the light manner Mr. Powers and
others have of speaking of this invention. One day he was much annoyed
when a visitor, after examining the machine very attentively for some
time, exclaimed, "Mr. Hart, what if you should have a man shut in there
among those points, and he should happen to sneeze?"

The Pitti Palace was one of my favorite haunt