of the English poetesses who preceded Mrs. Browning were
women of no ordinary talent, and that if the majority of them looked upon
poetry simply as a department of _belles lettres_, so in most cases did
their contemporaries. Since Mrs. Browning's day our woods have become
full of singing birds, and if I venture to ask them to apply themselves
more to prose and less to song, it is not that I like poetical prose, but
that I love the prose of poets.

VENUS OR VICTORY
(_Pall Mall Gazette_, February 24, 1888.)

There are certain problems in archaeology that seem to possess a real
romantic interest, and foremost among these is the question of the
so-called Venus of Melos. Who is she, this marble mutilated goddess whom
Gautier loved, to whom Heine bent his knee? What sculptor wrought her,
and for what shrine? Whose hands walled her up in that rude niche where
the Melian peasant found her? What symbol of her divinity did she carry?
Was it apple of gold or shield of bronze? Where is her city and what was
her name among gods and men? The last writer on this fascinating subject
is Mr. Stillman, who in a most interesting book recently published in
America, claims that the work of art in question is no sea-born and
foam-born Aphrodite, but the very Victory Without Wings that once stood
in the little chapel outside the gates of the Acropolis at Athens. So
long ago as 1826, that is to say six years after the discovery of the
statue, the Venus hypothesis was violently attacked by Millingen, and
from that time to this the battle of the archaeologists has never ceased.
Mr. Stillman, who fights, of course, under Millingen's banner, points out
that the statue is not of the Venus type at all, being far too heroic in
character to correspond to the Greek conception of Aphrodite at any
period of their artistic development, but that it agrees distinctly with
certain well-known statues of Victory, such as the celebrated 'Victory of
Brescia.' The latter is in bronze, is later, and has the wings, but the
type is unmistakable, and though not a reproduction it is certainly a
recollection of the Melian statue. The representation of Victory on the
coin of Agathocles is also obviously of the Melian type, and in the
museum of Naples is a terra-cotta Victory in almost the identical action
and drapery. As for Dumont d'Urville's statement that, when the statue
was discovered, one hand held an apple and the other a fold of the
drapery,