eBooks Base 2000

I do
not, and cannot think of her as a senseless image, but as a being that
lives to gladden the world, incapable of decay and death; as young and
fair to-day as she was three thousand years ago, and still to be young
and fair as long as a beautiful thought shall require physical
embodiment. I wonder how any sculptor has had the impertinence to aim at
any other presentation of female beauty. I mean no disrespect to Gibson
or Powers, or a hundred other men who people the world with nudities, all
of which are abortions as compared with her; but I think the world would
be all the richer if their Venuses, their Greek Slaves, their Eves, were
burnt into quicklime, leaving us only this statue as our image of the
beautiful. I observed to-day that the eyes of the statue are slightly
hollowed out, in a peculiar way, so as to give them a look of depth and
intelligence. She is a miracle. The sculptor must have wrought
religiously, and have felt that something far beyond his own skill was
working through his hands.


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