eBooks Base 2000

It was
prefixed to a cheap American edition of Milton's poems, and was probably
as familiar to Powers as to myself. It is very remarkable how difficult
it seems to be to strike out a new attitude in sculpture; a new group, or
a new single figure.
One piece of sculpture Powers exhibited, however, which was very
exquisite, and such as I never saw before. Opening a desk, he took out
something carefully enclosed between two layers of cotton-wool, on
removing which there appeared a little baby's hand most delicately
represented in the whitest marble; all the dimples where the knuckles
were to be, all the creases in the plump flesh, every infantine wrinkle
of the soft skin being lovingly recorded. "The critics condemn minute
representation," said Powers; "but you may look at this through a
microscope and see if it injures the general effect." Nature herself
never made a prettier or truer little hand. It was the hand of his
daughter,--"Luly's hand," Powers called it,--the same that gave my own
such a frank and friendly grasp when I first met "Luly.


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