I somewhat question whether it is quite the thing,
however, to make a genuine woman out of an allegory we ask, Who is to wed
this lovely virgin? and we are not satisfied to banish her into the realm
of chilly thought. But I liked the statue, and all the better for what I
criticise, and was sorry to see the huge package in which the finished
marble lies bundled up, ready to be sent to our country,--which does not
call for it.
Mr. Powers and his two daughters called to take leave of us, and at
parting I expressed a hope of seeing him in America. He said that it
would make him very unhappy to believe that he should never return
thither; but it seems to me that he has no such definite purpose of
return as would be certain to bring itself to pass. It makes a very
unsatisfactory life, thus to spend the greater part of it in exile. In
such a case we are always deferring the reality of life till a future
moment, and, by and by, we have deferred it till there are no future
moments; or, if we do go back, we find that life has shifted whatever of
reality it had to the country where we deemed ourselves only living
temporarily; and so between two stools we come to the ground, and make
ourselves a part of one or the other country only by laying our bones in
its soil.
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