FOUR individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one of the saloons of the sculpture gallery in Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the staircase) in the center of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinoüs, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries. Here, likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as it was two thousand years ago) of the Human Soul, with it's choice of Innocence or Evil close at hand, in the pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom, but assaulted by a snake.
From one of the windows of this saloon, we may see a flight of broad stone steps, descending alongside the antique and massive foundation of the Capitol, towards the battered triumphal arch of Septimius Severus, right below. Farther on, the eye skirts along the edge of the desolate forum (where Roman washerwomen hang out their linen to the sun), passing over a shapeless confusing of modern edifices, piled rudely up with ancient brick and stone, and over the domes of Christian churches, built on the old pavements of heathen temples, and supported by the very pillars that once upheld them. At a distance beyond - yet but a little way, considering how much history is heaped into the intervening space - rises the great sweep of the Coliseum, with the blue sky brightening through its upper tier of arches. Far off, the view is shut in by the Albany Mountains, looking just the same, amid all this decay and change, as when Romulus gazed thitherward over his half-finished wall.
We glance hastily at these things - at this bright sky, and those blue distant mountains, and at the ruins, Etruscan, Roman, Christian, vulnerable with a threshold antiquity, and at the company of world famous statues in the saloon - in the hope of putting the reader into that state of feeling which is experimented oftenest at Rome. It is a vague sense of ponderous rememberances; a perception of such weight and density in a bygone life, of which this spot was the center, that the present moment is pressed down or crowded out, and our individual affairs and interests are but half as real here as elsewhere. Viewed through this medium, our narrative - into which are woven some airy and unsubstantial threads, intermixed with others, twisted out of the commonest stuff of human existence - may seem not widely different from the texture of all our lives.
Side by side with the massiveness of the Roman past, all matters that we handle or dream of nowadays look evanescent and visionary alike.
It might be that the four persons whom we are seeking to introduce were conscious of this dreamy character of the present, as compared with the square blocks of granite wherewith the Romans built their lives. Perhaps it even contributed to the fanciful merriment which was just now their mood. When we find ourselves fading into shadows and unrealities, it seems hardly worth while to be sad, but rather to laugh as gaily as we may, and ask little reason wherefore.
Of these four friends of ours, there were artists, or connected with art; and, at this moment, they had been simultaneously struck by a resemblance between one of the antique statues, a well-known masterpiece of Grecian sculpture.
"You must needs confess, Kenyon," said a dark-eyed young woman, whom her friends called Miriam, "that you never chiseled out of marble, nor wrought in clay, a more vivid likeness than this, cunning a bust maker as you think yourself. The portraiture is perfect in character, sentiment, and feature. If it were a picture, the resemblance might be half illusive and imaginary; but here, in the Pentelic marble, it is a substantial fact, and may be tested by absolute touch and measurement. Our friend, Daniel is the very faun of Praxiteles. Is it not true, Hilda?"
"Not quite - almost - yes, I really think so," replied Hilda, a slender, brown haired New England girl, whose perception of form and expression were wonderfully clear and delicate. "If there is any differences between the two faces, the reason may be , I suppose that the Faun dwelt in woods and fields, and consorted with his like; whereas Daniel has known cities a little, and such people as ourselves. But the resemblance is very close, and very strange."
"Not so strange," whispered Miriam mischievously, "for no fault in Acadia was ever a greater simpleton than Daniel. He was hardly a man's share of wit, small as that may be. It is a pity that there are no longer any of this congenial race of rustic creatures for our friend to consort with!"
"Hush, naughty one!" returned Hilda. "You are very ungrateful, for you well know he has wit enough to worship you, at all events."
"Then the greater fool he!" said Miriam, so bitterly that Hidda's quiet eyes were somewhat startled.
"Daniel, my dear friend," said Kenyon, in Italian, "pray gratify us all by taking the exact attitude of this statue."
The young man laughed, and threw himself into the position, in which the statue has been standing for two or three thousand years. In truth, allowing for the difference of costume, and if a lion's skin could have been substituted for his modern talma, and a rustic pipe for his stick, Daniel might have figured perfectly as the marble faun, miraculously softened into flesh and blood.
"Yes, the resemblance is wonderful," observed Kenyon, after examining the marble and the man with the accuracy of a sculptor's eye. "There is one point, however, or, rather, two points in respect to which our friend Daniel's abundant curls will not permit us to stay whether the likeness is carried into minute detail."
And he sculptor directed the attentions of the party to the ears of the beautiful statue which they were contemplating. But we must do more than merely refer to this exquisite work of art; it must be described, however inadequate may be the effort to express its magic peculiarity in words.
The Faun is the marble image of a young man, leaning his right arm on the trunk or stump of a tree; one hand hangs carelessly by his side; in the other be holds the fragment of a pipe, or some such sylvan instrument of music. His only garment - a lion's skin, with the claws upon his shoulder - falls halfway down his back, leaving the limbs and entire front of the figure nude. The form, thus displayed, is marvelously grateful, but has a fuller and more rounded outline, more flesh, and less of heroic muscle than the old sculptors were wont to assign to their types of masculine beauty. The character of the face corresponds with the figure; it is most agreeable in outline and feature, but rounded and somewhat voluptuously developed, especially about the throat and chin; the nose is almost straight, but very slightly curves inward, thereby acquiring an indescribable charm of geniality and humor. The mouth, with it's full yet delicate lips, seems so nearly to smile outright that it calls forth a responsive smile. The whole statue - unlike anything else that ever was wrought in that severe material of marble that conveys the idea of an amiable and sensual creature, easy, mirthful, apt for jollity, yet not incapable of being touched by pathos. It is impossible to gaze long at this stone image without conceiving a kindly sentiment towards it, as if its substance were warm to the touch, and imbued with actual life. It comes very close to some of our pleasantest sympathies.
Perhaps it is the very lack of moral severity, of any high and heroic ingredient in the character of the Faun, that makes it so delightful an object to the human eye and to the frailty of the human heart. That being here represented is endowed with no principle of virtue, and would be true and honest by dint of his simplicity. we should expect from him no sacrifice or effort for an abstract cause; there is not an atom of martyr's stuff in all that softened marble; but he has a capacity for strong and warm attachment, and might act devotedly through its impulse, and even die for it at need. It is possible, too, that the faun might be educated through the medium of his emotions, so that the coarser animal portion of his nature might eventually be thrown into the background, though never utterly expelled.
The animal nature, indeed, is a most essential part of the Faun's composition; for the characteristics of the brute creation meet and combine with those of humanity in this strange yet true and natural conception of antique poetry and art. Praxiteles has subtly diffused throughout his work that mute mystery which so hopelessly perplexes us whenever we attempt to gain an intellectual or sympathetic knowledge of the lower orders of creation. The riddle is indicated, however, only by two definite signs; these are the two ears of the faun, which are leaf shaped, terminating in little peaks, like those of some species of animals.