There is something in the very colour which, to one acquainted with the art, suggests beautiful fancies.

It is the red of the Pompeian walls, and the rich tint seems to call up the matchless traceries of the ancients.

Old chisellers say that no one can model anything wholly bad in red wax, and there is truth in the saying.

The material is old--the older the better; it has passed under the hand of the artist again and again; it has taken form, served for the model of a lasting work, been kneaded together in a lump, been worked over and over by the boxwood tool.

The workman feels that it has absorbed some of the qualities of the master's genius, and touches it with the certainty that its stiff substance will yield new forms of beauty in his fingers, rendering up some of its latent capacity of shape at each pressure and twist of the deftly-handled instrument.
At the extremities of the long bench huge iron vices were fixed by staples that ran into the ground.