You feel that it ought to come down, and are dissatisfied that it does not obey the natural law." "I see," said Miriam mischievously, "you think that sculpture should be a sort of fossilizing process.

But, in truth, your frozen art has nothing like the scope and freedom of Hilda's and mine.

In painting there is no similar objection to the representation of brief snatches of time,--perhaps because a story can be so much more fully told in picture, and buttressed about with circumstances that give it an epoch.
For instance, a painter never would have sent down yonder Faun out of his far antiquity, lonely and desolate, with no companion to keep his simple heart warm." "Ah, the Faun!" cried Hilda, with a little gesture of impatience; "I have been looking at him too long; and now, instead of a beautiful statue, immortally young, I see only a corroded and discolored stone.
This change is very apt to occur in statues." "And a similar one in pictures, surely," retorted the sculptor.

"It is the spectator's mood that transfigures the Transfiguration itself.
I defy any painter to move and elevate me without my own consent and assistance." "Then you are deficient of a sense," said Miriam.
The party now strayed onward from hall to hall of that rich gallery, pausing here and there, to look at the multitude of noble and lovely shapes, which have been dug up out of the deep grave in which old Rome lies buried.

And still, the realization of the antique Faun, in the person of Donatello, gave a more vivid character to all these marble ghosts.