Kenyon cleared it away from between them, and almost deemed himself rewarded with a living smile.
It was either the prototype or a better repetition of the Venus of the Tribune.

But those who have been dissatisfied with the small head, the narrow, soulless face, the button-hole eyelids, of that famous statue, and its mouth such as nature never moulded, should see the genial breadth of this far nobler and sweeter countenance.

It is one of the few works of antique sculpture in which we recognize womanhood, and that, moreover, without prejudice to its divinity.
Here, then, was a treasure for the sculptor to have found! How happened it to be lying there, beside its grave of twenty centuries?
Why were not the tidings of its discovery already noised abroad?
The world was richer than yesterday, by something far more precious than gold.

Forgotten beauty had come back, as beautiful as ever; a goddess had risen from her long slumber, and was a goddess still.

Another cabinet in the Vatican was destined to shine as lustrously as that of the Apollo Belvedere; or, if the aged pope should resign his claim, an emperor would woo this tender marble, and win her as proudly as an imperial bride! Such were the thoughts with which Kenyon exaggerated to himself the importance of the newly discovered statue, and strove to feel at least a portion of the interest which this event would have inspired in him a little while before.