But it is in the plastic arts as in literature and poetry--what costs but little trouble has small chance of enduring.

The Cyprian limestone is too soft to furnish the effects and the contrasts which marble offers, so to speak, spontaneously; it is incapable of receiving the charming polish which makes so strong an opposition to the dark shadows of the parts where the chisel has scooped deep.

The chisel, whatever efforts it may make and however laboriously it may be applied, cannot impress on such material the strong and bold touches which indicate the osseous structure, and make the muscles and the veins show themselves under the epidermis in Greek statuary.

The sculptor's work is apt to be at once finikin and lax; it wants breadth, and it wants decision.

Moreover, the material, having little power of resistance, retains but ill what the chisel once impressed; the more delicate markings and the more lifelike touches that it once received, it loses easily through friction or exposure to rough weather.