There was a rosy tinge flushing the pure marble, the reflection of the crimson drapery around—the sorrowful gaze of the downcast eyes, the grace of the assumed position, affected me most singularly. I could have wept with a perfect agony of tears. Enthusiasm with me always ends in a merry laugh, or bitter weeping. The scene around was unheeded, the calm majesty of that perfect loveliness had brought a train of dreamy, delicious revery, in which hours might have passed unnoticed. It would be at once vain and unnecessary to enter upon a formal description of this "statue which enchants the world." Every journal in this city has given extended, and ofttimes miserably affected critiques upon the artist and his work; but I record the simple, unartistic emotions with which I gazed upon it.

  The peculiar beauty is its perfect truth. There is no falsity of outline—no distortion of the form; ah, it is a woman, and Pygmalion-like, the artist has given to her a soul. For the first time I could enter into the spirit of that beautiful fable. I could imagine the devotion with which the statue was gazed upon, day after day, as its development progressed beneath his skillful hand—the delicate stroke chiming faintly to his fast coming fantasies, as the chisel rang upon that pure surface—how he had dwelt upon its perfections until he grew mad with love for the creation of his own genius! The fable might easily become a truth. To return—the simplicity and purity with which the form is veiled as it were, takes from the mind every emotion save that of admiration. I could but wonder at the carping critics who allow nothing to be faultless. Were all minds as pure as that perfect face, we should hear no more of ladies being excluded from a work which they only can truly appreciate.