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We saw the differences, too, betwixt a church in which the same form of worship for which it was originally built is still kept up, and those of England, where it has been superseded for centuries; for here, in the recess of every arch of the side aisles, beneath each lofty window, there was a chapel dedicated to some Saint, and adorned with great marble sculptures of the crucifixion, and with pictures, execrably bad, in all cases, and various kinds of gilding and ornamentation.
"These admirable sculptures, which now adorn our city, are the union of Athenian genius and philosophy, and illustrate my meaning respecting the mental impression which is so essentially to be given to works of refined art.
'If they're a dream, said Sim, 'let sculptures have such wisions, and chisel 'em out when they wake. This is reality. Sleep has no such limbs as them. Tremble, Willet, and despair. She's mine! She's mine! With these triumphant expressions, he seized a hammer and dealt a heavy blow at a vice, which in his mind's eye represented the sconce or head of Joseph Willet.
In spite of successive conquests, there still towered upon the Acropolis the most wonderful temple of antiquity, built of Pentelic marble, and adorned with the sculptures of Phidias. Corinth was richer and more luxurious than Athens, and possessed the most valuable pictures of Greece, as well as the finest statues; a single street for three miles was adorned with costly edifices.
You enter this palace by four great portals, beautiful with sculptured figgers and ornaments, and as you go on in the colonnade you see beautiful paintin's illustratin' the rise and progress of Art. But that's their way. Wall, way up there and on the pediment of the principal entrances are sculptures and portraits of the ancient masters of Art in relief. In relief?
§ VIII. Now of these systems, the Ninevite and Egyptian are altogether opposed to modern habits of thought and action; they are sculptures evidently executed under absolute authorities, physical and mental, such as cannot at present exist.
The mediaeval and Renaissance sculptures alone deserve a visit. One can hardly bear to think of the amount of good work that has perished in Avignon. The city possessed before the Revolution sixty churches, and of these only eighteen remain; of between two and three hundred towers and spires, not one-tenth are left standing.
The white marble sculptures also gleamed from their height, where winged cupids or cherubs gambolled aloft in bas-reliefs; or allegoric shapes reclined along the cornices, hardly noticed, when the daylight comes brightly into the window.
Chateauroy himself was bending his fine, dark head toward the patrician on whom her instinct had fastened her hatred. "You expressed your wish to see my Corporal's little sculptures again, madame," he was murmuring now, as Cigarette got close enough under her flower shadows to catch the sense of the words. "To hear was to obey with me. He waits your commands yonder."
The sculptures on the walls of the temples are copied in little; and cats, dogs, and monkeys are there placed in the attitudes of the gods and kings of old. In one picture we have the mice attacking a castle defended by the cats, copied from a battle-scene of Ramses II. fighting against the Ethiopians.
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