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One of the monks takes one up and holds it so that we can see the image, about twice life-size, seated in that calm attitude of the sitting Buddha, with crossed legs and one hand on the lap, while the other hangs loosely down. There is a serene self-satisfied smirk on the marble face, which looks more like that of a woman than a man.
There was so little of this, or else it was so well bridled by the solemnity of the occasion, that not a man, woman, or child laughed when a bareheaded maid-servant broke through the lines and ran down between them with a life-size plaster bust of the Emperor William in her arms: she carried it like an overgrown infant, and in alarm at her conspicuous part she cast frightened looks from side to side without arousing any sort of notice.
I do not know what Alice did with the wax-flowers. As for the nine hundred dollars, I appropriated it to laudable purposes. Some of it went for a new silk dress for Alice; the rest I spent for books, and I recall my thrill of delight when I saw ensconced upon my shelves a splendid copy of Audubon's "Birds" with its life-size pictures of turkeys, buzzards, and other fowl done in impossible colors.
The place of honor, however, in this room was reserved for a life-size, full-length portrait of Mrs. Siddons, which Lawrence painted for Mrs. F and which is now in the National Gallery, a production so little to my taste both as picture and portrait that I used to wonder how Mrs. F could tolerate such a representation of her admirable friend.
Moreover, below the figures is an inscription in letters, the date of which is unmistakable, though unfortunately it can be only partially deciphered. It runs: The three figures are life-size. The central one is very peculiar, owing to the mitre or diadem it wears, which, however, is utterly unlike the episcopal mitre of the eleventh century.
As the windows are set very deeply in the walls, the light is bad, and these magnificent pictures are not seen to advantage. Occupying similar positions on the west are life-size portraits of George I., by Sir Godfrey Kneller; George II. and his consort, Caroline, by Enoch Seeman.
"Command him to do so, sire, and then to make a life-size picture from the sketch." "Ah! so you wish a portrait of the Barbarina?" "Yes, sire; but not for myself." "For whom, then?" "To have the pleasure of presenting it to my king." "And why?" "Because I am vain enough to believe that, as my present, the picture would have some value in your eyes," said Rothenberg, mockingly.
But he would not go down until night. Twice during the early evening Breed howled, and Collins, down in the choppy country below, turned his glasses toward the spot to see what manner of wolf this was who howled in the broad light of day. The second time he located Breed. The yellow wolf stood on the rims half a mile above, looming almost life-size in the twelve-power lens.
In the middle was a circular space of meadow, with trees above it, surrounded by a moat, above which stand life-size statues of warriors and poets and nobles and philosophers, blackened with the damp and mould of centuries, the folds of their gowns battered and grass-grown, their noses missing, their eyes put out by stones in the well-nerved hands of riotous youth, their swords and sceptres broken short, their pointed beards snapped off into bluntness.
One feels either like a count, or very lonesome, to sit down in a lofty chamber, say thirty-five feet square, with little furniture, and historical and tragical life-size figures staring at one from the wall-paper. One fears that they may come down in the deep night, and stand at the bedside, those narrow, canopied beds there in the distance, like the marble couches in the cathedral.