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Decorative, also, are the sculptured medallions between these columns, and the Pegasi on the spandrels of the arch, the medallions done by Calder, the Pegasi by Roth. The caryatids in pairs of male and female surmounting the balustrade of the sunken garden are merely lamp bearers. The spouting monsters in the fountain pools are but ornamental, and so are the figures in relief under the basins.
Is it her destiny there to await forever the mind, the liberator, the immense rider of Pegasi and hippo-griffs, the combatant of heroes of the dawn who shall descend from the azure between two wings, the radiant knight of the future? Will she forever summon in vain to her assistance the lance of light of the ideal?
'A Bernesque poet' at the very most, And never earnest save in politics The Pegasus that he was wont to boast A blundering, floundering hackney, full of tricks, A beast that must be driven to the post By whips and spurs and oaths and kicks and sticks, A gasping, ranting, broken-winded brute, That any judge of Pegasi would shoot;
It is of course true that he has never reached or attempted to reach the gorgeous rhapsodies of De Quincey or the dithyrambic melodies of Ruskin. But these heaven-born Pegasi cannot be harnessed to the working vehicles of our streets.
Such power have the Muses. The timeworn poet reclines, as though sleeping or resting, ready to be waked; his head is covered with flowing hair, and crowned with laurel; it leans upon his left hand. On either side of his couch stand cupids or genii with torches turned to earth. Above is a group of the three Graces, flanked by winged Pegasi.
Most of the stories of Pegasi and Hippogriffs, and of flying chariots, from that of Phaeton downwards to Astolfo's, were evidently intended by their authors as mythical; not so, however, with Bishop Wilkins; he boldly avers, for several reasons which he keeps to himself, and for others not very comprehensible to us, which he details "seriously and on good grounds," "that it is possible to make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit, and give such a motion unto it, as shall convey him through the air; and this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum, and commodities for traffic."
Above is a group of the three Graces, flanked by winged Pegasi. Higher up are throned two Victories with palms, and at the top a naked Fame. We need not ask who was Lancinus Curtius. He is forgotten, and his virtue has not saved him from oblivion; though he strove in his lifetime, pro virili parte, for the palm that Busti carved upon his grave.
But although devoting most of his attention to much-needed remeasurements of known pairs, he incidentally divided no less than 274 stars, the majority of which lay beyond the resolving power of less keen and effectually aided eyesight. Another pair, Kappa Pegasi, detected in 1880, was found in 1892 to have more than completed a circuit in the interim.
Then, as specimens of other kinds, some ovoides, resembling an egg of a dark brown colour, marked with white bands, and without tails; diodons, real sea-porcupines, furnished with spikes, and capable of swelling in such a way as to look like cushions bristling with darts; hippocampi, common to every ocean; some pegasi with lengthened snouts, which their pectoral fins, being much elongated and formed in the shape of wings, allow, if not to fly, at least to shoot into the air; pigeon spatulae, with tails covered with many rings of shell; macrognathi with long jaws, an excellent fish, nine inches long, and bright with most agreeable colours; pale-coloured calliomores, with rugged heads; and plenty of chaetpdons, with long and tubular muzzles, which kill insects by shooting them, as from an air-gun, with a single drop of water.
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