REPORT OF MR. MILLETT.
213
posed with all the artificial studied grace of this class of performers. The features were deftly carved; the lace was worked out with Chinese patience, and not a hair of the chignon was missing; the delicate French boots were fashioned to perfection, and even the stitches in the seams of the garments w T ere to be counted. It was only too plain to see that the execution of these trivial details w r as the sole idea of the artist, and that he chose his subject from the great resources ] t gave him for the practice of his chisel, unconscious of the sickening spectacle he was creating for every person of refined tastes. A little girl, by some unaccountable freak nude to the waist, her flowing garment in all its perfection of texture and studied folds trailing behind, contemplates a tiunch of flowers with a gesture of surprise and an expression °f admiration. You can see that her dress is woollen, with a satin stripe; the head necklace is highly polished ; the ear- rings shine like metal ; the coiffure is irreproachable, but the brainless creation is unendurable for a moment. A nude female with modern ornaments and the latest style of headdress, is Avalking unblushingly over a perfectly imitated piece °f turf. It is called Eve, or Flora, or Clytemnestra, and it 18 a lways the same vacant head on the same weak shoulders. ^ half dozen artists exposed the same motive, a child study- ln & from a book, the pages of which are carefully covered with, printing. The joys and the troubles of childhood found frequent expressions in marble, and the same figures that pass f° l supports to a fountain or a candelebra were placed before the public as serious work. There were ranks of busts of " Vei 7 variety; platoons of heads differing individually only a curl of the lip, a droop of the eyelid, or a change in the c °iffure ; all were pulseless, meaningless, vacant in expression, ail d this without an exception. It is a pitiful degradation of lei °ic marble to fashion it in such forms.
Nidia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii, by Jacob Ginotti, is not Ulla ttractive in the timid, hesitating pose and the sweet expression of the face. Sira, by Alexander Rondoni, a com- .Nation of marble and broilze, is full of character; not only ^ .^ e ne gro seen in the w T ell modelled features and the crisp ail 5 but the hands and arms exposed as she turns to see the v °uiid on her shoulder, are supple and true to the peculiar