The famous picture of the sacrifice of Iphigenia by Timanthes, the theme of admiration and criticism for the last two thousand years, which every writer on art deems it proper to mention in praise or in blame, could hardly have been more vivid or more terrible than this. The analogous idea, that of heroic resignation and self-devotion in a great cause, would be conveyed in sacred art by the figure of Jephtha’s daughter; she too regrets the promises of life, but dies not the less willingly. “My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the Lord hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon.” And for a single statue, Jephtha’s daughter would be a fine subject—one to task the powers of our best sculptors; the _sentiment_ would be the same as the Iphigenia, but the _treatment_ altogether different. For the Iphigenia in Tauris I think the modern sculptor would do well to set aside the character as represented by Euripides, and rather keep in view the conception of Goethe.[3] In his hand it has lost nothing of its statuesque elegance and simplicity, and has gained immeasurably in moral dignity and feminine tenderness. The Iphigenia in Tauris is no longer young, but she is still the consecrated virgin; no more the victim, but herself the priestess of those very rites by which she was once fated to perish. While Euripides has depicted her as stern and astute, Goethe has made her the impersonation of female devotedness, and mild, but unflinching integrity. She is like the young Neoptolemus when she disdains to use the stratagem which Pylades had suggested, when she dares to speak the truth, and trust to it alone for help and safety. The scene in which she is haunted by the recollection of her doomed ancestry, and mutters over the song of the Parcæ on that far-off sullen shore, is sublime, but incapable of representation in plastic art. It should, however, be well studied, as helping the artist to the abstract conception of the character as a whole. Carstens made a design, suggested by this tragedy, of the Three Parcæ singing their fatal mysterious song. A model of one of the figures (that of Atropos) used to stand in Goethe’s library, and a cast from this is before me while I write: every one who sees it takes it for an antique. [Illustration] EVE. I have but a few words to say of Eve. As she is the only undraped figure which is allowable in sacred art, the sculptors have multiplied representations of her, more or less finely imagined; but what I conceive to be the true type has seldom, very seldom, been attained. The remarks which follow are, however, suggestive, not critical.