Periander has gained new honors by this admirable piece of work. I had hardly commenced my examination of it, when a grating voice at my elbow, never, once heard, to be mistaken for any other, croaked out what was meant as a challenge. 'The greatest captain of this or of any age!' It was Spurius, a man whom no slight can chill nor, even insult, cause to abate the least of his intrusive familiarity--a familiarity which he covets, too, only for the sake of disputation and satire. To me, however, he is never other than a source of amusement. He is a variety of the species I love occasionally to study. I told him I was observing the workmanship, without thinking of the man represented. 'If you will allow me to say it,' he rejoined, 'a very inferior subject of contemplation. A statue--as I take it, the thing, that is, for which it is made, is commemoration. If one wants to see fine work in marble, there is the cornice for him just overhead: or in brass, let him look at the doors of the new temple, or the last table or couch of Syphax. The proper subject for man is man.' 'Well, Spurius, on your own ground then. In this brass I do not see brass, nor yet Aurelian--' 'What then, in the name of Hecate?' 'Nothing but intellect--the mind, the soul of the greater artist, Periander. That drapery never fell so upon Aurelian; nor was Aurelian's form or bearing ever like this. It is all ennobled, and exalted above pure nature, by the divine power of genius. The true artist, under every form and every line of nature, sees another form and line of more perfect grace and beauty, which he chooses instead, and makes it visible and permanent in stone or brass. You see nothing in me, but merely Piso as he walks the streets. Periander sees another within, bearing no more resemblance to me--yet as much--than does this, to Aurelian.' 'That, I simply conceive, to be so much sophistry,' rejoined the poet, 'which no man would be guilty of, except he had been for the very purpose, as one must think, of degrading his intellect, to the Athenian schools. Still, as I said and think, the statue is made to commemorate the man represented, not the artist.' 'It is made for that. But, oftentimes, the very name of the man commemorated is lost, while that of the artist lives forever. In my judgment there is as much of Periander in the statue as there is of Aurelian.' 'I know not what the fame of this great Periander may be ages hence. It has not till now reached my ear.' 'It is not easy to reach the ear of some who dwell in the via coeli.' I could not help saying that. 'My rooms, sir, I would inform you,' he rejoined sharply, 'are on the third floor.' 'Then I do wonder you should not have heard of Periander.'