The longer we gaze the stronger grows our feeling that it is in truth a menagerie, surviving somehow from early days. Only, how very silent! The last party of tourists has passed on, we are quite alone, save for these many shapes all around us--and it is hardly in nature that no faintest sound or movement should be heard. Those graceful greyhound puppies play with each other in perfect silence; not a footfall nor crackling twig betrays the flight of yonder deer. And so, gradually, it dawns on us that although this is life, it is life long turned to stone. Some Arabian Nights’ enchantment has been at work, arresting these varied forms in their prime of activity; and, doubtless, on some future day, at the true wizard’s touch, they will turn back again from marble into breathing flesh. But that will not happen to-day, nor yet to-morrow, so we may as well take advantage of the stillness to see what the menagerie contains. [Illustration: SCULPTURE OF THIEVING MONKEY IN THE VATICAN.] A dun cow, not far from Diana, stands snuffing the fresh air with upraised head; and a horse which once was roan--at least the marble still bears traces of reddish paint--looks inquiringly toward her. Near these peacefully-inclined animals crouches a lion, in readiness to leap upon his prey. In the next group the victim is secured; it represents a horse pulled down by a lion. Note the relentless grasp of the one, the helpless agony of the other. Wonderful as a work of art, it is nevertheless too painful to linger before; we are glad to turn away. Similar in character are two groups of deer seized by hounds, and another of a panther devouring its prey. Here is a wild boar, here the ugly phiz of a camel; here an alligator, to whose neutral character an existence in marble seems peculiarly well adapted; and here, at a respectful distance from his jaws, are a cock, a goose, a pelican, several peacocks and an eagle. The dignity of the latter is worth noting--its calm, imperial reserve, so indicative of the Rome whose emblem it was. Of the monkey hard by it can only be said that he is as perfect as monkeyish a monkey as ever breathed. He has been stealing fruit, probably from some old Roman garden, and has made off to this corner to eat it on the sly, glancing over his shoulder every now and then to make sure that no one will interrupt. [Illustration: STAG IN ALABASTER IN THE VATICAN.] A goat, a rhinoceros and a hyena come next, and then we approach a most remarkable bust of the Minotaur, that bull-headed, human-bodied terror which demanded a yearly tribute of youths and maidens, and was finally slain by Theseus, to the great relief of the Athenian world. What brutal, pitiless life, what fierce joy in the anticipated victims, looks out from his eyes and dilates his nostrils! It is a relief to turn away from the brute and examine instead his near neighbors, a crab and a green-gray dolphin rising from waves of white marble.