The name of Thomas Ball has acquired celebrity in art since that day, but this statue of Forrest in the character of Coriolanus will always stand as a proud landmark in his sculptured path of fame. It was a true work of love not less than of ambition. For in the long hours of their fellowship in the preparatory studying and sketching and casting the sitter and the artist grew friends. The sculptor took his model and sailed for Florence, there to produce the work he had conceived. And when a year and a half had gone by, the complete result, safely landed in Boston and set up for view in an art-gallery, greeted the eyes of Oakes and gladdened his heart. For it more than met his expectations, it perfectly contented him. He wrote to Mr. Ball, “I am glad the statue came unheralded to our shores, and am content to let the verdict of the public rest on the merits of the work. I congratulate you on an unequivocal and grand success. As a personal likeness of Forrest it is most truthful, and as an illustration of the Shakspearean conception of the Roman Consul it is sublime. For more than forty years I have known this man with an intimacy not common among men. Indeed, our friendship has been more like the devotion of a man to the woman he loves than the relations usually subsisting between men. In all my intercourse with the world I have never known a truer man or one with a nobler nature than Edwin Forrest, whose real worth and greatness will not be acknowledged by the world until he is dead. I rejoice that one of his own countrymen has given to posterity this true and magnificent portrait of him in immortal marble. The eloquence of this marble will outlive the malevolence of all the enemies and of all the critics who have assailed him.” Forrest was indeed fortunate in the peaceful and time-enduring victory achieved for him by the artist in this sculptured Coriolanus, whose haughty beauty, and right foot insupportably advanced with the planted weight of all imperious Rome, will speak his quality to generations yet unborn. What a melancholy contrast is suggested by the words of Mrs. Siddons after seeing the marble counterfeit of John Philip Kemble: “I cannot help thinking of the statue of my poor brother. It is an absolute libel on his noble person and air. I should like to pound it into dust and scatter it to the winds.”