Some would have sighed that such beings could only be pictured in a poet’s or an artist’s dream, but Lothair felt that what he beheld with rapture was no ideal creation, and that he was in the presence of the inspiring original. “It is too like!” he murmured. “It is the most successful recurrence to the true principles of art in modern sculpture,” said a gentleman on his right hand. This person was a young man, though more than ten years older than Lothair. His appearance was striking. Above the middle height, his form, athletic though lithe and symmetrical, was crowned by a countenance aquiline but delicate, and from many circumstances of a remarkable radiancy. The lustre of his complexion, the fire of his eye, and his chestnut hair in profuse curls, contributed much to this dazzling effect. A thick but small mustache did not conceal his curved lip or the scornful pride of his distended nostril, and his beard, close but not long, did not veil the singular beauty of his mouth. It was an arrogant face, daring and vivacious, yet weighted with an expression of deep and haughty thought. The costume of this gentleman was rich and picturesque. Such extravagance of form and color is sometimes encountered in the adventurous toilet of a country house, but rarely experienced in what might still be looked upon as a morning visit in the metropolis. “You know Mr. Phoebus?” asked a low, clear voice, and turning round Lothair was presented to a person so famous that even Lothair had heard of him. Mr. Phoebus was the most successful, not to say the most eminent, painter of the age. He was the descendant of a noble family of Gascony that had emigrated to England from France in the reign of Louis XIV. Unquestionably they had mixed their blood frequently during the interval and the vicissitudes of their various life; but, in Gaston Phoebus, Nature, as is sometimes her wont, had chosen to reproduce exactly the original type. He was the Gascon noble of the sixteenth century, with all his brilliancy, bravery, and boastfulness, equally vain, arrogant, and eccentric, accomplished in all the daring or the graceful pursuits of man, yet nursed in the philosophy of our times. “It is presumption in my talking about such things,” said Lothair; “but might I venture to ask what you may consider the true principles of art?” “ARYAN principles,” said Mr. Phoebus; “not merely the study of Nature, but of beautiful Nature; the art of design in a country inhabited by a first-rate race, and where the laws, the manners, the customs, are calculated to maintain the health and beauty of a first-rate race. In a greater or less degree, these conditions obtained from the age of Pericles to the age of Hadrian in pure Aryan communities, but Semitism began then to prevail, and ultimately triumphed. Semitism has destroyed art; it taught man to despise his own body, and the essence of art is to honor the human frame.”