I wondered, even at seven years of age, how sculptors in the flesh could come and carve original conceptions among the unspeakably successful attempts of those who were already thinnest dust, yet whose names have so much personality in them that a sovereign presence fills the place where they are spoken,--sculptors whose statues step as it were unexpectedly (themselves surprised) into sight, with none of the avoirdupois of later stone-work; that heaviness which, in some of the finest of these modern figures, causes them to pause involuntarily, as if snowed upon. The high degree of smoothness of the old statues, as well as their mellowed whiteness, may give life; added to that wonderful deep cutting in all crevices and detail of nature, such as gives, in literature, the life to Balzac's endlessly studied facts of situation. The sugary porousness of much of the inferior marble of to-day arrests the eye, and troubles it. Story's Cleopatra is smooth, close-fibred as glass, and the snowstorm has not been allowed to drift upon the folds of her robe, the interstices of her modeling. She, with a few others of still later date, comes near to the old art, which has as much possibility for our imaginative survey as the plot of "The Marble Faun," so marvelously, so intricately, so unslavishly finished. In looking at the Dying Gladiator, we wonder whether he has already passed on from mastering the thought of his approaching death to the remembrance of his wife and children; or whether upon the agony of the physical pang and the insult to courage, which his wound has brought him to endure, is yet to break the pathos of a hero's regret for the relinquished sweetness of love and home. The Marble Faun suggests the problem as to whether he has for an instant stopped laughing, or will not immediately laugh; and what has a little while ago, or will suddenly cause, the animal fury of gladness to turn this jocund athlete into a dancing, bewilderingly enticing companion, chiming with guffaws and songs. Cleopatra's watchful melancholy partook also of classic momentariness, and I hoped she would spring to her feet. I liked very much to go to Mr. Story's studio, and I thought that for so slight a figure he was remarkably fearless.