Two works of this late age deserve special mention. One is the statue of the Dying Gladiator, in the Capitoline Museum at Rome, supposed to have come from Pergamus. Says LÜBKE, "It undoubtedly represents a Gaul who, in battle, seeing the foe approach in overwhelming force, has fallen upon his own sword to escape a shameful slavery. Overcome by the faintness of approaching death, he has fallen upon his shield; his right arm with difficulty prevents his sinking to the ground; his life ebbs rapidly away with the blood streaming from the deep wound beneath his breast; his broad head droops heavily forward; the mists of death already cloud his eyes; his brows are knit with pain; and his lips are parted in a last sigh. There is, perhaps, no other statue in which the bitter necessity of death is expressed with such terrible truth--all the more terrible because the hardy body is so full of strength." Supported on his shortened arm he leans, Prone agonizing; with incumbent fate Heavy declines his head, yet dark beneath The suffering feature sullen vengeance lowers, Shame, indignation, unaccomplished rage; And still the cheated eye expects his fall. --THOMSON. The other statue is that masterpiece of art, the group of the La-oc'o-on, now in the Vatican at Rome, the work of the three Rhodian sculptors, Agesan'dros, Polydo'rus, and Athenodo'rus. It represents a scene, in connection with the fall of Troy, that Virgil describes in the Second Book of the Æneid. A Trojan priest, named Laocoon, endeavored to propitiate Neptune by sacrifice, and to dissuade the Trojans from admitting within the walls the fatal wooden horse, whereupon the goddess Minerva, ever favorable to the Greeks, punished him by sending two enormous serpents from the sea to destroy him and his two sons. The poet THOMSON well describes the agony and despair that the statue portrays: Such passion here! Such agonies! such bitterness of pain Seem so to tremble through the tortured stone That the touched heart engrosses all the view. Almost unmarked the best proportions pass That ever Greece beheld; and, seen alone, On the rapt eye the imperious passions seize: The father's double pangs, both for himself And sons, convulsed; to Heaven his rueful look, Imploring aid, and half-accusing, cast; His fell despair with indignation mixed As the strong-curling monsters from his side His full-extended fury cannot tear. More tender touched, with varied art, his sons All the soft rage of younger passions show: In a boy's helpless fate one sinks oppressed, While, yet unpierced, the frighted other tries His foot to steal out of the horrid twine. An American writer thus apostrophizes this grand representation: