tellectual ground.

"Of painting she spoke, but not so well. She seemed to think
painting worked more by illusion than sculpture. It involved
more prose, from its representing more objects. She said
nothing adequate about _color_.

"She dwelt upon the histrionic art as the most complete, its
organ being the most flexible and powerful.

"She then spoke of life, as the art, of which these all were
beautiful symbols; and said, in recurring to her opinions
expressed last winter, of Dante and Wordsworth, that she had
taken another view, deeper, and more in accordance with
some others which were then expressed. She acknowledged
that Wordsworth had done more to make all men poetical, than
perhaps any other; that he was the poet of reflection; that
where he failed to poetize his subject, his simple faith
intimated to the reader a poetry that he did not find in the
book. She admitted that Dante's Narrative was instinct with
the poetry concentrated often in single words. She uttered her
old heresies about Milton, however, unmodified.

"I do not remember the transition to modern poetry and Milnes;
but she read (very badly indeed) the Legendary Tale.

"We then had three conversations upon Sculpture, one of which
was taken up very much in historical accounts of the sculpture
of the ancients, in which color was added to form, and which
seemed to prove that they were not, after all, sufficiently
intellectual to be operated on by form exclusively. The
question, of course, arose whether there was a modern
sculpture, and why not. This led us to speak of the Greek
sculpture as growing naturally out of their life and religion,
and how alien it was to our life and to our religion. The
Swiss lion, carved by Thorwaldsen out of the side of a
mountain rock, was described as a natural growth. Those who
had seen it described it; and Mrs. ---- spoke of it. She was
also led to the story of her acquaintance with Thorwaldsen,
and drew tears from many eyes with her natural eloquence.

"Mrs. C. asked, if sculpture could express as well as painting
the idea of immortality.

"Margaret thought the Greek art expressed immortality as much
as Christian art, but did not throw it into the future, by
preeminence. They expressed it in the present, by casting out
of the mortal body every expressi