nduct
them--not to anything wearisome, only to a few examples.

Mr. Casaubon, seeing Dorothea look earnestly towards him, could not but
ask her if she would be interested in such visits: he was now at her
service during the whole day; and it was agreed that Will should come
on the morrow and drive with them.

Will could not omit Thorwaldsen, a living celebrity about whom even Mr.
Casaubon inquired, but before the day was far advanced he led the way
to the studio of his friend Adolf Naumann, whom he mentioned as one of
the chief renovators of Christian art, one of those who had not only
revived but expanded that grand conception of supreme events as
mysteries at which the successive ages were spectators, and in relation
to which the great souls of all periods became as it were
contemporaries. Will added that he had made himself Naumann's pupil
for the nonce.

"I have been making some oil-sketches under him," said Will. "I hate
copying. I must put something of my own in. Naumann has been painting
the Saints drawing the Car of the Church, and I have been making a
sketch of Marlowe's Tamburlaine Driving the Conquered Kings in his
Chariot. I am not so ecclesiastical as Naumann, and I sometimes twit
him with his excess of meaning. But this time I mean to outdo him in
breadth of intention. I take Tamburlaine in his chariot for the
tremendous course of the world's physical history lashing on the
harnessed dynasties. In my opinion, that is a good mythical
interpretation." Will here looked at Mr. Casaubon, who received this
offhand treatment of symbolism very uneasily, and bowed with a neutral
air.

"The sketch must be very grand, if it conveys so much," said Dorothea.
"I should need some explanation even of the meaning you give. Do you
intend Tamburlaine to represent earthquakes and volcanoes?"

"Oh yes," said Will, laughing, "and migrations of races and clearings
of forests--and America and the steam-engine. Everything you can
imagine!"

"What a difficult kind of shorthand!" said Dorothea, smiling towards
her husband. "It would require all your knowledge to be able to read
it."

Mr. Casaubon blinked furtively at Will. He had a suspicion that he was
being laughed at. But it was not possible to include Dorothea in the
suspicion.

They found Naumann painting industriously, but no model was present;
his pictures were advantageously arranged, and his own plain vivacious
person set off by a dove-colored blous