Page:A tribute to W. W. Corcoran, of Washington City (IA tributetowwcorco00boul).pdf/53

poverty brought the burden of a cross that many would have sunk under, rather than to have risen from. But faith was the stepping stone, and duty the goal, and through her brave struggle for relief, the sorrow of earth made the promise of heaven the brighter. Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz has beautifully defined "no cross―no crown!" when she says: "It is the slogan of life," the victor-anthem of death; the chorus of "eternity;" and truly to those who have borne the one, and shall claim the "coronal that endurance wears," the words are singularly adapted. In the Greek Slave there is real poetry of pose, and sweetness of facial expression. In the beautiful and graceful arms there is great symmetry, and in the no less perfect hand, there lies a world of expression. Altogether the extreme purity and chastity would impress one with the ideal style more than the natural. Flaxman makes a distinction between the two, in this wise: The natural is defined thus—"a representation of the human form, according to the distinction of sex and age, in action or repose, expressing the affections of the soul," and the ideal has this addition—"selected from such perfect examples as may excite in our minds a conception of the preternatural." Calmness, gentleness and modesty all speak in this statue, where sorrow, fear and despair might each contend. It is the exemplar too of those heroic qualities of which our sex are capable under distressing circumstances—the same courage and resignation with which martyrs met the flame or tortures the keenest and most cruel in a word, it is spirit prevailing over flesh, and subservient to the decrees of fate. In this same octagon room are also fine marble busts of Shakspeare, the veiled nun (copy), Il Penseroso, by Rinehart, and Bacchante, by Galt. A fine collection of Barye bronzes, numbering 60 pieces, recently purchased in