“I am very sorry to say,” said Lothair, “that I know very little about art, or indeed any thing else, but I admire what is beautiful. I know something about architecture, at least church architecture.”
“Well, religion has produced some of our finest buildings,” said Theodora; “there is no question of that; and as long as they are adapted to what takes place in them they are admirable. The fault I find in modern churches in this country is, that there is little relation between the ceremonies and the structure. Nobody seems now conscious that every true architectural form has a purpose. But I think the climax of confused ideas is capped when dissenting chapels are built like cathedrals.”
“Ah! to build a cathedral!” exclaimed Lothair, “that is a great enterprise. I wish I might show you some day some drawings I have of a projected cathedral.”
“A projected cathedral!” said Theodora. “Well, I must confess to you I never could comprehend the idea of a Protestant cathedral.”
“But I am not quite sure,” said Lothair, blushing and agitated, “that it will be a Protestant cathedral. I have not made up my mind about that.”
Theodora glanced at him, unobserved, with her wonderful gray eyes; a sort of supernatural light seemed to shoot from beneath their long dark lashes and read his inmost nature. They were all this time returning, as she had suggested, to the house. Rather suddenly she said, “By-the-by, as you are so fond of art, I ought to have asked you whether you would like to see a work by the sculptor of Cleopatra, which arrived when we were at Oxford. We have placed it on a pedestal in the temple. It is the Genius of Freedom. I may say I was assisting at its inauguration when your name was announced to me.”
Lothair caught at this proposal, and they turned and approached the temple. Some workmen were leaving the building as they entered, and one or two lingered.
Upon a pedestal of porphyry rose the statue of a female in marble. Though veiled with drapery which might have become the Goddess of Modesty, admirable art permitted the contour of the perfect form to be traced. The feet were without sandals, and the undulating breadth of one shoulder, where the drapery was festooned, remained uncovered. One expected with such a shape some divine visage. That was not wanting; but humanity was asserted in the transcendent brow, which beamed with sublime thought and profound enthusiasm.
Some would have sighed that such beings could only be pictured in a poet’s or an artist’s dream, but Lothair felt that what he beheld with rapture was no ideal creation, and that he was in the presence of the inspiring original.
“It is too like!” he murmured.