I think the noble picture of Eve in Mrs. Browning’s Drama of Exile, as that of the Mother of our redemption not less than the Mother of suffering humanity, might be read and considered with advantage by a modern sculptor.

“Rise, woman, rise To thy peculiar and best altitudes Of doing good and of resisting ill! Something thou hast to bear through womanhood; Peculiar suffering answering to the sin, Some pang paid down for each new human life; Some weariness in guarding such a life, Some coldness from the guarded; some mistrust From those thou hast too well served; from those beloved Too loyally, some treason. But go, thy love Shall chant to itself its own beatitudes After its own life-working! I bless thee to the desert and the thorns, To the elemental change and turbulence, And to the solemn dignities of grief; To each one of these ends, and to this end Of Death and the hereafter! Eve. I accept, For me and for my daughters, this high part Which lowly shall be counted!”

The figure of Eve in Raphael’s design (the one engraved by Marc Antonio) is exquisitely statuesque as well as exquisitely beautiful. In the moment that she presents the apple to Adam she looks—perhaps she ought to look—like the Venus Vincitrice of the antique time; but I am not sure; and, at all events, the less of the classical sentiment the better.

ADAM.

I have seen no statue of Adam; but surely he is a fine subject, either alone or as the companion of Eve; and the Miltonic type is here all-sufficient, combining the heroic ideal of Greek art with something higher still—

“Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,”

whence true authority in men—in fact, essential manliness.

Goethe had the idea that Adam ought to be represented with a spade, as the progenitor of all who till the ground, and partially draped with a deerskin, that is, after the Fall; which would be well: but he adds that Adam should have a child at his feet in the act of strangling a serpent. This appears to me objectionable and ambiguous; if admissible at all, the accessory figure would be a fitter accompaniment for Eve.