Yet methinks more properly might he have been called youth than man, the form and stature being juvenile. The limbs and body were slender, though not so as to convey any appearance of feebleness, it was rather that degree of slenderness which in elegant and refined society is deemed essential to grace. The countenance at once denoted strength and health and hilarity, and the incomparable carpenter had given it an expression of threatful and alert determination, suited to the station for which he was designed and the weapon which he bore. The shape of the face was rather round than oval, resembling methinks the broad harvest moon; the eyes were of the deepest black, the eyebrows black also; and there was a blackness about the nose and lips, such as might be imagined in the face of Hercules, while he was in the act of lifting and strangling the yet unsubdued and struggling Antæus. On his head was a little hat, low in the crown and narrow in the brim. His dress was a sleeved jacket without skirts,—our ancestors would have called it a gipion, jubon it would be rendered if ever this description were translated into Spanish, gibão in Portuguese, jupon or gippon in old French. It was fastened from the neck downward with eight white buttons, two and two, and between them was a broad white stripe, the colour of the gipion being brown: whether the strype was to represent silver lace, or a white facing like that of the naval uniform, is doubtful and of little consequence. The lower part of his dress represented innominables and hose in one, of the same colour as the gipion. And he carried a fowling-piece in his hand.
Great was the satisfaction which we all expressed at beholding so admirable a man; great were the applauses which we bestowed upon the workman with one consent; and great was the complacency with which Glover himself regarded the work of his own hands. He thought, he said, this would please us. Please us indeed it did, and so well did it answer that after short trial Mrs. L. thinking that a second image would render the whole garden secure, and moreover that it was not good for her Man to be alone, directed Glover to make a woman also. The woman accordingly was made. Flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, she could not be, the Man himself not being made of such materials; but she was wood of his wood and plank of his plank,—which was coming as nearly as possible to it, made of the same tree and fashioned by the same hand.
The woman was in all respects a goodly mate for the man, except that she seemed to be a few years older; she was rather below the mean stature, in that respect resembling the Venus de Medicis; slender waisted yet not looking as if she were tight-laced, nor so thin as to denote ill health. Her dress was a gown of homely brown, up to the neck. The artist had employed his brightest colours upon her face, even the eyes and nose partook of that brilliant tint which is sometimes called the roseate hue of health or exercise, sometimes the purple light of love. The whites of her eyes were large. She also was represented in a hat, but higher in the crown and broader in the rim than the man's, and where his brim was turned up, her's had a downward inclination giving a feminine character to that part of her dress.
She was placed in the garden; greatly as we admired both pieces of workmanship, we considered them merely as what they seemed to be; they went by the names of Mrs. L.'s Man and Woman; and even when you departed for the south they were still known only by that vague and most unworthy designation. Some startling circumstances after awhile excited a more particular attention to them. Several of the family declared they had been frightened by them; and K. one evening, came in saying that Aunt L.'s woman had given her a jump. Even this did not awaken any suspicion of their supernatural powers as it ought to have done, till on a winter's night, one of the maids hearing a knock at the back door opened it; and started back when she saw that it was the woman with a letter in her hand! This is as certain as that Nosso Senhor dos Passes knocked at the door of S. Roque's convent in Lisbon and was not taken in,—to the infinite regret of the monks when they learnt that he had gone afterwards to the Graça Convent and been admitted there. It is as certain that I have seen men, women and children of all ranks kissing the foot of the said Image in the Church, and half Lisbon following his procession in the streets. It is as certain as all the miracles in the Fasti, the Metamorphoses, and the Acta Sanctorum.
Many remarkable things were now called to mind both of the man and woman;—how on one occasion they had made Miss C.'s maid miscarry of—half a message; and how at another time when Isaac was bringing a basket from Mr. C.'s, he was frightened into his wits by them. But on Sunday evening last the most extraordinary display of wonderful power occurred, for in the evening the woman instead of being in her place among the pease, appeared standing erect on the top of Mr. Fisher's haymow in the forge field, and there on the following morning she was seen by all Keswick, who are witnesses of the fact.
You may well suppose that I now began to examine into the mystery, and manifold were the mysteries which I discovered, and many the analogies in their formation of which the maker could never by possibility have heard; and many the points of divine philosophy and theurgic science which they illustrated. In the first place two Swedenborgian correspondencies flashed upon me in the material whereof they were constructed. They were intended to guard the Garden. There is a proverb which says, set a thief to catch a thief, and therefore it is that they were fir statues. Take it in English and the correspondence is equally striking; they were made of deal, because they were to do a deal of good. The dark aspect of the male figure also was explained; for being stationed there contra fures, it was proper that he should have a furious countenance. Secondly, there is something wonderful in their formation:—they are bifronted, not merely bifaced like Janus, but bifronted from top to toe. Let the thief be as cunning as he may he cannot get behind them.—They have no backs, and were they disposed to be indolent and sit at their posts it would be impossible. They can appear at the kitchen door, or on the haymow, they can give the children and even the grown persons of the family a jump, but to sit is beyond their power however miraculous it may be; for impossibilities cannot be effected even by miracle, and as it is impossible to see without eyes, or to walk without legs,—or for a ship to float without a bottom, so is it for a person in the same predicament as such a ship—to sit.
Yet farther mysteries; both hands of these marvellous statues are right hands and both are left hands, they are at once ambidexter and ambisinister. It was said by Dryden of old Jacob Tonson that he had two left legs: but these marvellous statues have two left legs and two right legs each, and yet but four legs between them, that is to say but two a-piece. In the whole course of my reading I have found no account of any statues so wonderful as these. For though the Roman Janus was bifronted, and my old acquaintance Yamen had in like manner a double face, and many of the Hindoo and other Oriental Deities have their necks set round with heads, and their elbows with arms, yet it is certain that all these Gods have backs, and sides to them also. In this point no similitude can be found for our Images. They may be likened to the sea as being bottomless,—but as being without a back and in the mystery of having both hands and legs at once right and left they are unequalled; none but themselves can be their parallel.
Now my daughter I appeal to you and to all other reasonable persons,—I put the question to your own plain sense,—is it anyways likely that statues so wonderful, so inexpressibly mysterious in their properties should be the mere work of a Keswick carpenter, though aided as he was by Mrs. L.'s directions? Is it not certain that neither he, nor Mrs. L., had the slightest glimpse, the remotest thought of any such properties,—she when she designed, he when he executed the marvellous productions? Is it possible that they should? Would it not be preposterous to suppose it?
This supposition therefore being proved to be absurd, which in mathematics is equal to a demonstration that the contrary must be true, it remains to enquire into the real origin of their stupendous qualities. Both the ancient Heathens and the Romanists teach that certain Images of the Gods or of the Saints have been made without the aid of human hands, and that they have appeared no one knew whence or how. The Greeks called such images Diopeteis, as having fallen from the sky, and I could enumerate were it needful sundry Catholic Images which are at this day venerated as being either of angelic workmanship or celestial origin. We cannot however have recourse to this solution in the present case; for Glover is so veracious a man that if he had found these figures in his workshop without knowing how they came there,—or if he had seen them grow into shape while he was looking on,—he would certainly not have concealed a fact so extraordinary. All Keswick would have known it. It must have become as notorious as Prince Hohenloe's miracles.
There remains then another hypothesis, which is also common to the ancient Pagans and the Romanists;—that some superior powers finding a congruity in the Images have been pleased to communicate to them a portion of their influence, and even of their presence, and so if I may be allowed the word, have actually become inligneate in them. Were my old acquaintance, Thomas Taylor, here, who entirely believes this, he would at once determine which of his Heathen Deities have thus manifested their existence. Who indeed that looks at the Youth but must be reminded of Apollo? Said I that his face resembled in its rotundity the Moon? the Sun would have been the fitter similitude,—the sun shorn of its beams;—Phœbus,—such as he appeared when in the service of Admetus. And for his female companion, her beauty and the admiration which it excites in all beholders, identify her with no less certainty for Venus. We have named them therefore the Apollo de L., and the Venus de Glover; in justice to both artists; and in farther honour of them and of the Images themselves have composed the following inscription: