In the centre of the room, a white-marble Egeria, carved by Thorwaldsen, throws up between her hands a shaft of cold crystal water, pure as truth, which spreads into a silvery veil all around her, and plashes down in a snowy basin: no place could be more inviting for a bath. But in the winter Egeria shows her power of adaptation by furnishing instead a Geyser of hot water. Then I turn my scientific friends in here, when they call upon me, to make them feel at home.
In the position of Jack Horner, sits Miss Hosmer's Puck. Opposite is a mate production, which she never put on exhibition. It is Ariel, perched hiding in a honeysuckle, and leaning slyly out to play on an Æolian harp in a cottage latticed window.
Over the somewhat frequented couch of which I have spoken, there is a picture by Paul Delaroche of
'Sabrina fair
Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,
In twisted braids of lilies knitting
The loose folds of her amber-dropping hair.'
On the other side hangs another painting which I prefer, partly perhaps because even in my castle I was for a time at a loss how to procure it. The subject was recommended to me by Hans Christian Andersen. It is the story of a beautiful princess. Are not Danish princesses always beautiful?
Her numerous brothers were so unfortunate as to be laid, by a witch, under a spell of a most inconvenient sort. Every morning they were turned into wild swans. Every day they were obliged to fly over many a league of gray ocean to the mainland and back to their home, an island in the midst of the sea. At every sunset they resumed their natural shape, and were princes all night. One day they met their sister on the shore. They undertook to carry her back with them. Her Weight made them slower than usual. A storm came up in the after noon. There was a sad probability of the swans being turned into princes again before they could possibly 'see her home.'
In my picture, half of the swans are a plumy raft for her, and row her through the air with their sweeping wings. Another relay, more tired, perhaps, make a canopy over her, and fan her as they fly. Their outstretched gaze sees only the island. But the princess, as she lies facing backward, sees the danger. In despairing, motionless silence, she looks at the sinking sun, with no color in her cheeks but that which he casts upon her. The red, warning sun looks awfully back, face to face with her, in the narrowing strip of blue sky between two horizontal bars of thundering clouds, which the lightning is beginning to chain together, that the night may come before its time, and the enchanted princes and their sister may drown in darkness.
Church did the water very well, and Paul Weber the island. Rosa Bonheur was so kind as to paint the swans—I need not say how. But the rest of the picture was such a perplexity to me that I could think of nothing better than to send for Mr. Laroy Sunderland to call one day when I was out, and knock up Raphael to draw the princess, and Salvator Rosa, the clouds, and Titian to see to the sky and light. When I came in again, the completed whole met me as a pleasant surprise.
Not far off are Landseer's 'Challenge,' and a few other Arctic pieces of his, which I look at in July to keep myself cool. But the chief of my pictures are in the picture gallery, at the top of my castle, lighted from above. Connoisseurs assure me, with rare candor, that the 'Transfiguration,' 'Last Judgment,' 'Assumption of the Virgin,' and so forth, there, are duplicates rather than copies of the originals.
In my library there is scarcely a single picture to be found, nor a statue, nor a bust even, except of the duskiest, self-hiding bronze overhead—only some dim, dark engraving, or brown, antiquated autograph, fading in a little black frame, or a signet ring hanging against the book written by the crumbled hand that once wore it—only relics having the power to excite thought without distracting attention—- unobtrusive memorials of the dead with whom I am soon to live. Rich, black, old bookcases, carved all over in high relief, hold their immortal works or the records of their undying deeds. Even the writings of the living are sparingly admitted here. I stand on my guard constantly, lest I be enslaved by their influence. It is less by obsequiousness to the Present than by listening to the admonitions of the Past, that we may hope to gain a hearing from the Future.