"the poor young man has perished among the prizes that he sought," remarked she."but what a strange efficacy there is in death! if we cannot all win pearls, it causes an empty shell to satisfy us just as well.i like this statue, though it is too cold and stern in its moral lesson; and, physically, the form has not settled itself into sufficient repose."in another style, there was a grand, calm head of milton, not copied from any one bust or picture, yet more authentic than any of them, because all known representations of the poet had been profoundly studied, and solved in the artist's mind.the bust over the tomb in grey friars church, the original miniatures and pictures, wherever to be found, had mingled each its special truth in this one work; wherein, likewise, by long perusaland deep love of the paradise lost, the comus, the lycidas, and l'allegro, the sculptor had succeeded, even better than he knew, in spiritualizing his marble with the poet's mighty genius.and this was a great thing to have achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones and dust of milton were like those of any other dead man.
there were also several portrait-busts, comprising those of two or three of the illustrious men of our own country, whom kenyon, before he left america, had asked permission to model.he had done so, because he sincerely believed that, whether he wrought the busts in marble or bronze, the one would corrode and the other crumble in the long lapse of time, beneath these great men's immortality.possibly, however, the young artist may have underestimated the durability of his material.other faces there were, too, of men who (if the brevity of their remembrance, after death, can be augured from their little value in life) should have been represented in snow rather than marble.posterity will be puzzled what to do with busts like these, the concretions and petrifactions of a vain selfestimate; but will find, no doubt, that they serve to build into stone walls, or burn into quicklime, as well as if the marble had never been blocked into the guise of human heads.