grief by idle curiosity or useless speculation.

The monument, upon the opposite side, to Julian, third son of Lorenzo
Magnifico, is of very much the same character. Here are also two
mourning figures. One is a sleeping and wonderfully beautiful female
shape, colossal, in a position less adapted to repose than to the
display of the sculptor's power and her own perfections. This is
Night. A stupendously sculptured male figure, in a reclining attitude,
and exhibiting, I suppose, as much learning in his _torso_ as
does the famous figure in the Elgin marbles, strikes one as the most
triumphant statue of modern times.

The figure of Julian is not agreeable. The neck, long and twisted,
suggests an heroic ostrich in a Roman breastplate. The attitude, too,
is ungraceful. The hero sits with his knees projecting beyond the
perpendicular, so that his legs seem to be doubling under him, a
position deficient in grace and dignity.

It is superfluous to say that the spectator must invent for himself
the allegory which he may choose to see embodied in this stony
trio. It is not enough to be told the words of the charade,--Julian,
Night, Morning. One can never spell out the meaning by putting
together the group with the aid of such a key. Night is Night,
obviously, because she is asleep. For an equally profound reason, Day
is Day, because he is not asleep; and both, looked at in this vulgar
light, are creations as imaginative as Simon Snug, with his lantern,
representing moonshine. If the figures should arise and walk across
the chapel, changing places with the couple opposite them, as if in a
sepulchral quadrille, would the allegory become more intelligible?
Could not Day or Night move from Julian's monument, and take up the