his own head swam with his eagerness, and his limbs stiffened with the
cold. He had promptly set up a life-sized figure which he called
an "Adam," and was pushing it rapidly toward completion. There were
naturally a great many wiseheads who smiled at his precipitancy, and
cited him as one more example of Yankee crudity, a capital recruit to
the great army of those who wish to dance before they can walk. They
were right, but Roderick was right too, for the success of his statue
was not to have been foreseen; it partook, really, of the miraculous. He
never surpassed it afterwards, and a good judge here and there has been
known to pronounce it the finest piece of sculpture of our modern
era. To Rowland it seemed to justify superbly his highest hopes of his
friend, and he said to himself that if he had invested his happiness
in fostering a genius, he ought now to be in possession of a boundless
complacency. There was something especially confident and masterly in
the artist's negligence of all such small picturesque accessories
as might serve to label his figure to a vulgar apprehension. If it
represented the father of the human race and the primal embodiment of
human sensation, it did so in virtue of its look of balanced physical
perfection, and deeply, eagerly sentient vitality. Rowland, in fraternal
zeal, traveled up to Carrara and selected at the quarries the most
magnificent block of marble he could find, and when it came down to
Rome, the two young men had a "celebration." They drove out to Albano,
breakfasted boisterously (in their respective measure) at the inn, and
lounged away the day in the sun on the top of Monte Cavo. Roderick's
head was full of ideas for other works, which he described with infinite
spirit and eloquence, as vividly as if they were ranged on their
pedestals before him. He had an indefatigable fancy; things he saw in
the streets, in the country, things he heard and read, effects he saw
just missed or half-expressed in the works of others, acted upon his
mind as a kind of challenge, and he was terribly restless until, in some