prefixed to a cheap American edition of Milton's poems, and was probably
as familiar to Powers as to myself. It is very remarkable how difficult
it seems to be to strike out a new attitude in sculpture; a new group, or
a new single figure.

One piece of sculpture Powers exhibited, however, which was very
exquisite, and such as I never saw before. Opening a desk, he took out
something carefully enclosed between two layers of cotton-wool, on
removing which there appeared a little baby's hand most delicately
represented in the whitest marble; all the dimples where the knuckles
were to be, all the creases in the plump flesh, every infantine wrinkle
of the soft skin being lovingly recorded. "The critics condemn minute
representation," said Powers; "but you may look at this through a
microscope and see if it injures the general effect." Nature herself
never made a prettier or truer little hand. It was the hand of his
daughter,--"Luly's hand," Powers called it,--the same that gave my own
such a frank and friendly grasp when I first met "Luly." The sculptor
made it only for himself and his wife, but so many people, he said, had
insisted on having a copy, that there are now forty scattered about the
world. At sixty years, Luly ought to have her hand sculptured again, and
give it to her grandchildren with the baby's hand of five months old.
The baby-hand that had done nothing, and felt only its mother's kiss;
the old lady's hand that had exchanged the love-pressure, worn the
marriage-ring, closed dead eyes,--done a lifetime's work, in short. The
sentiment is rather obvious, but true nevertheless.

Before we went away, Powers took us into a room apart--apparently the
secretest room he had--and showed us some tools and machinery, all of his
own contrivance and invention. "You see I am a bit of a Yankee," he
observed.