The Marble Faun : Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, Illustrated with Photogravures

By Hawthorne, Nathaniel

Book Id: WPLBN0000650837
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 0.5 MB
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	The Marble Faun : Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, Illustrated with Photogravures
Author:	Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Fiction, Literature, Literature & drama
Collections:	Classic Literature Collection, Penn State University's Electronic Classics Series Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Penn State University's Electronic Classics


Citation APA MLA Chicago Hawthorne, B. N. (n.d.). The Marble Faun : Or, The Romance of Monte Beni, Illustrated with Photogravures. Retrieved from http://self.gutenberg.org/

Excerpt
Excerpt: Chapter 1. Miriam, Hilda, Kenyon, Donatello Four individuals, in whose fortunes we should be glad to interest the reader, happened to be standing in one of the saloons of the sculpture-gallery in the Capitol at Rome. It was that room (the first, after ascending the staircase) in the centre of which reclines the noble and most pathetic figure of the Dying Gladiator, just sinking into his death-swoon. Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries. Here, likewise, is seen a symbol (as apt at this moment as it was two thousand years ago) of the Human Soul, with its choice of Innocence or Evil close at hand, in the pretty figure of a child, clasping a dove to her bosom, but assaulted by a snake.