Essays on Life 



treatment as the Valsesian terra-cotta figures 

 have had to put up with ? Take the Venus of 

 Milo ; let her be done in terra-cotta, and have 

 run, not much, but still something, in the 

 baking ; paint her pink, two oils, all over, 

 and then varnish her it will help to preserve 

 the paint ; glue a lot of horsehair on to her 

 pate, half of which shall have come off, leaving 

 the glue still showing; scrape her, not too 

 thoroughly, get the village drawing-master to 

 paint her again, and the drawing-master in the 

 next provincial town to put a forest back- 

 ground behind her with the brightest emerald- 

 green leaves that he can do for the money ; 

 let this painting and scraping and repainting 

 be repeated several times over; festoon her 

 with pink and white flowers made of tissue 

 paper ; surround her with the cheapest German 

 imitations of the cheapest decorations that 

 Birmingham can produce ; let the night air 

 and winter fogs get at her for three hundred 

 years, and how easy, I wonder, will it be to 

 see the goddess who will be still in great part 

 there ? True, in the case of the Birth of the 



Virgin chapel at Montrigone, there is no real 



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