Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/284

274[February 20, 1869] discovered, are not stars. They are nothing but silver nails driven into the sky, and that is why they fall down in November, when the wind shakes out those that are not tightly hammered in. I deduced this startling discovery from the fact that I was a star, and, on close examination, had found myself only a common silver nail. It almost stopped my twinkling to think of the gross and impudent deception that had been practised on the public, in bringing them up to believe, that stars were anything. more. Then they are not high—scarcely a mile, within easy ballooning, distance—and yet the world had never found it out. I was dumb, another of myself was dead, and the third asleep, and I—we could never tell the discovery. I had one pleasing reflection that helped, in some degree, to make amends for my inability to tell the world about stars. That was a sort of comfortable internal consciousness, that my being driven into the sky as a silver nail, had some intimate concern with a very just revenge to be wrought on my murderer the dwarf, though without any idea how it was to be realised.

We stars, you must know, are sizeable nails, about the size of a giant's hat-peg. I was driven in, in a row with half a dozen others. I heard a kind of a chopping noise near me, and, looking up, who should I see but the dreadful dwarf and his mysterious loop. I was aware then, for the first time, that he lived up here; that this was, in short, his passage, and that we were his hat-pegs. I saw him take off his lobster-shell hat and hang it on an adjacent star, like an extinguisher, to put it out for the night. Then I shone on him most seductively. I suppose he thought he had taken his coat off, but these cunning people so often overreach themselves. He took hold of his loop, and I conclude, in a moment of absence of mind, he hung himself up, in his coat, on the silver nail, which was the star, which was me. He gave several terrible chops, which were like music in my ears, revenge being sweet. He was then no more. I wished he could have been some more for a trifle longer, for I revelled in his sufferings. Alas, for rejoicing in the misfortunes of others. His weight was too much for me. I felt myself loosening from a wretched lath and plaster sky, and at last down I came, lobster man and all, a good mile, plump on the earth.

—The floor of my room, of course. Naturally, the fall woke me from my dream. Looking out of window I saw the star I had watched before dozing off to sleep, had just emerged from the top bough of the firs, and the lobster man was comfortably hanging, by his loop, to a silver nail over the mantelshelf. I resumed my broken rest, and slept dreamless till morning.

When I came down-stairs, the waitress ventured to ask how I had slept. I explained I had had a bad dream.

"I knew how 'twould be, sir," she explained. "I've told missus of it afore to-day. 'Tain't nothing new. Everybody dreams bad that sleeps in that bed."

"Indeed," I said; "and pray why does everybody dream bad, who sleeps there?"

"Because, if you please, sir, missus she stuffed that there bed with live feathers—never baked 'em first" (she explained, observing I didn't comprehend), "and they heave, and heave, and heave, and rise like yeast when anybody sleeps on 'em, and you are bound to dream."

are dear. The reason why statues are so dear, is, that the mere cost of making them is very great:—far beyond what is commonly supposed. It is a fact, as melancholy as true, that many sculptors (especially among those who are little in renown) have barely enough to pay them for the material cost of their work, in a cheque, which to inexperienced eyes might seem very liberal. A certain class of speculators, who trade on the talent of young but penurious artists, know this perfectly well; and the public may understand it the better, if they will consider the various processes through which a work of sculpture must pass, from the moment when it is conceived by the artist, to the day when it is exhibited as a complete work.

First, let us treat of marble sculpture.

When an artist thinks of executing a statue in marble, his first step is usually to make a drawing of what he has planned. Some sculptors make as many as ten, twenty, fifty, drawings before hitting upon a composition which pleases them: and this labour is of course multiplied threefold or fourfold when a group is projected, and not merely a single figure. No one who has not studied sculpture, can realise the arduous problems involved in the designing of a limb, or in the correct delineation of a posture. A line out of place, a curve too hastily drawn, and the effect of the whole work may be marred. Patience is the watchword of sculptors. Better begin a sketch, a hundred times, than allow a bad drawing to become the design of a faulty statue.

After the work of sketching has been happily ended, the sculptor begins modelling, either in clay or wax, one or more miniatures of the statue, and has them cast in plaster. This process of modelling is to the making of a statue what the laying of a foundation stone is to the rearing of a building; it is the inauguration of the real work. Too frequently, however, the early models bring cruel deceptions to the artist. He finds that he has imagined more than he is able to perform, that his hand refuses to follow the guidance of his brain; or, worse still, that the figure which looked well enough on paper will not do for a statue, and that the whole course of planning and sketching must be gone through again. This is the moment most trying to beginners, especially to those who are over diffident. Upon finding how poorly his work interprets the meaning of his fancy, many a young artist throws up his