Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/394

380 have visited the cathedral chiefly to see this work of art, and many prose and poetical descriptions have been given of it. It still holds its reputation, though so many new masters have surpassed the old in conception and execution. They represent two infant daughters of Rev. Wm. Robinson, one of the prebendaries. Sleeping life could not be made more natural. They lie in each other's arms on a low mattress of marble, just like one which a mother might lay by the fireplace for a pair of twin toddlings tired with a Christmas frolic. The very pallet in which their young cheeks are half buried looks as if you might blow up wrinkles in it with your breath. I should not wonder if, now and then, a tender mother approaching them, has softened her step unconsciously as if loth to wake them up out of such sweet repose, for they look tired, not dead. Whoever appreciates fully the genius of the sculptor to breathe speaking life into cold marble, and give it the visible pulse of thought and feeling, should see and study this work of Chantrey, if he has not done so already. Bishop Ryder stands like a living man with lips just still, after a sermon on "God is Love." The statue is Chantrey's very last, and he had in the large-hearted and munificently-benevolent bishop an excellent subject for his chisel. He was only 59 years old when he died; yet he had filled the episcopal chair more