We see in this statue the contact of civilization with savage instinct,
and in the expression of the 'White Captive,' peering through maiden
timidity, and rising triumphant above physical fear in a look of
intellectual and religious strength, before which the swarthy warrior
feels himself in the presence of a superior power--a ruler! As we gaze
on in mute admiration, we behold the race of the red man receding
westward before that same power pictured in this wonderful face: now the
Indian tribes pass the Rocky mountains, they come within the roar of the
Pacific, and, growing less and less, they at last vanish away into the
uncertain mists of the ocean--a lost people, who have served the purpose
for which they were created, and disappeared from our continent to make
room for a nobler humanity. It is this melancholy fate, this glorious
triumph, that Palmer has recorded in a language more forcible than
history, more eloquent than song, more ravishing than the lyre! To
define how the statue spreads before you this great vision, eludes the
acutest analysis; but there it is, told just as plainly as the Falls of
Niagara or the eternal stars tell the omnipotence of God.
The longer one studies this marvellous work, the more he sees to admire,
to reflect upon. There is something in the general effect that makes the
beholder forget the perfect nudity of the figure, which necessarily
grows out of the circumstances of the case, and which is entirely unfelt
by the captive in her terrible realization of the peril which surrounds
her.
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