only a sculptor of the finest imagination, the most delicate taste, the sweetest feeling, and the rarest artistic skill--in a word, a sculptor and a poet too--could have first dreamed of a faun in this guise, and then have succeeded in imprisoning the sportive and frisky thing in marble.neither man nor animal, and yet no monster, but a being in whom both races meet on friendly ground. the idea grows coarse as we handle it, and hardens in our grasp.but, if the spectator broods long over the statue, he will be conscious of its spell; all the pleasantness of sylvan life, all the genial and happy characteristics of creatures that dwell in woods and fields, will seem to be mingled and kneaded into one substance, along with the kindred qualities in the human soul.trees, grass, flowers, woodland streamlets, cattle, deer, and unsophisticated man.the essence of all these was compressed long ago, and still exists, within that discolored marble surface of the faun of praxiteles.
and, after all, the idea may have been no dream, but rather a poet's reminiscence of a period when man's affinity with nature was more strict, and his fellowship with every living thing more intimate and dear.