‘The lips, as Cumæ’s cavern close;
The cheeks, with fast and sorrow thin;
The rigid front, almost morose,
But for the patient hope within;
Declare a life whose course hath been
Unsullied still, though still severe,
Which, through the wavering days of sin,
Kept itself icy chaste and clear.’
National characters become, as it were, household gods through the sculptor’s portrait; the duplicates of Canova’s head of Napoleon seem as appropriate in the salons and shops of France, as the heads of Washington and Franklin in America, or the antique images of Scipio Africanus and Ceres in Sicily, and Wellington and Byron in London.
It is to us a source of noble delight, that with these permanent trophies of the sculptor’s art may now be mingled our national fame. Twenty years ago, the address in Murray’s Guide-Book,—Crawford, an American Sculptor, Piazza Barberini,—would have been unique; now that name is enrolled on the list of the world’s benefactors in the patrimony of Art. Greenough, by his pen, his presence, and his chisel, gave an impulse to taste and knowledge in sculpture and architecture not destined soon to pass away; no more eloquent and original advocate of the beautiful and the true in the higher social economies has blest our day; his Cherubs and Medora overflow with the poetry of form; his essays are a valuable legacy of philosophic thought. The Greek Slave of Powers was invariably surrounded by visitors at the London World’s Fair and the Manchester Exhibition. Story’s Cleopatra was the nucleus of charmed observation at Sydenham. The Pearl Diver of Paul Akers is his own most beautiful monument. Palmer has sent forth from his isolated studio at Albany a series of ideal busts, of a pure type of original and exquisite beauty; and many others might be named who have honourably illustrated an American claim to distinction in an art eminently republican in its perpetuation of national worth, and the identity of its highest achievements with social progress.
BRIDGES.
‘I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose over the city,
Behind the dark church-tower.
And like those waters rushing
Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thoughts came o’er me,
That filled my eyes with tears.’
Longfellow.
