William Ware was graduated at Harvard University in 1816. After reading theology the usual term he was on the 18th of December, 1821, settled over the Unitarian society of Chambers street, New-York, where he remained about sixteen years. He gave little to the press except a few sermons, and four numbers of a religious miscellany called The Unitarian, until near the close of this period, when he commenced the publication in the Knickerbocker Magazine of those brilliant papers which in the autumn of 1836 were given to the world under the title of Zenobia, or the Fall of Palmyra, an Historical Romance. Before the completion of this work he had resigned his pastoral office and removed to Brookline, near Boston. The romance of Zenobia is in the form of letters to Marcus Curtius, at Rome, from Lucius Manlius Piso, a senator, who is supposed to have been led by circumstances of a private nature to visit Palmyra toward the close of the third century, to have become acquainted with the queen and her court, to have seen the City of the Desert in its greatest magnificence, and to have witnessed its destruction by the Emperor Aurelian. For the purposes of romantic fiction the subject is perhaps the finest that had not been appropriated in all ancient history; and the treatment of it, which is highly picturesque and dramatic throughout, shows that the author had been a successful student of the institutions, manners and social life of the age he attempted to illustrate.
Mr. Ware's second romance, Probus, or Rome in the Third Century, was published in the summer of 1838. It is a sort of sequel to the Zenobia, and is composed of letters purporting to be written by Piso from Rome to Fausta, the daughter of Gracchus, one of the old Palmyrene ministers. In the first work Piso meets with Probus, a Christian teacher, and is partially convinced of the truth of his doctrine; he is now a disciple, and a sharer of the persecutions which marked the last days of the reign of Aurelian. The characters in Probus are skilfully drawn and contrasted, and with a deeper moral interest, from the frequent discussions of doctrine which it contains, the romance has the classical style and spirit which characterized its predecessor.
Mr. Ware's third work is entitled Julian, or Scenes in Judea, and was published in 1841. The hero is a Roman, of Hebrew descent, who visits the land of his ancestors, to gratify a liberal curiosity, during the last days of the Saviour. Every thing connected with Palestine at this period is so familiar that the ground might seem to be sacred to History and Religion; but it has often been invaded by the romancer, and perhaps never with more success than in the present instance. Although Julian has less freshness than Zenobia, it has an air of truth and sincerity that renders it scarcely less interesting.
About the time of the publication of Julian, Mr. Ware was attacked with Epilepsy, while in his pulpit, at Lexington, near Boston, and he suffered all the residue of his life from disease and apprehension; but his illness did not affect his intelligence or its activity, and he continued to devote himself to congenial studies, for several years, chiefly as editor of The Christian Examiner. For a short period he was pastor of the Unitarian society at West Cambridge, but the condition of his health did not permit a regular discharge of his functions, for which, indeed, he was scarcely fitted in any thing but a spirit of humility and piety. His tastes and capacities would have secured for him greater triumphs in any department of pictorial or plastic art, to which he was always insensibly drawn by instinct and congenial studies.
In 1848 Mr. Ware passed several months abroad, and after his return he delivered in Lectures on European Capitals the best fruits of his travel. These Lectures have recently been published in a very attractive volume, which has been favorably received in this country and in England. Among his unprinted writings is a series of Lectures on the Life, Works, and Genius of Washington Allston. He died on the 19th of February.
The romances of Mr. Ware betray a familiarity with the civilization of the ancients, and are written in a graceful, pure and brilliant style. In our literature they are peculiar, and they will bear a favorable comparison with the most celebrated historical romances relating to the same scenes and periods which have been written abroad. They have passed through many editions in Great Britain, and have been translated into German and other languages of the continent.
John Frazee, the sculptor, died at the age of sixty, on the—th of March, at the house of his daughter, in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The Evening Post remarks that "he was a man of decided talent for sculpture, but the necessity of employing himself in other occupations, prevented his attaining that skill which, under more auspicious circumstances, would have been within his reach." Mr. Frazee was born in Brunswick, N.J., and in early life was a farmer and stone-cutter. One of his first attempts at sculpture which attracted notice, was a clever female bust, a likeness of one of his own family, exhibited in the gallery of the Academy of Design. He afterwards, at the request of the bar of New-York, was employed in the mural tablet and bust of John Welles, which fills a conspicuous place in St Paul's Church. This production, with others subsequently executed, attracted the attention of the Trustees of the Boston Athenæum, and at their request, in 1834, he proceeded to Boston, and modelled a series of busts of eminent men in that city—Webster, Bowditch, Prescott, Story, J. Lowell, and T. H. Perkins. Afterwards he went to Richmond, where he produced the likeness of John Marshall, copies of which adorn the Court rooms of New York, New-Orleans, and the Capitol of Virginia. On his return he visited President Jackson, at whose house he executed an inimitable head of that extraordinary man. Among his other productions were heads of General Lafayette, in 1824, De Witt Clinton, John Jay, Bishop Hobart, Dr. Milnor, Dr. Stearns, Nathaniel Prime, George Griswold, Eli Hart, &c. The monument, however, which is destined to perpetuate his fame, is the New York Custom-House. This edifice was commenced in 1834 by another gentleman, who, when he had finished the base, abandoned the work and withdrew his plans. Mr. Frazee was obliged to commence de novo, and in 1843 had completed the work. During the erection of the Custom-House, from the dampness of its material and concomitant causes, he contracted a disorder which caused paralysis, from which he never recovered. For several years he held a subordinate post under the Collector. His last effort with the chisel was in giving the finishing touch to the bust of General Jackson, which had remained in his studio seventeen years, without an order for completion. This was in November last, and while assiduously at work, his mallet fell from his hand, and his worn-out body followed it to the floor."
John Park, M. D., died in Worcester, Massachusetts, on the 2d of March, aged seventy-eight. He was an active member of the old Federal party in Massachusetts, during the administration of Jefferson and Madison, and exerted a wide and important influence by his well-known journal, The Boston Repertory. At a subsequent period, he established a private school for young women, which acquired a celebrity second to that of no similar educational institution in the old Commonwealth. He was distinguished for his cultivated literary tastes, his uncommon purity of character, his fine social qualities, and his cordial and attractive manners. Dr. Park was the father of Mrs. L. G. Hall, wife of the Rev. Dr. Hall, of Providence, the authoress of Miriam, and other successful productions, and of Mr. John C. Park, an eminent lawyer in Boston. Mrs. Osgood and several other distinguished literary women were among his pupils.