Scotland, in a stage aside.
"Do not the laurels overgrow the thorn?" said La Vallière, with a
wistful, inquiring smile.
Laura looked away. "They are very green at Avignon," said she.
Out of two primroses, side by side, Stella and Vanessa put forth
pale and anxious faces, with eyes tear-dimmed.
"Love does not feed on laurels," said Stella; "they are fruitless."
"That the clergy should be celibate is mine own desire," broke in
Queen Elizabeth. "Shall every curly fool's-pate of a girl be turning
after an anointed bishop? I will have this thing ended, certes! and
that with speed."
Vanessa was too deep in a brown study to hear. Presently she spoke.
"I believe that love is best founded upon a degree of respect and
veneration which it is decent in youth to render unto age and
learning."
"Ciel!" muttered Marguerite; "is it, then, that in this miserable
England one cherishes a grand passion for one's grandfather?"
The heliotrope-clusters melted into a face of plastic contour, rich
full lips, soft interfused outlines, intense purple eyes, and heavy
waving hair, dark indeed, but harmonized curiously with the narrow
gold fillet that bound it. "It is no pain to die for love," said the
low, deep voice, with an echo of rolling gerunds in the tone.
"That depends on how sharp the dagger is," returned Mary of Scotland.
"If the axe had been dull"----
From the heart of a red rose Juliet looked out; the golden centre
crowned her head with yellow tresses; her tender hazel eyes were
calm with intact passion; her mouth was scarlet with fresh kisses,
and full of consciousness and repose. "Harder it is to live for love,"
said she; "hardest of all to have ever lived without it."
"How much do you all help the matter?" said a practical Yankee voice
from a pink hollyhock. "If the infinite relations of life assert
themselves in marriage, and the infinite I merges its individuality
in the personality of another, the superincumbent need of a passional
relation passes without question. What the soul of the seeker asks
from itself and the universe is, whether the ultimate principle of
existent life is passional or philosophic."
"Your dialectic is wanting in purity of expression," calmly said
Hypatia; "the tongue of Olympus suits gods and their ministers only."
"Plato hath no question of the matter in hand," observed Lady Jane
Grey, with a tone of finishing the subject.
"I know nothing of your questions and philosophies," scornfully
stormed Cleopatra. "Fire seeks fire, and clay, clay. Isis send me
Antony, and every philosopher in Alexandria may go drown in the Nile!
Shall I blind my eyes with scrolls of papyrus when there is a goodly
Roman to be looked upon?"
From the deep blue petals of a double English violet came a delicate
face, pale, serene, sad, but exceeding tender. "Love liveth when the
lover dies," said Lady Rachel Russell. "I have well loved my lord in
the prison; shall I cease to affect him when he is become one of the
court above?"
"You are cautious of speech, Mesdames," carelessly spoke Marguerite.
"Women are the fools of men; you all know it. Every one of you has
carried cap and bell."
They all turned toward the hawk's-bill tulip; it was not there.
"Gone to Kenilworth," demurely sneered Mary of Scotland.
A pond-lily, floating in a tiny tank, opened its clasped petals; and
with one bare pearly foot upon the green island of leaves, and the
other touching the edge of the marble basin, clothed with a rippling,
lustrous, golden garment of hair, that rolled downward in glittering
masses to her slight ankles, and half hid the wide, innocent, blue
eyes and infantile, smiling lips, Eve said, "I was made for Adam,"
and slipped silently again into the closing flower.
"But we have changed all that!" answered Marguerite, tossing her
jewel-clasped curls.
"They whom the saints call upon to do battle for king and country
have their nature after the manner of their deeds," came a clear
voice from the fleur-de-lis, that clothed itself in armor, and
flashed from under a helmet the keen, dark eyes and firm, beardless
lips of a woman.
"There have been cloistered nuns," timidly breathed La Vallière.
"There is a monk's-hood in that parterre without," said Marguerite.
The white clematis shivered. It was a veiled shape in long robes,
that hid face and figure, who clung to the wall and whispered,
"Paraclete!"
"There are tales of saints in my breviary," soliloquized Mary of
Scotland; and in the streaming moonlight, as she spoke, a faint
outline gathered, lips and eyes of solemn peace, a crown of blood-red
roses pressing thorns into the wan temples that dripped sanguine
streams, and in the halo above the wreath a legend, partially
obscured, that ran, "Utque talis Rosa nulli alteri plantæ adhæreret"----
"But the girl there is no saint; I think, rather, she is of mine own
land," said a purple passion-flower, that hid itself under a black
mantilla, and glowed with dark beauty. The Spanish face bent over me
with ardent eyes and lips of sympathetic passion, and murmured,
"Do not fear! Pedro was faithful unto and after death; there are some
men"----
Pan growled! I rubbed my eyes! Where was I? Mrs. Reading stood by me
in very extempore costume, holding a night-lamp:--
"Goodness me, Miss Clara!" said she, "I never was more scared. I
happened to wake up, and I thought I see your west window open
across the corner; so I roused up to go and see if you was sick; and
you wasn't in bed, nor your frock anywhere. I was frighted to pieces;
but when I come down and found the greenhouse door open, I went in
just for a chance, and, lo and behold! here you are, sound asleep in
the chair, and Pan a-lying close onto that beautiful black lace frock!
Do get up, Miss Clara! you'll be sick to-morrow, sure as the world!"
I looked round me. All the flowers were cool and still; the calla
breathless and quiet; the pond-lily shut; the roses full of dew and
perfume; the clematis languid and luxuriant.
"Delia," said I, "what do you think about matrimony?"
Mrs. Reading stared at me with her honest green eyes. I laughed.
"Well," said she, "marriage is a lottery, Miss Clara. Reading was a
pretty good feller; but seein' things was as they was, if I'd had
means and knowed what I know now, I shouldn't never have married him."
"May-be you'd have married somebody else, though," suggested I.
"Like enough, Miss Clara; girls are unaccountable perverse when they
get in love. But do get up and go to bed. A'n't you goin' to the
Lake to-morrow?"
That put my speculation to flight. Up I rose and meekly followed
Delia to my room; this time she staid to see me fairly disrobed. But
I had had sleep enough. I was also quiet; I could think. The future
lay at my feet, to be planned and patterned at my will; or so I
thought. I had not permitted myself to think much about Harry Tempest,
from an instinctive feeling of danger; I did not know then that
"En songeant qu'il faut oublier
On s'en souvient!"
I was young, rich, beautiful, independent; I came and went as I would,
without question, and did my own pleasure. If I married, all this
power must be given up; possibly I and my husband would tire of each
other,--and then what remained but fixed and incurable disgust and
pain? I thought over my strange dream. Cleopatra, the enchantress,
and the scorn of men: that was not love, it was simple passion of
the lowest grade. Lady Jane Grey: she was only proper. Marguerite de
Valois: profligate. Elizabeth: a shrewish, selfish old politician.
Who of all these had loved? Arria: and Paetus dying, she could not
love. Lady Russell: she lived and mourned. I looked but at one side
of the argument, and drew my inferences from that, but they
satisfied me. Soon I saw the dawn stretch its opal tints over the
distant hills, and tinge the tree-tops with bloom. I heard the
half-articulate music of birds, stirring in their nests; but before
the sounds of higher life began to stir I had gone to sleep, firmly
resolved to ride to the Lake, and to give Harry Tempest no
opportunity to speak to me alone. But I slept too long; it was noon
before I woke, and I had sent no message about my preference of the
pony, as I promised, to Mr. Tempest. I had only time to breakfast
and dress. At three o'clock he came,--with his carriage, of course.
So I rode to the Lake!
It's all very well to make up one's mind to say a certain thing; it
is better if you say it; but, somehow or other,--I really was
ashamed afterward,--I forgot all my good reasons. I found I had taken
a great deal of pains to no purpose. In short, after due time, I
married Harry Tempest; and though it is some time since that happened,
I am still much of Eve's opinion,--
"I WAS MADE FOR ADAM."
* * * * *
CRAWFORD AND SCULPTURE.
There is as absolute an instinct in the human mind for the definite,
the palpable, and the emphatic, as there is for the mysterious, the
versatile, and the elusive. With some, method is a law, and taste
severe in affairs, costume, exercise, social intercourse, and faith.
The simplicity, directness, uniformity, and pure emphasis or grace
of Sculpture have analogies in literature and character: the terse
despatch of a brave soldier, the concentrated dialogue of Alfieri,
some proverbs, aphorisms, and poetic lines, that have become
household words, puritanic consistency, silent fortitude, are but so
many vigorous outlines, and impress us by virtue of the same
colorless intensity as a masterpiece of the statuary. How
sculpturesque is Dante, even in metaphor, as when he writes,--
"Ella non ci diceva alcuna cosa;
Ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando,
A guisa di leon quando si posa."
Nature, too, hints the art, when her landscape tints are covered
with snow, and the forms of tree, rock, and mountain are clearly
defined by the universal whiteness. Death, in its pale, still, fixed
image,--always solemn, sometimes beautiful,--would have inspired
primeval humanity to mould and chisel the lineaments of clay. Even
New Zealanders elaborately carve their war-clubs; and from the
"graven images" prohibited by the Decalogue as objects of worship,
through the mysterious granite effigies of ancient Egypt, the brutal
anomalies in Chinese porcelain, the gay and gilded figures on a
ship's prow,--whether emblems of rude ingenuity, tasteless caprice,
retrospective sentiment, or embodiments of the highest physical and
mental culture, as in the Greek statues,--there is no art whose
origin is more instructive and progress more historically significant.
The vases of Etruria are the best evidence of her degree of
civilization; the designs of Flaxman on Wedgwood ware redeem the
economical art of England; the Bears at Berne and the Wolf in the
Roman Capitol are the most venerable local insignia; the carvings of
Gibbons, in old English manor-houses, outrival all the luxurious
charms of modern upholstery; Phidias is a more familiar element in
Grecian history than Pericles; the moral energy of the old Italian
republics is more impressively shadowed forth and conserved in the
bold and vigorous creations of Michel Angelo than in the political
annals of Macchiavelli; and it is the massive, uncouth sculptures,
half-buried in sylvan vegetation, which mythically transmit the
ancient people of Central America.
We confess a faith in, and a love for, the "testimony of the rocks,"--
not only as interpreted by the sagacious Scotchman, as he excavated
the "old red sandstone," but as shaped into forms of truth, beauty,
and power by the hand of man through all generations. We love to
catch a glimpse of these silent memorials of our race, whether as
Nymphs half-shaded at noon-day with summer foliage in a garden, or
as Heroes gleaming with startling distinctness in the moonlit
city-square; as the similitudes of illustrious men gathered in the
halls of nations and crowned with a benignant fame, or as prone
effigies on sepulchres, forever proclaiming the calm without the
respiration of slumber, so as to tempt us to exclaim, with the
enamored gazer on the Egyptian queen, when the asp had done its work,--
"She looks like sleep,
As she would catch another Antony
In her _strong toil of grace_."
Although Dr. Johnson undervalued sculpture,--partly because of an
inadequate sense of the beautiful, and partly from ignorance of its
greatest trophies, he expressed unqualified assent to its
awe-inspiring influence in "the monumental caves of death," as
described by Congreve. Sir Joshua truly declares that "all arts
address themselves to the sensibility and imagination"; and no one
thus alive to the appeal of sculpture will marvel that the
infuriated mob spared the statues of the Tuileries at the bloody
climax of the French Revolution,--that a "love of the antique" knit
in bonds of life-long friendship Winckelmann and Cardinal Albani,--
that among the most salient of childhood's memories should be
Memnon's image and the Colossus of Rhodes,--that an imaginative girl
of exalted temperament died of love for the Apollo Belvidere,--and
that Carrara should win many a pilgrimage because its quarries have
peopled earth with grace.
To a sympathetic eye there are few more pleasing tableaux than a
gifted sculptor engaged in his work. How absorbed he is!--standing
erect by the mass of clay,--with graduated touch, moulding into
delicate undulations or expressive lines the inert mass,--now
stepping back to see the effect,--now bending forward, almost
lovingly, to add a master indentation or detach a thin layer,--and so,
hour after hour, working on, every muscle in action, each perception
active, oblivious of time, happy in the gradual approximation, under
patient and thoughtful manipulation, of what was a dense heap of
earth, to a form of vital expression or beauty. When such a man
departs from the world, after having thus labored in love and with
integrity so as to bequeathe memorable and cherished trophies of
this beautiful art,--when he dies in his prime, his character as a
man endeared by the ties of friendship, and his fame as an artist
made precious by the bond of a common nativity, we feel that the art
he loved and illustrated and the fame he won and honored demand a
coincident discussion.
Thomas Crawford was born in New York, March 22, 1813, and died in
London, October 16, 1857. His lineage, school education, and early
facilities indicate no remarkable means or motive for artistic
development; they were such as belong to the average positions of
the American citizen; although a bit of romance, which highly amused
the young sculptor, was the visit of a noble Irish lady to his studio,
who ardently demonstrated their common descent from an ancient house.
At first contented to experiment as a juvenile draughtsman, to gaze
into the windows of print-shops, to collect what he could obtain in
the shape of casts, to carve flowers, leaves, and monumental designs
in the marble-yard of Launitz,--then adventuring in wood sculptures
and portraits, until the encouragement of Thorwaldsen, the nude
models of the French Academy at Rome, and copies from the
Demosthenes and other antiques in the Vatican disciplined his eye
and touch,--thus by a healthful, rigorous process attaining the
manual skill and the mature judgment which equipped him to venture
wisely in the realm of original conception,--there was a thoroughness
and a progressive application in his whole initiatory course,
prophetic, to those versed in the history of Art, of the ultimate
and secure success so legitimately earned.
If Rome yields the choicest test, in modern times, of individual
endowment in sculpture, by virtue of her unequalled treasures and
select proficients in Art,--Munich affords the second ordeal in
Europe, because of the cultivated taste and superior foundries for
which that capital is renowned; and it is remarkable that both the
great statues there cast from Crawford's models by Müller inspired
those impromptu festivals which give expression to German enthusiasm.
The advent of the Beethoven statue was celebrated by the adequate
performance, under the auspices of both court and artists, of that
peerless composer's grandest music. When, on the evening of his
arrival, Crawford went to see, for the first time, his Washington in
bronze, he was surprised at the dusky precincts of the vast arena;
suddenly torches flashed illumination on the magnificent horse and
rider, and simultaneously burst forth from a hundred voices a song
of triumph and jubilee: thus the delighted Germans congratulated
their gifted brother, and hailed the sublime work,--to them typical
at once of American freedom, patriotism, and genius. The king warmly
recognized the original merits and consummate effect of the work;
the artists would suffer no inferior hands to pack and despatch it to
the sea-side; peasants greeted its triumphal progress;--the people
of Richmond were emulous to share the task of conveying it from the
quay to the Capitol hill; mute admiration, followed by ecstatic
cheers, hailed its unveiling, and the most gracious native eloquence
inaugurated its erection.
Descriptions of works of Art, especially of statues, are
proverbially unsatisfactory; only a vague idea can be given in words,
to the unprofessional reader; otherwise we might dwell upon the eager,
intent attitude of Orpheus as he seems to glide by the dozing
Cerberus, shading his eyes as they peer into the mysterious
labyrinth he is about to enter in search of his ravished bride;--we
might expatiate on the graceful, dignified aspect of Beethoven, the
concentration of his thoughtful brow, and the loving serenity of his
expression,--a kind of embodied musical self-absorption, yet an
accurate portrait of the man in his inspired mood; so might he have
stood when gathering into his serene consciousness the pastoral
melodies of Nature, on a summer evening, to be incorporated into
immortal combinations of harmonious sound;--we might descant upon
the union of majesty and spirit in the figure of Washington and the
vital truth of action in the horse, the air of command and of
rectitude, the martial vigor and grace, so instantly felt by the
popular heart, and so critically praised by the adept in statuary
cognizant of the difficulties to be overcome and the impression to
be absolutely evolved from such a work, in order to make it at once
true to Nature and to character;--we might repeat the declaration,
that no figure, ancient or modern, so entirely illustrates the
classic definition of oratory, as consisting in action, as the
statue of Patrick Henry, which seems instinct with that memorable
utterance, "Give me liberty or give me death!" The inventive
felicity of the design for one of the pediments of the Capitol might
be unfolded as a vivid historic poem; and it requires no imagination
to show that Jefferson looks the author of the Declaration of
Independence. The union of original expression and skill in statuary
and of ingenious constructiveness in monumental designs, which
Crawford exhibited, may be regarded as a peculiar excellence and a
rare distinction.
Much has been said and written of the limits of sculpture; but it is
the sphere, rather than the art itself, which is thus bounded; and
one of its most glorious distinctions, like that of the human form
and face, which are its highest subject, is the vast possible
variety within what seems, at first thought, to be so narrow a field.
That the same number and kind of limbs and features should, under the
plastic touch of genius, have given birth to so many and totally
diverse forms, memorable for ages and endeared to humanity, is in
itself an infinite marvel, which vindicates, as a beautiful wonder,
the statuary's art from the more Protean rivalry of pictorial skill.
If we call to mind even a few of the sculptured creations which are
"a joy forever," even to retrospection,--haunting by their pure
individuality the temple of memory, permanently enshrined in
heartfelt admiration as illustrations of what is noble in man and
woman, significant in history, powerful in expression, or
irresistible in grace,--we feel what a world of varied interest is
hinted by the very name of Sculpture. Through it the most just and
clear idea of Grecian culture is revealed to the many. The solemn
mystery of Egyptian and the grand scale of Assyrian civilization are
best attested by the same trophies. How a Sphinx typifies the land
of the Pyramids and all its associations, mythological, scientific,
natural, and sacred,--its reverence for the dead, and its dim and
portentous traditions! and what a reflex of Nineveh's palmy days are
the winged lions exhumed by Layard! What more authentic tokens of
Mediaeval piety and patience exist than the elaborate and grotesque
carvings of Albert Dürer's day? The colossal Brahma in the temple of
Elephanta, near Bombay, is the visible acme of Asiatic superstition.
And can an illustration of the revival of Art, in the fifteenth
century, so exuberant, aspiring, and sublime, be imagined, to
surpass the Day and Night, the Moses, and other statues of Angelo?--
But such general inferences are less impressive than the personal
experience of every European traveller with the least passion for
the beautiful or reverence for genius. Is there any sphere of
observation and enjoyment to such a one, more prolific of individual
suggestions than this so-called limited art? From the soulful glow
of expression in the inspired countenance of the Apollo, to the
womanly contours, so exquisite, in the armless figure of the Venus
de Milo,--from the aerial posture of John of Bologna's Mercury, to
the inimitable and firm dignity in the attitude of Aristides in the
Museum of Naples,--from the delicate lines which teach how grace can
chasten nudity in the Goddess of the Tribune at Florence, to the
embodied melancholy of Hamlet in the brooding Lorenzo of the Medici
Chapel,--from the stone despair, the frozen tears, as it were, of all
bereaved maternity, in the very bend of Niobe's body and yearning
gesture, to the _abandon_ gleaming from every muscle of the Dancing
Faun,--from the stern brow of the Knife-grinder, and the bleeding
frame of the Gladiator, whereon are written forever the inhumanities
of ancient civilization, to the triumphant beauty and firm, light,
enjoyable aspect of Dannecker's Ariadne,--from the unutterable joy
of Cupid and Psyche's embrace, to the grand authority of Moses,--how
many separate phases of human emotion "live in stone"! What greater
contrast to eye or imagination, in our knowledge of facts and in our
consciousness of sentiment, can be exemplified, than those so
distinctly, memorably, and gracefully moulded in the apostolic
figures of Thorwaldsen, the Hero and Leander of Steinhaüser, the
lovely funereal monument, inspired by gratitude, which Rauch reared
to Louise of Prussia, Chantrey's Sleeping Children, Canova's Lions
in St. Peter's, the bas-reliefs of Ghiberti on the Baptistery doors
at Florence, and Gibson's Horses of the Sun?