Thomas Crawford: A Eulogy

IN the Boston Music Hall, in front of the great organ, there stands a statue in bronze of the illustrious composer, Beethoven. It is a noble work of art,—grand, impressive, mournful. The face and form are visibly stamped with the marks of sorrow and struggle. The matted hair, the furrowed brow, the worn countenance, the compressed lips, belong to one who was sorely tried, alike by his own spirit and by the lot that was laid upon him. Lonely, sensitive. irritable, for many years deprived of the precious gift of hearing, the genius that has charmed and elevated so many brought little happiness to its possessor. That breathing bronze is not merely a reproduction of the face and form of Beethoven, but it is a visible expression of that internal strife between will and circumstance, between the spirit of man and the influence of his position, which began in Eden, and will endure as long as earth endures, it is to the eye what his own Fifth Symphony is to the ear, what the Book of Job and the play of Hamlet are to the mind.

I purpose to speak here of the life and works of the artist to whom we owe this noble statue. To him were given a happier lot, a happier spirit; yet he had had enough of struggle and disappointment to enable him to comprehend and embody his subject. Alike in high inventive genius, alike in purity of life, the composer and the sculptor have passed away from earth. They rest from their labors and their works follow them. Pain and sorrow can reach them no more. What they did, and what they were, are alike gathered into the storehouse of the great past, and form part of the inheritance of time.

Thomas Crawford was born in the city of New York, March 22, 1813, of a respectable family, neither rich nor poor. His parents were emigrants from the north of Ireland, members of the Church of England, sprung of a good stock, which was honorably commended in their lives and conversation. His father, a man of active mind and genial spirit, fond of reading, hospitable, and open-handed, died in 1838. His mother was a woman of rare excellence, firm in the discharge of duty, full of lovingkindness, thinking and speaking ill of none, abounding in acts of charity, of a cheerful temper, and with a vein of quiet humor, that, under all the burdens of life, kept her spirit light and her heart young to the last. She lived to see the full maturity of her son’s genius, his rare domestic happiness, his wide-spread and increasing fame ; and, being called away two years before him, was mercifully spared the pang of parting with him on earth, and permitted to welcome him in Heaven.

Of a family of four children, two only lived to grow up,—Thomas, and an elder sister, who was a sister of the heart as well as of the blood, with whom through life his relations were most intimate and tender, and who exerted over his powerful nature that gentle feminine influence which is at once softening and elevating. She was his friend, his counsellor, his confidant : so long as they were together every thought and aspiration were revealed to her as they rose; and when they were separated, his letters to her comprised not merely the journal of his life, but a record of the growth of his mind and the progress of his genius.

Crawford was born with the genius of an artist, but his early years were passed under influences not particularly calculated to develop it. At the time of his boyhood, the opportunities for cultivation in art in our country were by no means what they now are. But from the first, the native bent of his mind was manifested in that direction and made for itself a path of progress, in spite of external difficulties and discouragements. While yet a child, much of his time was passed in copying engravings, — a taste and habit which led to his being sent to a drawing-school, a step amply justified by the rapid progress which he made. Though it was hoped and desired that, after the manner of American boys, he should engage in some department of business, no violence was done to his irrepressible inclinations. Crawford’s father, like Milton’s, did not require his son to devote himself to uncongenial pursuits, however gainful, but allowed him to cultivate his best powers, and permitted him to obey his highest aspirations.

By the force of a natural and unconscious attraction, his feet were led to those places in his native city — there were not many — where anything like artists’ work was to be seen. A large workshop in which wood-carving was carried on became his favorite resort. He watched with keen delight the movements of the hand under which oak and mahogany were shaped into groups of flowers and wreaths of foliage, and finally determined to learn the art he had observed with so much interest. He applied himself diligently to the labors of his new employment; and in view of his future profession, it was by no means an unwise step thus to learn the use of the chisel.

While thus faithfully occupied in mastering the technical difficulties of his new pursuit, much of his leisure time was given to the study of architecture, though the assiduous practice of drawing and sketching was still kept up. He was also gradually gathering together a considerable collection of casts and bas-reliefs, and his quick and discerning eye enabled him to discover specimens that were valuable either for beauty or for rarity. His untiring and progressive energy soon gave him all the skill and faculty which he could gain from the limited art of wood-carving; and feeling the sting of a higher ambition, he abandoned this employment, and set his face more distinctly towards the ideal heights of art.

He had thus far been timidly groping his way in the dark, or at least in the twilight; but now gleams of the wishedfor day began to appear, and he moved on with firmer and bolder steps. He commenced modelling in clay in his own room,—a spot over which the genius of art presided ; for the walls were covered with sketches in chalks and charcoal, the floor was strewn with casts, the table heaped with clay, and the chairs filled with books, mostly biographies of artists, or treatises on some department of art.

This was the beginning of his career as an artist. He had reached the point the prolongation of which formed the line of his whole life. From this time he moved ever onward, sometimes slowly, sometimes painfully, often under discouragements, but always bravely, energetically, hopefully. Whether with sympathy or without it, in solitude or cheered by the love of kindred hearts, in the sunshine of patronage or the shadow of neglect, he was ever advancing. His was not one of those too sensitive and susceptible natures, on which the want of opportunity acts with paralyzing effect: he had the patient endurance which can long wait, and which makes the work it cannot find.

The next event in his life is his being employed in the studio of Frazee and Launitz, who were workers in marble, especially in monumental sculpture. Here he remained two years, and they were industrious and profitable years. In the modelling of the foliage and flowers which formed the decorative portions of the works executed in this studio, as well as in several original designs for monumental structures, he began to give proof of inventive genius and mechanical skill. During these two years he attended the drawingschool of the National Academy of Design ; and so intent was he on making progress, that, after working all day for his employers in the studio, he would often labor in the school till a late hour in the night.

At the end of these two years, he is of full age and has put on the duties and responsibilities of manhood. His career is fixed ; he is troubled by no doubt or conflicts as to what he shall do or what he shall be. There is no struggle, no indecision, no weighing of arguments, no balancing of considerations. He is an artist, and can no more resist being an artist than the acorn can help turning into the oak. His training and preparation thus far have not been the best, but they have been good. Others have had better teaching and better opportunities, but of such as he could command he has made the best possible use. He has not been rocked and dandled into the stature and dimensions of an artist. His teaching has been imperfect, but his training has been excellent, at least for a genius so rich and a nature so powerful. It was such training as the frosty air and the strong wind give to the mountain pine, — sharp, but invigorating. It was the training of toil and sacrifice, of renunciation and patience. Life had fed him as Cheiron fed Achilles, upon lions’ hearts. Pleasure had not corrupted, indolence had not enfeebled him. If there was in him any natural tendency to concentration and reserve, it had been counteracted by the influences of a happy home. There he had found love and sympathy and comprehension ; there he had breathed the air of peace, and in that benignant atmosphere the affections of his heart had been cultivated so as to keep pace with the growth of his mind and the development of his character.

That such a young man, with such aspirations and powers, who had exhausted all the resources for education in art which his own country afforded, should have his heart turned with longing desire towards Italy, was natural and inevitable. That land of hope and promise to him was his vision by day and his dream by night. Between his wish and its fulfilment there stood but one obstacle, and that was most honorable to him. He shrank from inflicting the pang of separation upon his parents, especially his mother to whom he was most tenderly attached, and from whom he had never been parted longer than a week. How could he tell her that he must leave her for years, perhaps forever ? But her love, and his father’s, were self-sacrificing and unselfish. They took counsel of the strength, and not the weakness, of their hearts. Not without a struggle, not without sighs, not without many natural tears, the resolve was reached. With prayers and benedictions, they speeded their glorious boy upon the path which Providence seemed to have marked out for him. It was decided that he should go for two years and no more. All that the most thoughtful affection could suggest for every possible want during that period was provided for him. He sailed from New York in May, 1835, in a small brig bound for Leghorn. The passage to Gibraltar was long and stormy; slowly the little bark crept along the shores of the Mediterranean ; at Leghorn, they were delayed by quarantine; and it was not until September that the great vision of Rome broke upon the sight and soul of the youthful pilgrim.

At present, when so many American artists and students of art are to be found in Rome, it is difficult to believe how different was the state of things in 1835. At that time an artist from America occasionally visted Italy, but more as a traveller than as a student; few remained there long, and fewer still made it their home. Groenough was in Florence, entering upon a career which was to be so honorable to his country and to himself, and like Crawford’s Own, so sadly and prematurely arrested by death. But no American sculptor had preceded Crawford in Rome, and he found no such circle of American artists and art students as is now there to give welcome, encouragement, criticism, and sympathy.

It may well be supposed that the first few days of his residence in Rome were passed in a tumultuous whirl of sensations and emotions, which prevented him from at once setting to work. He arrived there at a propitious season of the year, when the fierce heats of summer are beginning to be mitigated, and the milder days of autumn to shed their benediction over the reviving earth. There is no month in the year in which the peculiar traits of Roman life, and the peculiar characteristics of the Roman people, are better seen than in October, — the vintage month, when the grapes have been gathered and the wine is pressed; the period which, in all wine-growing countries, throws a gleam of joy over the paths of common life, and lights up the brow of toil with a transient ray of festive mirth. At this season, too, Rome is almost wholly free from strangers, the foreign birds of passage having taken their flight after Holy Week, to reappear at Christmas. The touching ruins of Rome, its magnificent collections in art, the palaces and churches, the desolate beauty of the Campagna, made all the more impression upon him because he saw them alone, because his enthusiasm was not checked by swarms of idle tourists, over whose light natures the beauty of both nature and art passes like sunbeams and shadows over a landscape.

We can imagine the feelings with which a young man of his intense and concentrated nature — who, in the prosaic and practical atmosphere of New York had been hungering and thirsting for the vision of beauty, as the benighted dweller in the Arctic circle longs for the first ray of returning light — must have gazed upon the Vatican, the Capitol, St. Peter’s, the Forum, the frescos of Raphael and Michael Angelo, the inestimable remains of Greek sculpture, the long lines of aqueduct that stretch across the Campagna, and all the numberless and indescribable objects which in Rome delight, arouse, elevate, and refine the susceptible mind.

But in time these wild raptures, these tumultuous delights, passed away, and Crawford set himself to work in good earnest. His friend Launitz had given him a letter of introduction to Thorwaldsen, who, in a vigorous old age and in the enjoyment of a world-wide fame, was busily engaged in completing those great works, now in Copenhagen, which are esteemed the highest efforts of his genius. He occupied an extensive studio, filled with busy students and workmen, and with a silent assemblage of his own works in marble or plaster. The noble-hearted Dane received the unknown youth with a parental kindness which awakened in Crawford’s heart a corresponding warmth of grateful and reverent affection. He invited him to work in his studio,—an invitation which, it is needless to say, was gladly accepted.

Crawford’s whole life may be divided into three periods, — one reaching from his birth to his arrival in Rome, one from that moment to his marriage, and the third from his marriage to his death. The first may be called the years of preparation, the second the years of struggle, and the last the years of triumph. He went to Rome, it will be remembered, with the purpose of remaining there only two years ; in fact it became his home for the remainder of his life, and he did not return to his native country, even for a visit, till nine years from the time of his leaving it. These were most fruitful and important years, — years of conscientious toil and manly patience, in which nothing was lost by indolence, and nothing surrendered to frivolous and enfeebling pleasures; years rich in artistic progress and moral growth, leaving few facts for biography, but much for eulogy. His life flows on in a uniform course. A portion of the day is given to a careful and detailed study of the great works of art to be found in Rome, with copious record of his observations; and the rest is devoted to steady professional toil, often continued late into the night. He watches carefully the manifold processes going on in the studio of Thonvaldsen, and profits by all that he sees. The great master himself stops before a figure which his pupil is modelling, contemplates it for a few moments in a way that shows he sees signs of promise in it, and then gives a few hints which fall like good seed upon fertile soil. He is often discouraged, but never cast down, for the strength of his will is equal to the vigor of his genius. He draws diligently from life-models in the French Academy; he sets up figures in clay, and breaks them to begin anew. He lives with the most vigorous economy, and keeps clear of the burden and bondage of debt. This economy was in part self-imposed, for a considerable part of his earnings, as well as of the means contributed by his kindred at home, was expended in the purchase of casts, engravings, and books upon art, of which he accumulated in time an ample collection, justly regarding them as the tools of his trade, and looking upon them as invested capital, which would sooner or later yield him sure returns.

To have a due sense of Crawford’s force of character and progressive genius, we must judge him. not by the final results which he reached, but by the chances which were against him at the start.

Here is a young man of twenty-two, taken from the watchful care and purifying affections of a happy home and exposed to the dangers of an uncontrolled independence in a foreign land. At this period he disappears from sight, and for years is hidden from our view. How will it be with him when he emerges from the gloom and is again seen ? Will he have kept his moral purity unsullied, and escape the temptations to which the sensitive organization of the artist peculiarly exposes him ? How will it be with the growth of his genius and the development of his powers ? Will he have the patience to wait till he can grasp opportunity by the forelock, or will long-deferred hope make the heart sick and the hand slack ? Flow will the multitude of works of art in Rome affect him ? Will they act as a spur or a clog ? Will they quicken and inspire him, or will they paralyze his energies by the disproportion between their vast aggregate and all that can be accomplished by the most vigorous powers and the longest life of any one man ? Will his life be wasted in vague dreams and airy hopes, in fancies that take no shape and aspirations that bear no fruit ?

All these perils were avoided. He drew from the influences around him the elements of healthy and continuous growth. Under the discouragements incident to the commencement of the career of an artist, he preserved alike the purity of his soul and the activity of his mind. With a young man of such powers and such strength of character, success is simply a matter of time. It may come too late to be valued ; it may be deferred till most of those whom the artist wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and failure have become empty sounds ; death may follow hard upon it, and the laurel that was meant for the brow may be laid upon the coffin; — but it will surely come.

During the first few years of his residence in Rome, he was obliged to content himself with the humbler labors of his art, — executing portrait busts and making copies of antique statues, — work which gave no opportunity of displaying the higher qualities of his genius. As an illustration of his enthusiasm and energy, it may be stated that during ten weeks, in the year 1837, he modelled seventeen busts to be put into marble, and copied in marble the statue of Demosthenes in the Vatican.

His impatient spirit, conscious of hidden power, undoubtedly chafed under this restraint; but looking back upon his life as a whole, and knowing what he accomplished, it was quite as well that he was so long occupied in those comparatively mechanical tasks which trained the hand and the eye so faithfully that they proved thoroughly trustworthy servants when he rose into a higher sphere of art. The fidelity with which he executed the commissions intrusted to him, his indefatigable industry, the almost ascetic simplicity of his life, at length attracted attention. He began to emerge from obscurity, — to lift his head above the level of those waters beneath which so many hearts have sunk, leaving but a bubble on the surface to prove that they had once throbbed.

Strangers, English and American, inquired about the solitary and enthusiastic student of art, whose lamp was seen burning in his studio deep into the night, and who was so rarely found where loungers congregate to speed the lazy hours. Words of encouragement were addressed to him by competent judges, which confirmed his own sense of untried powers and lightened the burden of expectation.

During all those years of toil and self-denial, his letters were full of affection and of cheerfulness too. If despondency ever visited his heart, he did not allow its shadow to darken the hearts of those who loved him. In these letters his reserved and secluded nature poured forth the thoughts, the hopes, the aspirations which were not revealed to those around him. In such correspondence alone he found the companionship and society congenial to a character like his, in which the affections were deep, but not lightly moved.

He had been but two years in Rome when the scourge of the cholera fell upon the city. It is not easy to conceive the terror inspired by this visitation in a community ignorant and excitable, and dreading death in proportion to the keenness with which they enjoy life. It was indeed no idle fear; for when the pestilence was at its height, the deaths were more than four hundred a day, in a population of less than one hundred and fifty thousand. The usual duties of life were suspended, and its ordinary ties were broken. Most of those who could escaped from the city; servants fled from their masters; and the claims of kindred were not always strong enough to resist the dread of contagion.

Crawford remained at Rome the whole time, in the midst of the dead and the dying, daily witnessing sights that left impressions on his mind never to be effaced, though too painful to be lightly touched upon or often alluded to. Nor did he shrink from the duties which humanity exacted in a crisis so terrible. For twenty hours he stood alone by the bedside of one of the victims of the fell disease, serving, aiding, sustaining as he best might, till life departed, and this too while fully believing the cholera to be contagious, and knowing that he might be called to pass through the same agonies as those he had witnessed.

In a letter written to his sister in May, 1839, we have the first intimation of a work which forms a marked event in Crawford’s life, — the statue of Orpheus, now belonging to the Boston Athenæum. In this letter he says: “ I have commenced modelling a statue large as life, the attitude of which throws at once in my way all the difficulties attending the representation of the human figure. When this is finished as I hope to do it, it will show that I am ambitious enough to strive with those who are moving in the highest range of sculpture. You will be anxious to know something of the subject I have chosen. You will find it in the tenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, where Orpheus is described as leaving the realms of light and upper air to seek his lost Eurydice in the infernal regions. You will find it also in the fourth Georgic of Virgil. I have selected the moment when Orpheus, having tamed the dog Cerberus, ceases playing upon the lyre and rushes triumphantly through the gate of hell. The subject is admirably adapted to the display of every manly beauty; into the face I shall endeavor to throw an expression of intense anxiety softened by the awe which would naturally be caused by such a sight as we may suppose the realms of Pluto to present. You will see by the pencil sketch which I enclose that the action is sudden and spirited;—with one hand he shades his eyes as I have often observed persons to do when entering any dark place, with the other he holds the lyre which is to charm Pluto and the Furies. At his feet is the three-headed dog Cerberus; this is important, for the attributes of lyre and wreath also belong to Apollo ; but with Cerberus, any one having the slightest knowledge of mythology must know that the figure is Orpheus in search of Eurydice; thus the story is told at first sight. I am trying—for the statue is considerably advanced— to give an air of antique beauty to the whole composition by keeping clear of all extravagance in the movement, and working as nearly as possible in the spirit of the ancient Greek masters.” The modelling of the Orpheus occupied much of his time during the summer and early autumn ; and in November he wrote home that it had been completed, cast in plaster, and submitted to the criticism of the Roman artists, who had warmly praised it, and that among those who had given it hearty admiration was the Marchese Melchiore, the editor of a periodical devoted to art, who had requested that it might be engraved for his journal, promising to write the accompanying notice of it himself. The whole letter is in a strain of manly cheerfulness and confident hope, and thus closes: “ In the mean time have no fear for me. I am in glorious health and hope to continue so. My circumstances are comparatively easy, and I want for nothing but large commissions and plenty of them. You see I cannot refrain from writing in high spirits, because there is a prophetic voice whispering that all will go well.”

During tire year 1839 he was engaged upon some other ideal work besides the Orpheus, and, under the pressure of constant and impassioned labor, his mind and frame were alike overtasked. The natural reaction took place: soon after writing and despatching the letter from which I have just quoted, he was attacked with brain fever, which, with a relapse produced by resuming work too soon, brought him to the borders of the grave. It was not until the summer of 1840 that his health was fully restored. With his complete recovery from this illness, there broke around him the dawn of a brighter day. Mr. Charles Sumner, who had made his acquaintance in Rome, in the summer of 1839, had been much impressed with the evidences of ability displayed in his works, and especially with the merit and promise of the Orpheus. Upon his return home in 1840, lie procured, by subscription among his friends, the means of sending an order for a marble copy of this statue for the Boston Athenæum. This order reached him in the latter part of that year. The statue arrived in Boston in 1841, and excited great and general admiration, alike from the originality of the conception and the technical excellence of the details. Good judges felt that it was the production of an artist who was something more than a patient and skilful reproducer of existing forms, and that it was imbued with a creative genius which revealed a power of progress, and an element of growth, asking recognition and encouragement. The strong impression made by this statue produced its natural result: many commissions were sent to him, and some of them for works of an ideal character, such as gave him the sphere and opportunity he had long desired. The days of sharp struggle were over, and his patient expectation began to reap its reward. He had no longer occasion to struggle against depression and despondency; he had fought the fight and won the crown. Work, and congenial work too, came to him in reasonable measure, not enough to absorb and exhaust all his energies, but sufficient to give him uninterrupted occupation, and to make his future sure. He had a large studio fitted up in the Piazza Barberini, and his active industry soon filled it with a collection of expressive and original works.

This improvement in his prospects and position was followed not long after by a full measure of domestic happiness. Among the Americans who visited Rome in 1843 was our townsman, Dr. Howe, with his newly married wife and her sister, Miss Louisa Ward, of New York. Between this young lady and Crawford there grew up a mutual attraction, and when she returned to New York, in the summer of 1844, they were pledged to each other. He came home during the same summer, and their marriage took place in the following November. They returned together to Rome in August, 1845.

During this visit to America, the circle of his acquaintance was much enlarged, and his frank and unpretending manners confirmed the favorable impression which his works had created. His deportment was grave, his words were few, and his countenance showed some marks of the struggles and sufferings he had passed through ; but no one could fail to observe in him the indications of a simple and manly nature, as well as of a vigorous genius, conscious of its powers, but asking no more than was indisputably its due.

Of his domestic life it is enough to say that it was one of rare happiness, and that it acted most favorably, both upon the growth of his character and the development of his genius. A nature like his, concentrated and reserved, with no inclination for general society, might have become ascetic, if not morbid, without the softening influence of the domestic affections. From the day of his marriage to the day of his death, his spirit breathed the air of peace, and his heart reposed in the sunshine of happiness. His home and his studio made up his world ; beyond them his thoughts and wishes rarely strayed; his genius and his heart were content to move within that range. The anxious cares, the lonely weariness, the heartsickness of hope deferred, which had saddened his earlier years, were now remembered only as a painful dream is remembered in morning light.

His house soon became a favorite place of social resort to his countrymen and countrywomen during the winter season. No one who was so fortunate as to be welcomed to his Roman fireside will ever forget the cordial atmosphere of that happy home, where manly power and womanly gentleness were so well blended, the simple kindness and heart-born courtesy that put every one at ease, and made the stranger forget that he was in a foreign land.

There are natures to which the sting of necessity seems requisite; which put forth all their energies only in conflict with adverse conditions, and languish and lose their spring when success has been attained and the path of progress lies plain and level before them. Crawford was not one of these. Hard work was the inevitable condition of his existence. He needed not the spur of want to overcome indolence, for in his whole body there was not one drop of indolent blood. He had toiled diligently and hopefully in his solitary studies, when there were few to praise and none to buy ; and now, when his genius was recognized, when he had gained a firm position, competence, and happiness, he toiled none the less enthusiastically. His spirits rose and his energies increased, just in proportion as his reputation advanced and the claims upon his time were multiplied. He drew from happiness the elements of growth, and found in peace the impulse to the most strenuous exertion.

From his return to Rome, in 1845, till his visit to this country in 1849, there are few incidents to record. His days flowed on in an unbroken, uneventful current. He sought no other refreshment, after the toils of the studio, than the happiness he found in his home. In the heats of summer, he usually spent a few weeks with his family in some one of the beautiful mountain retreats near Rome, amusing himself, and, at the same time, cultivating his eye, by sketching from nature. Nowhere was there a busier or a happier man. Commissions came to him in reasonable measure, and of a kind which gave full scope to his genius in the region of the purely beautiful. But there was still deep in his heart the sense of an unsatisfied want, and a longing to soar into a sphere of art not yet opened to him.

His masculine genius felt competent to deal with grander conceptions and loftier themes than those which had thus far occupied his time and hand. Stately forms, shapes of more than mortal port and stature, the majestic heroes of history, in garb and movement as they lived, yet touched with ideal light, floated before his mind’s eye, and he passionately desired to arrest and embody them in enduring marble or bronze.

He was an ardent lover of his country, long residence abroad only kindling his patriotism to a purer and brighter flame, and he longed for the opportunity to illustrate its history by his art, and to twine his own name with the memories of its great men. He was nearer the goal of his wishes than he imagined.

In 1849 he came to the United States with his family, and remained for several months. While he was here the State of Virginia advertised for plans for a monument to Washington, for which a liberal appropriation had been made by the Legislature. Crawford determined to enter the lists as a competitor, though the period within which plans were to be received had nearly expired when he heard of the proposition.

With characteristic ardor he began the work and completed the model in a wonderfully short time. The committee charged with the duty of making the selection found the superiority of his design over all others so obvious that, without a moment’s doubt or misgiving, the preference was awarded to it. His success gave him the greatest satisfaction, and he expressed it with the unaffected simplicity that was native to him. The design, combining an equestrian statue of Washington, with fulllength statues of several eminent citizens of Virginia, gave him the noblest range within the power of his art. He could now fully show what manner of artist he was. Here was work of the high and dignified character he had long wished for, enough in quantity to occupy him for many years, and such as, when successfully executed, would give him the most enduring reputation. Hardly had the glow and exaltation of this triumph passed away, when the emotion was renewed by a generous commission from the national government, for works in sculpture for the addition to the Capitol at Washington. When he returned to Rome, in 1850, it was with the feeling that he had nothing to regret in the past, and nothing to ask for in the future.

For the next six years Crawford’s life was one of unexampled activity ; the sum of his labors can hardly be paralleled in the whole history of art. Eight or ten spacious rooms, opening into each other and forming a noble studio adjoining his dwelling, were filled with workmen busily employed in transferring to marble the grand and lovely forms developed by his creative genius. Another apartment was added to the suite, expressly for the modelling of the equestrian statue of Washington, and the noble colossal figure of America, ordered for the dome of the Capitol. In addition to these great works, designs for the bronze doors of the Capitol and a bas-relief for its pediment, of almost colossal proportions, had been intrusted to him, while his other labors at this period were of such extent and variety as would alone have earned for him the praise of honorable industry.

The Beethoven, the James Otis, — at Mount Auburn, a figure of the highest merit, — and several other works, lovely embodiments of ideal and domestic subjects, were among the fruits of these crowded and brilliant years. Such was the activity of his temperament, and such was his pleasure in labor, that mere change of occupation gave him the relief which most men can find only in absolute rest. When exhausted by mental excitement and manual toil, he would leave his large designs, and relieve his wearied nerves and overtasked hand by some lighter labor, giving shape to some poetic fancy, or illustrating domestic affection by some figure or group.

When the cast of the equestrian statue of Washington was completed, the interest and admiration which it awakened both among the native and foreign residents in Rome were so great, and the visitors who pressed to see it came in such continuous throngs, that it became necessary to limit the admissions to one day in the week. The highest and most discriminating praise was bestowed upon it by those whose judgment was most trustworthy. When it was cast in bronze at Munich, it won from the cultivated taste and knowledge of that city an equal meed of applause.

The statue of Beethoven was cast in Munich in the early part of 1855. Its high merits as a work of art were fully recognized there, and mingled with this feeling was a strong sense of national pride, that the genius of the illustrious German composer was so appreciated in the distant land of America. When the casting was completed, and the bright, consummate figure appeared perfect from the mould, the event was celebrated by a musical and literary festival, the king and queen being present. Some of Beethoven’s productions were performed, and an original prologue in verse was recited. The statue, placed in the hall, crowned with flowers, and relieved against a background of dark green velvet, was the central point of interest.

Crawford came again to this country in 1856, mainly on business connected with his commissions from the United States and the State of Virginia. Never had he seemed more full of life and power and hope than during the brief period of this visit. His rich and energetic genius had been fully expanded by the sunshine of opportunity. Every look, every tone, every movement, were expressive of physical and intellectual vigor, of just self-reliance, and the calm consciousness of inward force. The shadow of an unsatisfied want had passed away from his face, he was no longer restless and abstracted under a sense of unemployed capacities. His growth in all good things was perceptible at a glance. With what pride we that loved him looked upon him, — we who had watched him from the beginning, and saw in him now only the realization of our hopes and the fulfilment of our predictions !

In the autumn he returned to Rome, leaving his family, but accompanied by his sister. During the last few weeks that he was in America,his friends had observedan inflammation and slight protrusion of the left eye ; but he made light of it and supposed it to be merely a temporary affection, which would pass away. But during the voyage and subsequent journey to Rome the trouble increased, the eye became painful and morbidly sensitive to light. Once more in his studio, be began to labor with his usual ardor and energy ; but, though the spirit was determined and the hand obedient, the eye was obstinately disobedient. His strong will, his vehement ambition, his warm heart struggled long and manfully against the infirmity, but in vain ; they were called to severer tasks, to unknown and fearful lessons. Who can measure the trial to such a spirit ? He laid aside the chisel for a brief interval, visiting his studios once or twice a day, directing and watching labors he could not share. A surgical examination was made, with no satisfactory results. By the advice of physicians and friends, he went to Paris to seek the best surgical skill which the world could furnish. Here, in January, 1857, he was joined by his wife, who had been summoned to meet him. The surgeons of Paris pronounced the disease to be a cancerous tumor, the root of which was in the brain,—a fearful sentence! for what earthly power could arrest or reach such an enemy to life ? The whole extent of their opinion was not revealed to him, and the light of hope still played about his future. After some weeks had passed without improvement, he was taken to London, to be put under the care of a surgeon who had made diseases of the kind under which he was suffering a subject of specia study, whose skill and devotion, however, proved unavailing against the terrible disorder. Slowly his vigorous frame and powerful constitution yielded to the inexorable foe. Suffering, weakness, inaction, were to him new teachings. He whose untiring hand had ever been so obedient to a creative imagination was now prostrate on a couch of pain, incapable of mental or bodily effort, racked through dreary days and dreary nights with sharp agony, each day adding something to the virulence of the disease, each day taking something from the power of resistance.

Yet under this new and bitter experience he was patient, uncomplaining, ever cheerful, watchful for others, and for their sakes concealing what was possible of his sufferings. His strong nature and hopeful spirit fought bravely and yielded only inch by inch. Life was dear to him, and with reason, for he had won all that makes life sweet to man. Fame, happiness, fortune, a noble past, a glorious future, — all were his. It was hard to be thus called away in the blaze of noon, long before the night had come, when the weary frame is ready to lay aside the burden of toil, and the grave is welcomed like the bed. Bitterly must he have thought of his unfinished works, of the dreams and visions that had not yet ripened into forms. But no murmur escaped his lips. Whatever anguish might have wrung his spirit, his words were hopeful, cheerful, consolatory. Serenely, calmly, resignedly, he trod the dark way. When it was told him that there was no longer any hope, he folded his hands, and bowed in meek submission to the will of God. On the loth of October, 1857, after a long year of suffering, the merciful summons came which set the spirit free. They that looked upon that tranquil face, now no longer wrung and worn with pain, felt that within that darkened chamber, where so long the lapse of time had been marked only by throbs of anguish, his noblest work had been achieved,— that there he had won, not earthly laurels, but celestial palms.

Crawford was about five feet ten inches in height, of an erect and vigorous frame, and all his movements expressed energy and decision. His complexion was of that florid health more common in English than American faces. His hair was brown, his eyes were blue, large, and expressive. The general expression of his countenance was grave, but it was readily lighted up by an animated smile. His constitution was vigorous, and his physical strength equal to the largest requirements of his art. His health had always been good, and few men have ever had more perfect and unbroken possession of all their mental and physical energies than he, as indeed the immense amount of his labors abundantly proves.

His character wrns perfectly transparent. He was a man of truth, energy, and simplicity, who went directly to the point, and spoke his mind decidedly and unreservedly. All this was obvious to the most casual observer, upon the slightest acquaintance. But, combined with these qualities, there were in him a depth and tenderness of feeling not readily discerned, nor lightly revealed. His manners were not at all times and under all conditions the exact interpreters of his character. For the first thirty years of his life he passed through much privation and struggle, and lived much alone. For general society so called he had little taste, and never seemed entirely at ease if by chance he mingled in its larger gatherings. On such occasions, there might be noticed in him a gravity and an abstracted air, which showed that his thoughts were not with the present. His natural temperament was impatient; he struggled against it manfully and generally with success; but sometimes an abruptness of manner and a vehemence of expression showed how much there was to be resisted. His early friends could remark in him, as he grew older, a change like that which Southey has touched upon in his lines upon the Holly-Tree : —

No man was less vain than Crawford ; but he had a perfect consciousness of his powers, which, from his frankness, he took no pains to conceal. The fame he finally won was anticipated by him with a proud confidence. With so much genius, so much self-reliance, and so impatient a spirit, he naturally chafed and fretted inwardly at being obliged to wait so long for “ the patronage of opportunity ” ; and this secret unrest and struggle revealed itself in an occasional coldness, almost sternness, of manner, by which strangers were sometimes repelled, and his friends sometimes puzzled.

But professional success and domestic happiness came with a benignant and soothing touch to the brave, true, deep-hearted man. As he grew older, his nature mellowed, and his manner grew softer and gentler. His spirits rose, his heart expanded, his sympathies became more comprehensive and more easily moved, his smiles more beaming and frequent, his manners more and more expressive of his warmth of heart and tenderness of feeling; “hope elevated and joy brightened ” him. His moral nature was as pure as his genius was high. The temptations to which the sensitive organization of artists exposes them had no power over him. The beauty which he worshipped was not an earthly enchantress, but a heavenly vision. His genius had “angelic wings and fed on manna.” The marble in which he wrought was not more insensible to the seductions of sense than was he. Nor was he the slave of those dainty and luxurious habits, into which artists are apt to fall, and which are but a refined and subtle form of selfishness, never so dangerous as when it invades us with taste as an ally. His manner of life was always simple, his wants were few and easily gratified. In the severe simplicity of his personal tastes, in his concentrated and reserved character, and in his devotion to his art, there was something that reminds one of Michael Angelo. As a husband and father, he was the most faithful of men.

He was free from another class of infirmities to which artists are prone, not because they are more imperfect than other men, but because the lines of comparison between artists are more sharply drawn. He had no taint of envy, and nothing of that subtle form of vanity which seeks its own food by preying upon another’s reputation. He did not often speak of other artists or their works, but when he did it was with a generous recognition of whatever was excellent in them. Of himself and his own productions he rarely spoke. He had, as we have seen, given himself to art from his boyhood, with an absorbing devotion, which left him little time or thought for any other object. His wise self-appreciation would have energetically disclaimed the title of a scholar ; yet his range of reading had been much wider, and his attainments greater, than was generally supposed even by those who knew him well. In his boyhood and youth, he was an enthusiastic and indiscriminate reader. Homer, Shakespeare, Byron, and Shelley were his favorites, but translations of the best Greek and Latin authors, and a pretty wide range of English poetry, history, biography, and books of travels, were read with avidity and profit. After he went abroad, he acquired the French and Italian languages, — the latter perfectly. — and, during the long and lonely years of his early residence in Rome, reading was a constant resource to him. With the lives and works of artists he was entirely familiar. It was only occasionally and by accident, as it were, that these attainments and this cultivation were revealed.

Crawfoid never talked for effect, and utterly disdained the ephemeral triumphs of society. Though he was a man of strong affections, tenderly attached to his friends, and capable of making great sacrifices and efforts for them, he had not a very social nature. He did not depend for happiness upon the companionship or society of others.

In the winter of 1847-48, I passed three months in Rome, and saw him almost daily. I would sometimes call upon him, and tempt him away from his studio for a long walk. He generally complied with my proposal, but I should not have continued to encroach upon his valuable time, had I not felt that it was a kindness to him to take him from his toil. It was only in these walks that I found out the resources of his mind, and the extent of his knowledge. The various objects that we passed in the city and its neighborhood suggested to him anecdotes and interesting traits, brought from the stores of a tenacious memory, and his criticisms upon architecture, sculpture, and painting were highly valuable.

As an artist, Crawford stands, beyond all question or controversy, in the first rank. That gift of invention, without which judgment is cold, taste feeble, and mechanical skill lifeless,— that divine inspiration which we recognize as a kindred element in productions of the highest class, whether in poetry, painting, or sculpture, — had been bestowed upon him in large measure. His works were the expressions and emanations of a creative power, and not merely the labors of a cunning and patient hand. In him, the processes of his art came from within ; the grand and beautiful forms which he has left iu marble or bronze existed first as ideas in the mind. By them he was inspired; they seized upon him with a sort of possession, and constrained the docile hand to do their bidding. In modelling he was remarkable for the fervid rapidity with which he wrought ; the half-conscious clay grew beneath his hands, as if in obedience to a self-contained principle of life. He labored as if to free himself from a presence by which he was haunted, and not to embody a vision by which he was wooed.

This high inventive power was always under the control of sound judgment and good taste. His works are never exaggerated, never fantastic, never grotesque. He understands and respects the necessary limitations of sculpture, and keeps carefully within that range. He knew that, in attempting to produce strictly picturesque effects in sculpture, he could only forfeit the essential excellence of his art, without securing that to which he aspired. The fascinating faults of Bernini and his followers never seduced him into imitation. He is at once the most modern and the most Greek of sculptors, — modern, in his sympathy with the age in which he lived, and his power of embodying its ideas ; Greek — in the purity of his forms, and the serene atmosphere of repose that hangs over even his most animated works. He is quite as remarkable for the wide range of his creative genius as for its absolute power. His variety and versatility, combined with such uniform excellence, constitute his highest claims to admiration. In most sculptors, even of the first class, it is easy to see that their genius has a peculiar and congenial sphere, and, when it wanders, betrays something of compulsive and laborious flight. Canova, for instance, is at home in the region of the graceful and the beautiful; Thorwaldsen, in that of the grand and heroic ; neither can fully secure the success which spontaneously lights upon the others work. But in Crawford we mark no such limitation. He is equally admirable in the embodiment of ideal loveliness, in the expression of domestic tenderness, in the interpretation of Christian struggle and aspiration, and in the reproduction of the spirit of history in the forms and faces of its representative men. We are equally awed by the sublimity of his colossal America, stirred by the breathing power and majesty of his Washington, Beethoven, and Otis, and moved by the pathos of his Adam and Eve, the touching tenderness of his Children in the Wood, and the exquisite beauty of his Peri. His male figures express all the dignity and power which art exacts ; his female forms have the flowing outline and undulating grace which belong to the feminine type; and his children breathe all the frolic, joy, and spontaneous movement, which the unworn sense of life inspires.

Like those of all men of genius, his works are unequal. Patient mediocrity, which copies but does not create, can easily attain the praise of uniformity, but the light of inspiration is subject to eclipse and wane. Kvery imaginative artist is conscious of moods more or less happy, feels sometimes the upward spring, and sometimes the depressing weight. Of the great number of works which Crawford designed or executed, there is not one which docs not bear the stamp and impress of his peculiar power ; but to say that they bear it in equal measure is a judgment against which he himself would have eagerly protested. It is no disparagement to the genius of Sir Walter Scott, to admit that the Black Dwarf or the Surgeon’s Daughter is inferior to Ivanhoe or the Bride of Lammermoor.

In Crawford’s works there are not always that minute finish and patient elaboration of details which an unripe taste in art is apt to overvalue. His inventive faculty was so strong, ideas darted into his mind with such rapidity, that he could not linger over the meshes of a net or the folds of a veil with the plodding assiduity of a Chinese carver in ivory. Before one ideal form was embodied, another rose before him, with a beauty of promise upon its brow like the light of Phosphorus in the morning sky. His inspiration was “as a burning fire shut up in his bones, and he could not stay.”

In 1843 he wrote: “I regret that I have not a hundred hands, to keep pace with the workings of my mind.” This was with him not a rhetorical flight, still less an effusion of vanity; it was the simple expression of a strong feeling. Whenever he was willing to lay constraint upon his fervid spirit, no one could finish more completely or carefully than he did. A marble bust of Mrs. Crawford, over which we may well suppose his chisel lingered lovingly with a reluctance to leave its work, is a proof of this. Nothing in ancient or modern art surpasses the exquisite elaboration of this work, and the patient skill with which the drapery and embellishments are represented.

All Crawford’s works which I have seen, whether historical or ideal, have the stamp of vital power. The figure seems to have been arrested at a point of transition between two continuous states of existence. We see many works in marble in which the proportions of nature are duly preserved, and the forms of life are accurately rendered, but the spirit of life is not there. They want movement and expression, and if changed into flesh, they would be dead bodies and not living forms. But the statues of Crawford remind us, by their life and animation, of the best productions of Grecian art. The breast seems to heave, the lips to move, the nostrils to dilate; the marble or bronze is not merely a correct transcript of the human form and face, but it is penetrated and informed with the soul of humanity.

To comprehend the full measure of Crawford’s genius, and to learn the exact rank he is entitled to hold as an artist, we must bear in mind the comparatively early age at which he died, and the fact that his active professional life extended over little more than twenty years. This consideration is particularly important when applied to the art of sculpture, because of the nature of the materials in which it works. A painter may shut himself up in his studio, and with his brushes, paints, and canvas, all costing but a few dollars, produce a work which shall make him immortal; but a sculptor of equal merit must wait much longer for the opportunity to prove his power, because of the costliness of his materials. The marble or bronze in which a great conception is embodied is so expensive that untried and unknown hands cannot be trusted with it.

A sculptor must show his passport even to generous opportunity. He must creep before he can walk, he must walk before he can fly. By works of lower range and inferior scope, he must have given proof of the ability that is in him, before he can command the means of the highest success. Thus it has rarely happened that a sculptor receives a commission for a work of the highest class before the age of thirty-five, and Crawford laid down the chisel to die at forty-three. All the sculptors of modern times with whom he would naturally be compared lived to an age much beyond his. Thorwaldsen died at seventy-three, Canova at sixty-five, Bartolini at seventytwo, Rauch at eighty, Dannecker at eighty-three, Flaxman at seventy-one, Chantrey at fifty-nine, Gibson at seventy-six, and David at seventy. There is not one of these eminent artists, who, at the age of forty-three, had done as much as Crawford did, taking the amount and the quality of the work together, — not one who, if he had been called from his earthly labors at that age, would have left so glorious a record behind. Reasoning from analogy, and in view of the fact that nearly all the greatest works in sculpture have been achieved after the artist had reached the age of forty, is it too much to say, that had Crawford lived to the appointed age of threescore and ten, and gone on as he had been going on, he would have left behind him no equal name in modern sculpture ?

In his industry, in the amount of what he accomplished, few sculptors can be compared with him. During his twenty years of professional life, he finished upward of sixty works, — many of them colossal, — and left about fifty sketches in plaster, and designs of various kinds.

And the stream of this strong, deep, and vigorous life was arrested so early by the touch of death ! If there were not beyond that vault of blue a world where shapes of more perfect beauty are revealed to finer faculties, — where all the grandeur and loveliness of earth are reproduced, bathed in softer lights and touched with lovelier hues, — something of murmur, something of bitterness, might mingle with the tears with which we recall that lifeless hand, that silent chisel, those unfinished works. But even this emotion comes from the weakness of the natural heart. There is another voice, there is a higher teaching. These tell us that, in this our mortal state, shortness of duration is not of necessity imperfection, and that a life like that we are commemorating, dignified by such high aspirations, so rich in accomplishment, so noble in self-government, is a finished result, cut off when it may be. That life alone is fragmentary in which, through indolence, infirmity of will, or self-indulgent habits, the work is not done that might have been clone.

He rests from his labors ; death alone had the power to make him rest. His works follow him ; his example follows him, too. Hot after life’s fitful fever, but after life’s duties well discharged, its burdens nobly sustained, its temptations faithfully resisted, he sleeps well. In sadness and sorrow we leave him in his deep repose, — but not in sadness and sorrow alone. Some throbs of gratitude mingle with the grief that weighs upon the heart,—gratitude for what he was, as well as what he did ; for the noble works he has left behind ; for the teachings of his life ; for the grandeur of his death.