also to be observed that there is in the Christian cemeteries on the whole a remarkable absence of heathen imagery,–less by far than might have been expected in the works of those surrounded by heathen modes of thought and expression. The influence of Christianity, however, so changed the current of ideas, and so affected the feelings of those whom it called to new life, that heathenism became to them, as it were, a dead letter, devoid of all that could rouse the fancy, or affect the inner thought. A great gulf was fixed between them and it,–a gulf which for three centuries, at least, charity alone could bridge over. It was not till near the fourth century that heathenism began, to any marked extent, to modify the character and to corrupt the purity of Christianity.
And with this is connected one of the most important historic facts with regard to the Art of the catacombs. In no one of the pictures of the earlier centuries is support or corroboration to be found of the distinctive dogmas and peculiar claims of the Roman Church. We have already spoken of the pictures that have been supposed to have symbolic reference to the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and have shown how little they require such an interpretation. The exaltation of St. Peter above the other Apostles is utterly unknown in the works of the first three centuries; in instances in which he is represented, it is as the companion of St. Paul. The Virgin never appears as the subject of any special reverence. Sometimes, as in pictures of the Magi bringing their gifts, she is seen with the child Jesus upon her lap. No attempt to represent the Trinity (an irreverence which did not become familiar till centuries later) exists in the catacombs, and no sign of the existence of the doctrine of the Trinity is to be met with in them, unless in works of a very late period. Of the doctrines of Purgatory and Hell, of Indulgences, of Absolution, no trace is to be found. Of the worship of the saints there are few signs before the fourth century,–and it was not until after this period that figures of the saints, such as those spoken of heretofore, in the account of the crypt of St. Cecilia, became a common adornment of the sepulchral walls. The use of the _nimbus_, or glory round the head, was not introduced into Christian Art before the end of the fourth century. It was borrowed from Paganism, and was adopted, with many other ideas and forms of representation, from the same source, after Romanism had taken the place of Paganism as the religion of the Western Empire. The faith of the catacombs of the first three centuries was Christianity, not Romanism.
In the later catacombs, the change of belief, which was wrought outside of them, is plainly visible in the change in the style of Art. Byzantine models stiffened, formalized, and gradually destroyed the spirit of the early paintings. Richness of vestment and mannerism of expression took the place of simplicity and straightforwardness. The Art which is still the popular Art in Italy began to exhibit its lower round of subjects. Saints of all kinds were preferred to the personages of Scripture. The time of suffering and trial having passed, men stirred their slow imaginations with pictures of the crucifixion and the passion. Martyrdoms began to be represented; and the series–not even yet, alas! come to an end–of the coarse and bloody atrocities of painting, pictures worthy only of the shambles, beginning here, marked the decline of piety and the absence of feeling. Love and veneration for the older and simpler works disappeared, and through many of the ancient pictures fresh graves were dug, that faithless Christians might be buried near those whom they esteemed able to intercede for and protect them. These graves hollowed out in the wall around the tomb of some saint or martyr became so common, that the term soon arose of a burial _intra_ or _retro sanctos_, _among_ or _behind the saints_. One of the most precious pictures in the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, precious from its peculiar character, is thus in some of its most important parts utterly destroyed. It represents, so far as is to be seen now, two men in the attitude of preaching to flocks who stand near them,–and if the eye is not deceived by the uncertain light, and by the dimness of the injured colors, a shower of rain, typical of the showers of divine grace, is falling upon the sheep: on one who is listening intently, with head erect, the shower falls abundantly; on another who listens, but with less eagerness, the rain falls in less abundance; on a third who listens, but continues to eat, with head bent downward, the rain falls scantily; while on a fourth, who has turned away to crop the grass, scarcely a drop descends. Into this parable in painting the irreverence of a succeeding century cut its now rifled and forlorn graves.
But the Art of the catacombs, after its first age, was not confined to painting. Many sculptured sarcophagi have been found within the crypts, and in the crypts of the churches connected with the cemeteries. Here was again the adoption of an ancient custom; and in many instances, indeed, the ancient sarcophagi themselves were employed for modern bodies, and the old heathens turned out for the new Christians. Others were obviously the work of heathen artists employed for Christian service; and others exhibit, even more plainly than the later paintings, some of the special doctrines of the Church. The whole character of this sculpture deserves fuller investigation than we can give to it here. The collection of these first Christian works in marble that has recently been made in the Lateran Museum affords opportunity for its careful study,–a study interesting not only in an artistic, but in an historic and doctrinal point of view.
The single undoubted Christian statue of early date that has come down to us is that of St. Hippolytus, Bishop of Porto, which was found in 1551, near the Basilica of St. Lawrence. Unfortunately, it was much mutilated, and has been greatly restored; but it is still of uncommon interest, not only from its excellent qualities as a work of Art, but also from the engraving upon its side of a list of the works of the Saint, and of a double paschal cycle. This, too, is now in the Christian Museum at the Lateran.
Another branch of early Christian Art, which deserves more attention than it has yet received, is that of the mosaics of the catacombs. Their character is widely different from that of those with which a few centuries afterwards the popes splendidly adorned their favorite churches. But we must leave mosaics, gems, lamps, and all the lesser articles of ornament and of common household use that have been found in the graves, and which bring one often into strange familiarity with the ways and near sympathy with the feelings of those who occupied the now empty cells. Most of these trifles seem to have been buried with the dead as the memorials of a love that longed to reach beyond death with the expressions of its constancy and its grief. Among them have been found the toys of little children,– their jointed ivory dolls, their rattles, their little rings, and bells,–full, even now, of the sweet sounds of long-ago household joys, and of the tender recollections of household sorrows. In looking at them, one is reminded of the constant recurrence of the figure of the Good Shepherd bearing his lamb, painted upon the walls of these ancient chapels and crypts.
It was thus that the dawn of Christian Art lighted up the darkness of the catacombs. While the Roman nobles were decorating their villas and summer-houses with gay figures, scenes from the ancient stories, and representations of licentious fancies,–while the emperors were paving the halls of their great baths with mosaic portraits of the famous prize-fighters and gladiators,–the Christians were painting the walls of their obscure cemeteries with imagery which expressed the new lessons of their faith, and which was the type and the beginning of the most beautiful works that the human imagination has conceived, and the promise of still more beautiful works yet to be created for the delight and help of the world.
[To be continued.]
* * * * *
BEATRICE
How was I worthy so divine a loss,
Deepening my midnights, kindling all my morns? Why waste such precious wood to make my cross, Such far-sought roses for my crown of thorns?
And when she came, how earned I such a gift? Why spend on me, a poor earth-delving mole, The fireside sweetnesses, the heavenward lift, The hourly mercy of a woman’s soul?
Ah, did we know to give her all her right, What wonders even in our poor clay were done! It is not Woman leaves us to our night, It is our earth that grovels from her sun.
Our nobler cultured fields and gracious domes We whirl too oft from her who still shines on To light in vain our caves and clefts, the homes Of night-bird instincts pained till she be gone.
Still must this body starve our souls with shade; But when Death makes us what we were before, Then shall her sunshine all our depths invade, And not a shadow stain heaven’s crystal floor.
METEMPSYCHOSIS.
“The sense of the world is short,–
Long and various the report,–
To love and be beloved:
Men and gods have not outlearned it; And how oft soe’er they’ve turned it,
‘Tis not to be improved!”–EMERSON.
Mr. Vane and Mr. Payne both were eagerly describing to me their arrangements for an excursion to the Lake. I did not doubt it would be charming, but neither of these two gentlemen would be endurable on such a drive, and each was determined to ask me first. I stood pushing apart the crushed flowers of my bouquet, in which all the gardener’s art vindicated itself by making the airy grace of Nature into a flat, unmeaning mosaic.
In the next room the passionate melancholy of a waltz was mocked and travestied by the frantic and ungrateful whirl that only Americans are capable of executing; the music lived alone in upper air; of men and dancing it was all unaware; the involved cadences rolled away over the lawn, shook the dew-drooped roses on their stems, and went upward into the boundless moonlight to its home. Through all, Messrs. Vane and Payne harangued me about the splendid bowling-alley at the Lake, the mountain-strawberries, the boats, the gravel-walks! At last it became amusing to see how skilfully they each evaded and extinguished the other; it was a game of chess, and he was to be victor who should first ask me; if one verged upon the question, the other quickly interposed some delightful circumstance about the excursion, and called upon the first to corroborate his testimony; neither, in Alexander’s place, would have done anything but assure the other that the Gordian knot was very peculiarly tied, and quite tight.
Presently Harry Tempest stood by my side. I became aware that he had heard the discussion. He took my bouquet from my hand, and stood smelling it, while my two acquaintance went on. I was getting troubled and annoyed; Mr. Tempest’s presence was not composing. I played with my fan nervously; at length I dropped it. Harry Tempest picked it up, and, as I stooped, our eyes met; he gave me the fan, and, turning from Messrs. Vane and Payne, said, very coolly,–
“The Lake is really a charming place; I think, Miss Willing, you would find a carriage an easier mode of conveyance, so far, than your pony; shall I bring one for you? or do you still prefer to ride?”
This was so quietly done, that it seemed to me really a settled affair of some standing that I was to go to the Lake with Mr. Tempest. Mr. Vane sauntered off to join the waltzers; Mr. Payne suddenly perceived Professor Rust at his elbow and began to talk chemistry. I said, as calmly as I had been asked,–
“I will send you word some time tomorrow; I cannot tell just now.”
Here some of my friends came to say good night; my duties as hostess drew me toward the door; Harry Tempest returned my bouquet and whispered, or rather said in that tone of society that only the person addressed can hear,–
“Clara! let it be a drive!”
My head bent forward as he spoke, for I could not look at him; when I raised it, he was gone.
The music still soared and floated on through the windows into the moonlight; one by one the older part of my guests left me; only a few of the gayest and youngest still persevered in that indefatigable waltz, the oval room looking as if a score of bubbles were playing hop and skip,–for in the crinoline expansions the gentlemen’s black pen-and-ink outlines were all lost. At length even these went; the music died; its soul went up with a long, broken cry; its body was put piecemeal into several green bags, shouldered by stout Germans, and carried quite out of sight. The servants gathered and set away such things as were most needful to be arranged, put out the lights, locked the doors and windows, and went to bed. Mrs. Reading, my good housekeeper, begged me to go up stairs.
“You look so tired, Miss Clara!”
“So I am, Delia!” said I. “I will rest. Go to bed you, and I shall come presently.”
I heard her heavy steps ascend the stairs; I heard the door of her room close, creaking. How could I sleep? I knew very well what the coming day would bring; I knew why Harry Tempest preferred to drive. I had need of something beside rest, for sleep was impossible; I needed calmness, quiet, enough poise to ask myself a momentous question, and be candidly answered. This quiet was not to be found in my room, I well knew; every bit of its furniture, its drapery, was haunted, and in any hour of emotion the latent ghosts came out upon me in swarms; the quaint mandarins with crooked eyes and fat cheeks had eyed me a thousand times when Elsie’s arm was clasped over my neck, and with her head upon my shoulder we lay and laughed, when we should have been dressing, at those Chinese chintz curtains. Elsie was gone; if she had been here, I had been at once counselled. Rest there, dead Past!–I could not go to my bedroom.
The green-house opened from the large parlor by a sash-door. At this season of the year the glazed roof and sides were withdrawn or lowered, but at night the lower sashes were drawn up and fastened, lest incursive cats or dogs should destroy my flowers. The great Newfoundland that was our guard slept on the floor here, since it was the weakest spot for any ill-meaning visitors to enter at.
I drew the long skirt of my lace dress up over my hair, and quietly went into the green-house. The lawn and its black firs tempted me, but there was moonlight on the lawn, and moonlight I cannot bear; it burns my head more fiercely than any noon sun; it scorches my eyelids; it exhausts and fevers me; it excites my brain, and now I looked for calm. This the odor of the flowers and their pure expression promised me. A tall, thick-leaved camellia stood half-way down the border, and before it was a garden-chair. The moonlight shed no ray there, but through the sashes above streamed cool and fair over the blooms that clung to the wall and adorned the parterres and vases; for this house was set after a fashion of my own, a winter-garden under glass; no stages filled the centre. It was laid out with no stiff rule, but here and there in urns of stone, or in pyramidal stands, gorgeous or fragrant plants ran at their own wild will, while over all the wall and along the woodwork of the roof trailed passion-flowers, roses, honeysuckles, fragrant clematis, ivy, and those tropic vines whose long dead names belie their fervid luxuriance and fantastic growth; great trees of lemon and orange interspaced the vines in shallow niches of their own, and the languid drooping tresses of a golden acacia flung themselves over and across the deep glittering mass of a broad-leaved myrtle.
As I sat down in the chair, Pan reared his dusky length from his mat, and came for a recognition. It was wont to be something more positive than caresses; but to-night neither sweet biscuit nor savory bit of confectionery appeared in the hand that welcomed him; yet he was as loving as ever, and, with a grim sense of protection, flung himself at my feet, drew a long breath, and slept. I dared not yet think; I rested my head against the chair, and breathed in the odor of the flowers: the delicate scent of tea-roses; the Southern perfume, fiery and sweet, like Greek wine, of profuse heliotropes,–a perfume that gives you thirst, and longing, and regret. I turned my head toward the orange-trees; Southern, also, but sensuous and tropic, was the breath of those thick white stars,–a tasted odor. Not so the cool air that came to me from a diamond-shaped bed of Parma violets, kept back so long from bloom that I might have a succession of them; these were the last, and their perfume told it, for it was at once a caress and a sigh. I breathed the gale of sweetness till every nerve rested and every pulse was tranquil as the air without.
I heard a little stir. I looked up. A stately calla, that reared one marble cup from its gracious cool leaves, was bending earthward with a slow and voluntary motion; from the cup glided a fair woman’s shape; snowy, sandalled feet shone from under the long robe; hair of crisped gold crowned the Greek features. It was Hypatia. A little shiver crept through a white tea-rose beside the calla; its delicate leaves fluttered to the ground; a slight figure, a sweet, sad face, with melancholy blue eyes and fair brown hair, parted the petals. La Valliere! She gazed in my eyes.
“Poor little child!” said she. “Have you a treatise against love, Hypatia?”
The Greek of Egypt smiled and looked at me also. “I have discovered that the steps of the gods are upon wool,” answered she; “if love had a beginning to sight, should not we also foresee its end?”
“And when one foresees the end, one dies,” murmured La Valliere.
“Bah!” exclaimed Marguerite of Valois, from the heart of a rose-red camellia,–“not at all, my dear; one gets a new lover!”
“Or the new lover gets you,” said a dulcet tone, tipped with satire, from the red lips of Mary of Scotland,–lips that were just now the petals of a crimson carnation.
“Philosophy hath a less troubled sea wherein to ride than the stormy fluctuance of mortal passion; Plato is diviner than Ovid,” said a puritanic, piping voice from a coif that was fashioned out of the white camellia-blooms behind my chair, and circled the prim beauty of Lady Jane Grey.
“Are you a woman, or one of the Sphinx’s children?” said a stormy, thrilling, imperious accent, from the wild purple and scarlet flower of the Strelitzia, that gradually shaped itself into gorgeous Oriental robes, rolled in waves of splendor from the lithe waist and slender arms of a dark woman, no more young,–sallow, thin, but more graceful than any bending bough of the desert acacia, and with eyes like midnight, deep, glowing, flashing, melting into dew, as she looked at the sedate lady of England.
“You do not know love!” resumed she. “It is one draught,–a jewel fused in nectar; drink the pearl and bring the asp!”
Her words brought beauty; the sallow face burnt with living scarlet on lip and cheek; the tiny pearl-grains of teeth flashed across the swarth shade above her curving, passionate mouth; the wide nostrils expanded; the great eyes flamed under her low brow and glittering coils of black hair.
“Poor Octavia!” whispered La Valliere. Lady Jane Grey took up her breviary and read.
“After all, you died!” said Hypatia.
“I lived!” retorted Cleopatra.
“Lived and loved,” said a dreamy tone from the hundred leaves of a spotless La Marque rose; and the steady, “unhasting, unresting” soul of Thekla looked out from that centreless flower, in true German guise of brown braided tresses, deep blue eyes like forget-me-nots, sedate lips, and a straight nose.
“I have lived, and loved, and cut bread and butter,” solemnly pronounced a mountain-daisy, assuming the broad features of a fraeulein.
Cleopatra used an Egyptian oath. Lady Jane Grey put down her breviary and took up Plato. Marguerite of Valois laughed outright. Hypatia put a green leaf over Charlotte, with the air of a high-priestess, and extinguished her.
“Who does not love cannot lose,” mused La Valliere.
“Who does not love neither has nor gains,” said Hypatia. “The dilemma hath two sides, and both gain and loss are problematic. It is the ideal of love that enthralls us, not the real.”
“Hush! you white-faced Greek! It was not an ideal; it was Mark Antony. By Isis! does a dream fight, and swear, and kiss?”
“The Navarrese did; and France dreamed he was my master,–not I!” laughed Marguerite.
“This is most weak stuff for goodly and noble women to foster,” grimly uttered a flame-colored hawk’s-bill tulip, that directly assumed a ruff and an aquiline nose.
Mary of Scotland passed her hand about her fair throat. “Where is Leicester’s ring?” said she.
The Queen did not hear, but went on. “Truly, you make as if it was the intent of women to be trodden under foot of men. She that ruleth herself shall rule both princes and nobles, I wot. Yet I had done well to marry. Love or no love, I would the house of Hanover had waged war with one of mine own blood; I hate those fair, fat Guelphs!”
“Love hath sometimes the thorn alone, the rose being blasted in bud,” uttered a sweet and sonorous voice with a little nasal accent, out of the myrtle-boughs that starred with bloom her hair, and swept the hem of her green dress.
“Sweet soul, wast thou not, then, sated upon sonnets?” said Mary of Scotland, in a stage aside.
“Do not the laurels overgrow the thorn?” said La Valliere, 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 Valliere.
“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 plantae adhaereret”—-
“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 Mueller 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 Duerer’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 Steinhaueser, the lovely funereal monument, inspired by gratitude, which Ranch 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?
Have you ever strolled from the inn at Lucerne, on a pleasant afternoon, along the Zurich road, to the old General’s garden, where stands the colossal lion designed by Thorwaldsen, to keep fresh the brave renown of the Swiss guard who perished in defence of the royal family of France during the massacre of the Revolution? Carved from the massive sandstone, the majestic animal, with the fatal spear in his side, yet loyal in his vigil over the royal shield, is a grand image of fidelity unto death. The stillness, the isolation, the vivid creepers festooning the rocks, the clear mirror of the basin, into which trickle pellucid streams, reflecting the vast proportions of the enormous lion, the veteran Swiss, who acts as _cicerone_, the adjacent chapel with its altar-cloth wrought by one of the fair descendants of the Bourbon king and queen for whom these victims perished, the hour, the memories, the admixture of Nature and Art, convey a unique impression, in absolute contrast with such white effigies, for instance, as in the dusky precincts of Santa Croce droop over the sepulchre of Alfieri, or with the famous bronze boar in the Mercato Nuevo of Florence, or the ethereal loveliness of that sweet scion of the English nobility, moulded by Chantrey in all the soft and lithe grace of childhood, holding a contented dove to her bosom.
Even as the subject of taste, independently of historical diversities, sculpture presents every degree of the meretricious, the grotesque, and the beautiful,–more emphatically, because more palpably, than is observable in painting. The inimitable Grecian standard is an immortal precedent; the Mediaeval carvings embody the rude Teutonic truthfulness; where Canova provoked comparison with the antique, as in the Perseus and Venus, his more gross ideal is painfully evident. How artificial seems Bernini in contrast with Angelo! How minutely expressive are the terra-cotta images of Spain! What a climax of absurdity teases the eye in the monstrosities in stone which draw travellers in Sicily to the eccentric nobleman’s villa, near Palermo! Who does not shrink from the French allegory and horrible melodrama of Roubillac’s monument to Miss Nightingale, in Westminster Abbey? How like Horace Walpole to dote on Ann Conway’s canine groups! We actually feel sleepy, as we examine the little black marble Somnus of the Florence Gallery, and electrified with the first sight of the Apollo, and won to sweet emotion in the presence of Nymphs, Graces, and the Goddess of Beauty, when, shaped by the hand of genius, they seem the ethereal types of that:
—-“common clay ta’en from the common earth, Moulded by God and tempered by the tears Of angels to the perfect form of woman.”
Yet the distinctive element in the pleasure afforded by sculpture is tranquillity,–a quiet, contemplative delight; somewhat of awe chastens admiration; a feeling of peace hallows sympathy; and we echo the poet’s sentiment,–
“I do feel a mighty calmness creep
Over my heart, which can no longer borrow Its hues from chance or change,–those children of to-morrow.”
It is this fixedness and placidity, conveying the impression of fate, death, repose, or immortality, which render sculpture so congenial as commemorative of the departed. Even quaint wooden effigies, like those in St. Mary’s Church at Chester, with the obsolete peaked beards, ruffs, and broadswords, accord with the venerable associations of a Mediaeval tomb; while marble figures, typifying Grief, Poetry, Fame, or Hope, brooding over the lineaments of the illustrious dead, seem, of all sepulchral decorations, the most apt and impressive. We remember, after exploring the plain of Ravenna on an autumn day, and rehearsing the famous battle in which the brave young Gaston de Foix fell, how the associations of the scene and story were defined and deepened as we gazed on the sculptured form of a recumbent knight in armor, preserved in the academy of the old city; it seemed to bring back and stamp with brave renown forever the gallant soldier who so long ago perished there in battle. In Cathedral and Parthenon, under the dome of the Invalides, in the sequestered parish church or the rural cemetery, what image so accords with the sad reality and the serene hope of humanity, as the adequate marble personification on sarcophagus and beneath shrine, in mausoleum or on turf-mound?
“His palms infolded on his breast,
There is no other thought express’d But long disquiet merged in rest.”
In truth, it is for want of comprehensive perception that we take so readily for granted the limited scope of this glorious art. There is in the Grecian mythology alone a remarkable variety of character and expression, as perpetuated by the statuary; and when to her deities we add the athletes, charioteers, and marble portraits, a realm of diverse creations is opened. Indeed, to the average modern mind, it is the statues of Grecian divinities that constitute the poetic charm of her history; abstractly, we regard them with the poet:–
“Their gods? what were their gods?
There’s Mars, all bloody-haired; and Hercules, Whose soul was in his sinews; Pluto, blacker Than his own hell; Vulcan, who shook his horns At every limp he took; great Bacchus rode Upon a barrel; and in a cockle-shell
Neptune kept state; then Mercury was a thief; Juno a shrew; Pallas a prude, at best;
And Venus walked the clouds in search of lovers; Only great Jove, the lord and thunderer, Sat in the circle of his starry power
And frowned ‘I will!’ to all.”
Not in their marble beauty do they thus ignobly impress us,–but calm, fair, strong, and immortal. “They seem,” wrote Hazlitt, “to have no sympathy with us, and not to want our admiration. In their faultless excellence they appear sufficient to themselves.”
In the sculptor’s art, more than on the historian’s page, lives the most glorious memory of the classic past. A visit to the Vatican by torchlight endears even these poor traditional deities forever.
On lofty ceilings vivid frescoes glow, Auroras beam,
The steeds of Neptune through the waters go. Or Sibyls dream.
As in the flickering torchlight shadows weaved Illusions wild,
Methought Apollo’s bosom slightly heaved And Juno smiled.
Aerial Mercuries in bronze upspring, Dianas fly,
And marble Cupids to the Psyches cling Without a sigh.
To this variety in unity, this wealth of antique genius, Crawford brought the keen relish of an observant and the aptitude of a creative mind. His taste in Art was eminently catholic; he loved the fables and the personages of Greece because of this very diversity of character,–the freedom to delineate human instincts and passions under a mythological guise,–just as Keats prized the same themes as giving broad range to his fanciful muse. A list of our prolific sculptor’s works is found to include the entire circle of subjects and styles appropriate to his art–first, the usual classic themes, of which his first remarkable achievement was the Orpheus; then a series of Christian or religious illustrations, from Adam and Saul to Christ at the Well of Samaria; next, individual portraits; a series of domestic figures, such as the “Children in the Wood,” or “Truant Boys”; and, finally, what may be termed national statuary, of which Beethoven and Washington are eminent exemplars. Like Thorwaldsen, Crawford excelled in _basso-rilievo_, and was a remarkable pictorial sculptor. Having made early and intense studies of the antique, he as carefully observed Nature; few statuaries have more keenly noted the action of childhood or equestrian feats, so that the limbs and movement of the sweetest of human and the noblest of brute creatures were critically known to him. In sculpture, we believe that a great secret of the highest success lies in an intuitive eclecticism, whereby the faultless graces of the antique are combined with just observation of Nature. Without correct imitative facility, a sculptor wanders from the truth and the fact of visible things; without ideality, he makes but a mechanical transcript; without invention, he but repeats conventional traits. The desirable medium, the effective principle, has been well defined by the author of “Scenes and Thoughts in Europe”:– “Art does not merely copy Nature; it _cooeperates_ with her, it makes palpable her finest essence, it reveals the spiritual source of the corporeal by the perfection of its incarnations.” That Crawford invariably kept himself to “the height of this great argument” it were presumptuous to assert; but that he constantly approached such an ideal, and that he sometimes seized its vital principle, the varied and expressive forms yet conserved in his studio at Rome emphatically attest. He had obtained command of the vocabulary of his art; in expressing it, like all men who strive largely, he was unequal. Some of his creations are far more felicitous than others; he sometimes worked too fast, and sometimes undertook what did not greatly inspire him; but when we reflect on the limited period of his artist-life, on the intrepid advancement of its incipient stages under the pressure of narrow means and comparative solitude, on the extraordinary progress, the culminating force, the numerous trophies, and the acknowledged triumphs of a life of labors, so patiently achieved, and suddenly cut off in mid career,–we cannot but recognize a consummate artist and the grandest promise yet vouchsafed to the cause of national Art.
Shelley used to say that a Roman peasant is as good a judge of sculpture as the best academician or anatomist. It is this direct appeal, this elemental simplicity, which constitutes the great distinction and charm of the art. There is nothing evasive and mysterious; in dealing with form and expression through features and attitude, average observation is a reliable test. The same English poet was right in declaring that the Greek sculptors did not find their inspiration in the dissecting-room; yet upon no subject has criticism displayed greater insight on the one hand and pedantry on the other, than in the discussion of these very _chefs-d’oeuvre_ of antiquity. While Michel Angelo, who was at Rome when the Laocooen was discovered, hailed it as “the wonder of Art,” and scholars identified the group with a famous one described by Pliny, Canova thought that the right arm of the father was not in its right position, and the other restorations in the work have all been objected to. Goethe recognized a profound sagacity in the artist: “If,” he wrote, “we try to place the bite in some different position, the whole action is changed, and we find it impossible to conceive one more fitting; the situation of the bite renders necessary the whole action of the limbs”;–and another critic says, “In the group of the Laocooen, the breast is expanded and the throat contracted to show that the agonies that convulse the frame are borne in silence.” In striking contrast with such testimonies to the scientific truth to Nature in Grecian Art was the objection I once heard an American back-woods mechanic make to this celebrated work; he asked why the figures were seated in a row on a dry-goods box, and declared that the serpent was not of a size to coil round so small an arm as the child’s, without breaking its vertebrae. So disgusted was Titian with the critical pedantry elicited by this group, that, in ridicule thereof, he painted a caricature,–three monkeys writhing in the folds of a little snake.
Yet, despite the jargon of connoisseurship, against which Byron, while contemplating the Venus de Medici, utters so eloquent an invective, sculpture is a grand, serene, and intelligible art,–more so than architecture and painting,–and, as such, justly consecrated to the heroic and the beautiful in man and history. It is predominantly commemorative. How the old cities of Europe are peopled to the imagination, as well as the eye, by the statues of their traditional rulers or illustrious children, keeping, as it were, a warning sign, or a sublime vigil, silent, yet expressive, in the heart of busy life and through the lapse of ages! We could never pass Duke Cosmo’s imposing effigy in the old square of Florence without the magnificent patronage and the despotic perfidy of the Medicean family being revived to memory with intense local association,–nor note the ugly mitred and cloaked papal figures, with hands extended, in the mockery of benediction, over the beggars in the piazzas of Romagna, without Ranke’s frightful picture of Church abuses reappearing, as if to crown these brazen forms with infamy. There was always a gleam of poetry,–however sad,–on the most foggy day, in the glimpse afforded from our window, in Trafalgar Square, of that patient horseman, Charles the Martyr. How alive old Neptune sometimes looked, by moonlight, in Rome, as we passed his plashing fountain! And those German poets,–Goethe, Schiller, and Jean Paul,–what to modern eyes were Frankfort, Stuttgart, and Baireuth, unconsecrated by their endeared forms? The most pleasant association Versailles yielded us of the Bourbon dynasty was that inspired by Jeanne d’Arc, graceful in her marble sleep, as sculptured by Marie d’Orleans; and the most impressive token of Napoleon’s downfall we saw in Europe was his colossal image intended for the square of Leghorn, but thrown permanently on the sculptor’s hands by the waning of his proud star. The statue of Heber, to Christian vision, hallows Calcutta. The Perseus of Cellini breathes of the months of artistic suspense, inspiration, and experiment, so graphically described in that clever egotist’s memoirs. One feels like blessing the grief-bowed figures at the tomb of Princess Charlotte, so truly do their attitudes express our sympathy with the love and the sorrow her name excites. Would not Sterne have felt a thrill of complacency, had he beheld his tableau of the Widow Wadman and Uncle Toby so genially embodied by Ball Hughes? What more spirited symbol of prosperous conquest can be imagined than the gilded horses of St. Mark’s? How natural was Michel Angelo’s exclamation, “March!” as he gazed on Donatello’s San Giorgio, in the Church of San Michele,–one mailed hand on a shield, bare head, complete armor, and the foot advanced, like a sentinel who hears the challenge, or a knight listening for the charge! Tenerani’s “Descent from the Cross,” in the Torlonia Chapel, outlives in remembrance the brilliant assemblies of that financial house. The outlines of Flaxman, essentially statuesque, seem alone adequate to illustrate to the eye the great Mediaeval poet, whose verse seems often cut from stone in the quarries of infernal destiny. How grandly sleep the lions of Canova at Pope Clement’s tomb!
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. Palmer has sent forth from his isolated studio at Albany a series of ideal busts, of a pure type of original and exquisite beauty. Others might be named who have honorably 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.
Facility of execution and prolific invention were the essential traits of Crawford’s genius. For some years his studio has been one of the shrines of travellers at Rome, because of the number and variety as well as excellence of its trophies. The idea has been suggested, and it is one we hope to see realized, that this complete series of casts should be permanently conserved in such a temple as Copenhagen reared to the memory of her great sculptor. It was on account of this facility and fecundity that Crawford advocated plaster as an occasional substitute for bronze and marble, where elaborate compositions were proposed. He felt capable of achieving so much, his mind teemed with so many panoramic and single conceptions,–historical, allegorical, ideal, and illustrative of standard literature or classical fable,–that only time and expense presented obstacles to unlimited invention. Perhaps no one can conceive this peculiar creativeness of his fancy and aptitude of hand, who has not had occasion to talk with Crawford of some projected monument or statue. No sooner was he possessed of the idea to be embodied, the person or occasion to be commemorated, than he instantly conceived a plan and drew a model, invariably possessing some felicitous thought or significant arrangement. His sketch-book was quite as suggestive of genius as his studio. The “Sketch of a Statue to crown the Dome of the United States Capitol”–a photograph of which is before us as we write, dated two years ago–is an instance in point. A more grand figure, original and symbolic, graceful and sublime, in attitude, aspect, drapery, accessories, and expression, or one more appropriate, cannot be imagined; and yet it is only one of hundreds of national designs, more or less mature, which that fertile brain, patriotic heart, and cunning hand devised. We are justified in regarding the appropriation by the State of Virginia, for a monument to Washington by such a man, as an epoch in the history of national Art. Crawford hailed it as would a confident explorer the ship destined to convey him to untracked regions, the ambitious soldier tidings of the coming foe, or any brave aspirant a long-sought opportunity. It is one of the drawbacks to elaborate achievement in sculpture, that the materials and the processes of the art require large pecuniary facilities. To plan and execute a great national monument, under a government commission, was precisely the occasion for which Crawford had long waited. Happening to read the proposals in a journal, while on a visit to this country, he repaired immediately to Richmond, submitted his views, and soon received the appointment.
The absence of complexity in the language and intent of sculpture is always obvious in the expositions of its votaries. In no class of men have we found such distinct and scientific views of Art. One lovely evening in spring, we stood with Bartolini beside the corpse of a beautiful child. Bereavement in a foreign land has a desolation of its own, and the afflicted mother desired to carry home a statue of her loved and lost. We conducted the sculptor to the chamber of death, that he might superintend the casts from the body. No sooner did his eyes fall upon it, than they glowed with admiration and filled with tears. He waved the assistants aside, clasped his hands, and gazed spellbound upon the dead child. Its brow was ideal in contour, the hair of wavy gold, the cheeks of angelic outline. “How beautiful!” exclaimed Bartolini; and drawing us to the bedside, with a mingled awe and intelligence, he pointed out how the rigidity of death coincided, in this fair young creature, with the standard of Art;-the very hands, he declared, had stiffened into lines of beauty; and over the beautiful clay we thus learned from the lips of a venerable sculptor how intimate and minute is the cognizance this noble art takes of the language of the human form. Greenough would unfold by the hour the exquisite relation between function and beauty, organization and use,–tracing therein a profound law and an illimitable truth. No more genial spectacle greeted us in Rome than Thorwaldsen at his Sunday-noon receptions;–his white hair, kindly smile, urbane manners, and unpretending simplicity gave an added charm to the wise and liberal sentiments he expressed on Art,– reminding us, in his frank eclecticism, of the spirit in which Humboldt cultivates science, and Sismondi history. Nor less indicative of this clear apprehension was the thorough solution we have heard Powers give, over the mask taken from a dead face, of the problem, how its living aspect was to modify its sculptured reproduction; or the original views expressed by Palmer as to the treatment of the eyes and hair in marble. During Crawford’s last visit to America, we accompanied him to examine a portrait of Washington by Wright. It boasts no elegance of arrangement or refinement of execution; at a glance it was evident that the artist had but a limited sense of beauty and lacked imagination; but, on the other hand, he possessed what, for a sculptor’s object,–namely, facts of form and feature,–is more important,–conscience. Crawford declared this was the only portrait of Washington which literally represented his costume; having recently examined the uniform, sword, etc., he was enabled to identify the strands of the epaulette, the number of buttons, and even the peculiar seal and watch-key. A man so faithful to details, so devoted to authenticity, Crawford argued, was reliable in more essential things. He remarked, that one of his own greatest difficulties in the equestrian statue had been to reconcile the shortness of the neck in Stuart’s portrait and Houdon’s statue (the body of which was not taken from life) with the stature of Washington,–there being an anatomical incongruity therein. “I had determined,” he continued, “to follow what the laws of Nature and all precedent indicate as the right proportion,– otherwise it would be impossible to make a graceful and impressive statue; but in this picture, bearing such remarkable evidence of authenticity, I find the correct distance between chin and breast.”
American travellers in Italy will sometimes be repelled by a certain narrowness in the critical estimate of modern sculptors; though of all arts sculpture demands and justifies the most liberal eclecticism. Thus, a broad line of demarcation has been arbitrarily drawn between high finish and prolific invention, originality and superficial skill; as if these merits could not be united, or were incompatible with each other,–and that, invariably, works of “outward skill elaborate” are “of inward less exact” A Boston critic denominates Powers “a sublime mechanic,” as if there were only physical imitation in his busts, and no expression in his figures. The insinuation is unjust. By exquisite finish and patient labor he makes of such subjects as the Fisher-boy, the Proserpine, and Il Penseroso charming creations,–in attitude and feature true to the moment and the mood delineated, and not less true in each detail; their popularity is justified by scientific and tasteful canons; and his portrait busts and statues are, in many instances, unrivalled for character as well as execution. A letter to one of his friends lies before us, in which he responds to an amicable remonstrance at his apparent slowness of achievement. The reasoning is so cogent, the principle asserted of such wide application, and the artistic conscience so nobly evident, that we venture to quote a passage.
“It is said, that works designed to adorn buildings need not be done with much care, being only architectural sculptures. This is quite a modern idea. The Greeks did not entertain it, as is proved by those gems which Lord Elgin sawed away from the walls of the Parthenon. I cannot admit that a noble art should ever be prostituted to purposes of mere show. They do not make rough columns, coarse and uneven friezes, jagged mouldings, etc., for buildings. These are always highly finished. Are figures in marble less important? But speed, speed, is the order of the day,–‘quick and cheap’ is the cry; and if I prefer to linger behind and take pains with the little I do, there are some now, and there will be more hereafter, to approve it. I cannot consent to model statues at the rate of three in six months, and a clear conscience will reward me for not having yielded to the temptation of making money at the sacrifice of my artistic reputation. Art is, or should be, poetry, in its various forms,–no matter what it is written upon,–parchment, paper, canvas, or marble. Milton employed his daughter to write his ‘Paradise Lost,’ not to compose it; her hand was moved by his soul; she was his modelling-tool,–nothing more. But to employ another to model for you, and go away from him, is not analogous. He then composes for you; modelling is composition. And whom did Shakspeare get to do this for him? Whom did Gray employ to arrange in words that immortal wreath set with diamond thoughts which he has thrown upon a country churchyard? Whom did Michel Angelo get to model his Moses? How many young men did Ghiberti employ during the forty years he was engaged upon the Gates of Paradise? I cannot yield my convictions of what is proper in Art. I will do my work as well as I know how, and necessity compels me to demand ample payment for it.”
We have sometimes wondered that some aesthetic philosopher has not analyzed the vital relation of the arts to each other and given a popular exposition of their mutual dependence. Drawing from the antique has long been an acknowledged initiation for the limner, and Campbell, in his terse description of the histrionic art, says that therein “verse ceases to be airy thought, and sculpture to be dumb.” How much of their peculiar effects did Talma, Kemble, and Rachel owe to the attitudes, gestures, and drapery of the Grecian statues! Kean adopted the “dying fall” of General Abercrombie’s figure in St. Paul’s as the model of his own. Some of the memorable scenes and votaries of the drama are directly associated with the sculptor’s art,– as, for instance, the last act of “Don Giovanni,” wherein the expressive music of Mozart breathes a pleasing terror in connection with the spectral nod of the marble horseman; and Shakspeare has availed himself of this art, with beautiful wisdom, in that melting scene where remorseful love pleads with the motionless heroine of the “Winter’s Tale,”–
“Her natural posture!
Chide me, dear stone, that I may say, indeed, Thou art Hermione; or rather, thou art she In thy not chiding: for she was as tender As infancy and grace.”
Garrick imitated to the life, in “Abel Drugger,” a vacant stare peculiar to Nollekens, the sculptor; and Colley Cibber’s father was a devotee of the chisel and adorned Chatsworth with free-stone Sea-Nymphs.
Crawford’s interest in portrait-busts was secondary, owing to his inventive ardor; the study he bestowed upon the lineaments of Washington, however, gave a zest and a special insight to his endeavor to represent his head in marble, and, accordingly, this specimen of his ability, which arrived in this country after his decease, is remarkable for its expressive, original, and finished character. For ourselves, in view of the great historical value, comparative authenticity, and possible significance and beauty of this department of sculpture, it has a peculiar interest and charm. The most distinct idea we have of the Roman emperors, even in regard to their individual characters, is derived from their busts at the Vatican and elsewhere. The benignity of Trajan, the animal development of Nero, and the classic rigor of young Augustus are best apprehended through these memorable effigies which Time has spared and Art transmitted. And a similar permanence and distinctness of impression associate most of our illustrious moderns with their sculptured features: the ironical grimace of Voltaire is perpetuated by Houdon’s bust; the sympathetic intellectuality of Schiller by Dannecker’s; Handel’s countenance is familiar through the elaborate chisel of Roubillac; Nollekens moulded Sterne’s delicate and unimpassioned but keen physiognomy, and Chantrey the lofty cranium of Scott. Who has not blessed the rude but conscientious artist who carved the head of Shakspeare preserved at Stratford? How quaintly appropriate to the old house in Nuremberg is Albert Duerer’s bust over the door! Our best knowledge of Alexander Hamilton’s aspect is obtained from the expressive marble head of him by that ardent republican sculptor, Ceracchi. It was appropriate for Mrs. Darner, the daughter of a gallant field-marshal, to portray in marble, as heroic idols, Fox, Nelson, and Napoleon. We were never more convinced of the intrinsic grace and solemnity of this form of “counterfeit presentment” than when exploring the Bacioechi _palazzo_ at Bologna. In the centre of a circular room, lighted from above, and draped as well as carpeted with purple, stood on a simple pedestal the bust of Napoleon’s sister, thus enshrined after death by her husband. The profound stillness, the relief of this isolated head against a mass of dark tints, and its consequent emphatic individuality, made the sequestered chamber seem a holy place, where communion with the departed, so spiritually represented by the exquisite image, appeared not only natural, but inevitable. Our countryman, Powers, has eminently illustrated the possible excellence of this branch of Art. In mathematical correctness of detail, unrivalled finish of texture, and with these, in many cases, the highest characterization, busts from his hand have an absolute artistic value, independent of likeness, like a portrait by Vandyck or Titian. When the subject is favorable, his achievements in this regard are memorable, and fill the eye and mind with ideas of beauty and meaning undreamed of by those who consider marble portraits as wholly imitative and mechanical. Was there ever a human face which so completely reflected inward experience and individual genius as the bust which haunts us throughout Italy, broods over the monument in Santa Croce, gazes pensively from library niche, seems to awe the more radiant images of boudoir and gallery, and sternly looks melancholy reproach from the Ravenna tomb?
“The lips, as Cumae’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.
There is no phase of modern life so legitimate in its enjoyment and so pleasing to contemplate as the life of the true artist. Endowed with a faculty and inspired by a love for creative beauty, work is to him at once a high vocation and a generous instinct. Imagine the peace and the progress of those years at Rome when Crawford toiled day after day in his studio,–at first without encouragement and for bread, then in a more confident spirit and with some definite triumph, and at last crowned with domestic happiness and artistic renown,–his mind filled with ideal tasks more and more grand in their scope, and the coming years devoted in prospect to the realization of his noblest aspirations. From early morning to twilight, with rare and brief interruptions, he thus designed, modelled, chiselled, superintended, every day adding something permanent to his trophies. This self-consecration was entire, and in his view indispensable. Few and simple were the recreative interludes: a reunion of brother-artists or fellow-countrymen and their families,–an occasional journey, almost invariably with a professional intent,–a summer holiday or a winter festival; but, methodical in pastime as in work, his family and his books were his cherished resources. Often so weary at night that he returned home only to recline on a couch, caress his children, or refresh his mind with some agreeable volume provided by his vigilant companion,–the best energies of his mind and the freshest hours of life were absolutely given to Art. This is the great lesson of his career: not by spasmodic effort, or dalliance with moods, or fitful resolution, did he accomplish so much; but by earnestness of purpose, consistency of aim, heroic decision of character. There is nothing less vague, less casual in human experience, than true artist-life. Rome is the shrine of many a dreamer, the haunt of countless inefficient enthusiasts. But there, as elsewhere, will must intensify thought, action control imagination, or both are fruitless. Those melancholy ruins, those grand temples of religion, the immortal forms and hues that glorify palace and chapel, square, mausoleum, and Vatican, the dreamy murmur of fountains, the aroma of violets and pine-trees, the pensive relics of imperial sway, the sublime desolation of the Campagna, the mystery of Nature and Art, when both are hallowed by time, the social zest of an original brotherhood like the artists, the freedom and loveliness, the ravishment of spring and the soft radiance of sunset, all that there captivates soul and sense, must be resisted as well as enjoyed;–self-control, self-respect, self-dedication are as needful as susceptibility, or these peerless local charms will only enchant to betray the artist. Crawford carried to Rome the ardor of an Irish temperament and the vigor of an American character. Hundreds have passed through a like ordeal of privation, ungenial because conventional work, and slow approach to the goal of recognized power and remunerated sacrifice; but few have emerged from the shadow to the sunshine, by such manly steps and patient, cheerful trust. It was not the voice of complaint that first attracted towards him intelligent sympathy,–it was brave achievement; and from the day when a remittance from Boston enabled him to put his Orpheus in marble, to the day when, attended by his devoted sister, he paid the last visit to his crowded studio, and looked, with quivering eyelids, but firm heart, on the silent but eloquent offspring of his brain and hand, the Artist in him was coincident with the Man,–clear, unswerving, productive, the sphere extending, the significance multiplying, and the mastery becoming more and more complete through resolute practice, vivid intuition, and candid search for truth.
In the fifteenth century, and earlier, the lives of artists were adventurous; political relations gave scope to incident; and Michel Angelo, Salvator Rosa, and Benvenuto Cellini furnish almost as many anecdotes as memorials of genius. In modern times, however, vicissitude has chiefly diversified the uniform and tranquil existence of the artist; his struggles with fortune, and not his relations to public events, have given external interest to his biography. It is the mental rather than the outward life which is fraught with significance to the painter and sculptor; consciousness more than experience affords salient points in his career. How the executive are trained to embody the creative powers, through what struggles dexterity is attained, and by what reflection and earnest musing and observant patience and blest intuitions original achievements glimmer upon the fancy, grow mature by thought, correct through the study of Nature, and are finally realized in action,– these and such as these inward revelations constitute the actual life of the artist. The mere events of Crawford’s existence are neither marvellous nor varied; his early love of imitative pastime, his fixed purpose, his resort to stone-cutting as the nearest available expedient for the gratification of that instinct to copy and create form which so decidedly marks an aptitude for sculpture, his visit to Rome, the self-denial and the lonely toil of his novitiate, his rapid advancement in both knowledge and skill, and his gradual recognition as a man of original mind and wise enthusiasm are but the normal characteristics of his fraternity. Circumstances, however, give a singular prominence and pathos to these usual facts of artist-life. When Crawford began his professional career, sculpture, as an American pursuit, was almost as rare as painting at the time of West’s advent in Rome; to excel therein was a national distinction, having a freshness and personal interest such as the votaries of older countries did not share; as the American representative of his art at Rome, even in the eyes of his comrades, and especially in the estimation of his countrymen, he long occupied an isolated position. The qualities of the man,–his patient industry,-the new and unexpected superiority in different branches of his art, so constantly exhibited,–the loyal, generous, and frank spirit of his domestic and social life,–the freedom, the faith, and the assiduity that endeared him to so large and distinguished a circle, were individual claims often noted by foreigners and natives in the Eternal City as honorable to his country. It was remembered there, when he died, that the hand now cold had warmly grasped in welcome his compatriots, shouldered a musket as one of the republican guard, and been extended with sympathy and aid to his less prosperous brothers. At the meeting of fellow-artists, convened to pay a tribute to his memory, every nation of Europe was represented, and the most illustrious of living English sculptors was the first to propose a substantial memorial to his name. What his nativity and his character thus so eminently contributed to signalize, the offspring of his genius, the manner of his death, solemnly confirmed. By no sudden fever, such as insidiously steals from the Roman marshes and poisons the blood of its victims,–by no violent epidemic, like those which have again and again devastated the cities of Europe,–by no illusive decline, whereby vital power is sapped unconsciously and with mild gradations, and which, in that soft clime, has peopled with the dust of strangers the cemetery which the pyramid of Cestius overshadows and the heart of Shelley consecrates,–by none of these familiar gates of death did Crawford pass on; but, in the meridian of his powers and his fame, in the climax of his artistic career, in the noontide of his most genial activity, a corrosive tumor on the inner side of the orbit of the eye encroached month by month, week by week, hour by hour, upon the sources of life. Medical skill freed the brain from its deadly pressure, but could not divert its organic affinity. The mind’s integrity was thus preserved intact; consciousness and self-possession lent their dignity to waning strength; but the alert muscles were relaxed; the busy hands folded in prayer; what Michel Angelo uttered in his eighty-sixth Crawford was called upon to echo in his forty-fifth year:–
“Wellnigh the voyage now is overpast, And my frail bark, through troubled seas and rude, Draws nigh that common haven where at last, Of every action, be it evil or good,
Must due account be rendered. Well I know How vain will then appear that favored art, Sole idol long, and monarch of my heart; For all is vain that man desires below.”
The cheerful voice was often hushed by pain; but conjugal and sisterly love kept vigil, a long, a bitter year, by that couch of suffering in the heart of multitudinous Paris and London; hundreds of sympathizing friends, in both hemispheres, listened and prayed and hoped through a dreary twelvemonth. With the ripe autumn closed the quiet struggle; and “in the bleak December” the mortal remains were followed from the temple where his youth worshipped, to the snow-clad knoll at Greenwood; garlands and tears, the ritual and the requiem, eulogy and elegy, consecrated the final scene. By a singular coincidence, the news of his decease reached the United States simultaneously with the arrival of the ship in James River with the colossal bronze statue of Washington, his crowning achievement.
One would imagine, from the eagerness and intensity exhibited by Crawford, that he anticipated a brief career. Work seemed as essential to his comfort as rest is to less determined natures. He was a thorough believer in the moral necessity of absolute allegiance to his sphere; and differed from his brother-artists chiefly in the decisive manner in which he kept aloof from extrinsic and incidental influences. If Art ever made labor delectable, it was so with him. He seemed to go through with the ordinary processes of life with but a half consciousness thereof,–save where his personal affections were concerned. One of the first works for which he expressed a sympathetic admiration was Thorwaldsen’s “Triumph of Alexander,”–one of the most elaborate and suggestive of modern friezes. He early contemplated an entire series of illustrations of Ovid. He alternated, with infinite relish, between the extreme phases of his art,–a delicate Peri and a majestic Colossus, an extensive array of basso rilievo figures, a sublime ideal of manhood and an exquisite image of infancy. His alacrity of temper was co-equal with his steadiness of purpose; and the cheerfulness of an active mind, sanguine temperament, and great nervous energy did not abandon him, even in the state of forced passivity so intolerable to such habitude; for hilarious words and, once or twice, the old ringing laugh startled the fond watchers of his declining hours. The events of his life are but a few expressive outlines; his works embody his most real experience; and the thoughts and feelings, the observation and the sentiment, not therein moulded or sketched, happily found adequate record in the ample and ingenuous letters he wrote to his beloved sister, from the time of his first arrival in Europe to that of his last arrival in America,–embracing a period of twenty-two years. Each work he conceived and executed, each process of study, the impressions he gained and the convictions at which he arrived in relation to ancient and modern art,–each journey, achievement, plan, opinion,–what he saw, and imagined, and hoped, and did,–was frankly and fondly noted; and the time may come when these epistles, inspired by love and dictated by intelligent sympathy and insight, will be compiled into a priceless memorial of artist-life.
ASIRVADAM THE BRAHMIN.
Who put together the machinery of the great Indian revolt, and set it going? Who stirred up the sleeping tiger in the Sepoy’s heart, and struck Christendom aghast with the dire devilries of Meerut and Cawnpore?
Asirvadam the Brahmin!
Asirvadam is nimble with mace or cue; at the billiard-table, it is hinted, he can distinguish a kiss from a carom; at the sideboard (and here, if I were Mr. Charles Reade, I would whisper, in small type) he confounds not cocktails with cobblers; when, being in trade, he would sell you saltpetre, he tries you with flax-seed; when he would buy indigo, he offers you indigo at a sacrifice. Yet, in Asirvadam, if any quality is more noticeable than the sleek respectability of the Baboo, it is the jealous orthodoxy of the Brahmin. If he knows in what presence to step out of his slippers, and when to pick them up again with his toes, in jaunty dandyisms of etiquette, he also makes the most of his insolent order and its patent of privilege, and wears the rue of his triple cord with a demure and dignified difference. High, low, or jack, it is always “the game” with him; and the game is–Asirvadam the Brahmin,–free tricks and Brahmins’ rights,–Asirvadam for his caste, and everything for Asirvadam.
The natural history of our astute and accomplished friend is worth a page or two. And first, as to his color. Asirvadam comes from the northern provinces, and calls the snow-turbaned Himalayas cousin; consequently his complexion is the brightest among Brahmins. By some who are uninitiated in the chemical mysteries of our metropolitan milk-trade, it has been likened to chocolate and cream, with plenty of cream; but the comparison depends, for the idea it conveys, so much on the taste of the ethnological inquirer, as to the proportion of cream, and still so much more, as in the case of Mr. Weller’s weal pies, on the reputation of “the lady as makes it,” that it will hardly serve the requirements of a severe scientific statement. Copper-color has an excess of red, and sepia is too brown; the tarry tawniness of an old boatswain’s hand is nearer the mark, but even that is less among man-of-war’s men than in the merchant-service, and is least in the revenue marine; it varies, also, with the habits of the individual, and the nature of his employment for the time being. The flipper of your legitimate shiver-my-timbery old salt, whose most amiable office is piping all hands to witness punishment, has long since acquired the hue of a seven-years’ meerschaum; while the dandy cockswain of a forty-gun frigate lying off the navy-yard, who brings the third cutter ship-shapely alongside with a pretty girl in the stern-sheets, lends her–the pretty girl–a hand at the gangway, that has been softened by fastidious applications of solvent slush to the tint of a long envelope “on public service.” “Law sheep,” when we come to the binding of books, is too sallow for this simile; a little volume of “Familiar Quotations,” in limp calf, (Bartlett, Cambridge, 1855,) might answer,–if the cover of the January number of the “Atlantic Monthly” were not exactly the thing.
Simplicity, convenience, decorum, and picturesqueness distinguish the costume of Asirvadam the Brahmin. Three yards of yard-wide fine cotton cloth envelope his loins, in such a manner, that, while one end hangs in graceful folds in front, the other falls in a fine distraction behind. Over this, a robe of muslin, or silk, or pina cloth–the latter in peculiar favor, by reason of its superior purity, for high-caste wear–covers his neck, breast, and arms, and descends nearly to his ankles. Asirvadam borrowed this garment from the Mussulman; but he fastens it on the left side, which the follower of the Prophet never does, and surmounts it with an ample and elegant waistband, beside the broad Romanesque mantle that he tosses over his shoulder with such a senatorial air. His turban, also, is an innovation,–not proper to the Brahmin,–pure and simple, but, like the robe, adopted from the Moorish wardrobe, for a more imposing appearance in Sahib society. It is formed of a very narrow strip, fifteen or twenty yards long, of fine stuff, moulded to the orthodox shape and size by wrapping it, while wet, on a wooden block; having been hardened in the sun, it is worn like a hat. As for his feet, Asirvadam, uncompromising in externals, disdains to pollute them with the touch of leather. Shameless fellows, Brahmins though they be, of the sect of Vishnu, go about, without a blush, in thonged sandals, made of abominable skins; but Asirvadam, strict as a Gooroo when the eyes of his caste are on him, is immaculate in wooden clogs.
In ornaments, his taste, though somewhat grotesque, is by no means lavish. A sort of stud or button, composed of a solitary ruby, in the upper rim of the cartilage of either ear,–a chain of gold, curiously wrought, and intertwined with a string of small pearls, around his neck,–a massive bangle of plain gold on his arm,–a richly jewelled ring on his thumb, and others, broad and shield-like, on his toes,–complete his outfit in these vanities.
As often as Asirvadam honors us with his morning visit of business or ceremony, a slight yellow line, drawn horizontally between his eyebrows, with a paste composed of ground sandal-wood, denotes that he has purified himself externally and internally, by bathing and prayers. To omit this, even by the most unavoidable chance to appear in public without it, were to incur a grave public scandal; only excepting the reason of mourning, when, by an expressive Oriental figure, the absence of the caste-mark is accepted for the token of a profound and absorbing sorrow, which takes no thought even for the customary forms of decency. The disciple of Siva crossbars his forehead with ashes of cow-dung or ashes of the dead; the sectary of Vishnu adorns his with a sort of trident, composed of a central perpendicular line in red, and two oblique lines, white or yellow. But the true Brahmin knows no Siva or Vishnu, no sectarian distinctions or preferences; Indra has set no seal upon his brow, nor Krishna, nor Devendra. For, ignoring celestial personalities, it is the Trimurti that he grandly adores,–Creation, Preservation, Destruction triune,–one body with three heads; and the right line alone, or _pottu_, the mystic circle, describes the sublime simplicity of his soul’s aspiration.
When Asirvadam was but seven years old, he was invested with the triple cord, by a grotesque, and in most respects absurd, extravagant, and expensive ceremony, called the _Upanayana_, or Introduction to the Sciences, because none but Brahmins are freely admitted to their mysteries. This triple cord consists of three thick strands of cotton, each composed of several finer threads; these three strands, representing Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, are not twisted together, but hang separately, from the left shoulder to the right hip. The preparation of so sacred a badge is entrusted to none but the purest hands, and the process is attended with many imposing ceremonies. Only Brahmins may gather the fresh cotton; only Brahmins may card and spin and twist it; and its investiture is a matter of so great cost, that the poorer brothers must have recourse to contributions from the pious of their caste, to defray the exorbitant charges of priests and masters of ceremonies.
It is a noticeable fact in the natural history of the always insolent Asirvadam, that, unlike Shatriya, the warrior, Vaishya, the cultivator, or Soodra, the laborer, he is not born into the full enjoyment of his honors, but, on the contrary, is scarcely of more consideration than a Pariah, until by the Upanayana he has been admitted to his birthright. Yet, once decorated with the ennobling badge of his order, our friend became from that moment something superior, something exclusive, something supercilious, arrogant, exacting,–Asirvadam, the high Brahmin,–a creature of wide strides without awkwardness, towering airs without bombast, Sanscrit quotations without pedantry, florid phraseology without hyperbole, allegorical illustrations and proverbial points without sententiousness, fanciful flights without affectation, and formal strains of compliment without offensive adulation.
When Asirvadam meets Asirvadam in the way, compliments pass: each touches his forehead with his right hand, and murmurs twice the auspicious name of Rama. But the passing Vaishya or Soodra elevates reverently his joined palms above his head, and, stepping out of his slippers, salutes the descendant of the Seven Holy Penitents with _namaskaram_, the pious obeisance. _Andam arya_! “Hail, exalted Lord!” he cries; and the exalted lord, extending the pure lilies of his hands lordliwise, as one who condescends to accept an humble offering, mutters the mysterious benediction which only Gooroos and high Brahmins may bestow,–_Asirvadam_!
The low-caste slave who may be admitted to the distinguished presence of our friend, to implore indulgence, or to supplicate pardon for an offence, must thrice touch the ground, or the honored feet, with both his hands, which immediately he lays upon his forehead; and there are occasions of peculiar humiliation which require the profound prostration of the _sashtangam_, or abasement of the eight members, wherein the suppliant extends himself face downward on the earth, with palms joined above his head.
If Asirvadam–having concluded a visit in which he has deferentially reminded me of the peculiar privilege I enjoy in being admitted to social converse with so select a being–is about to withdraw the light of his presence, he retires backward, with many humbly gracious salaams. If, on the other hand, I have had the honor to be his distinguished guest at his garden-house, and am in the act of taking my leave, he patronizes me to the gate with elaborate obsequiousness, that would be tedious, if it were not so graceful, so comfortable, so gallantly vainglorious. He shows the way by following, and spares me the indignity of seeing his back by never taking his eyes from mine. He knows what is due to his accomplished friend, the Sahib, who is learned in the four Yankee Vedas; as to what is due to Asirvadam the Brahmin, no man knoweth the beginning or the end of that.
When Asirvadam crosses my threshold, he leaves his slippers at the door. I am flattered by the act into a self-appreciative complacency, until I discover that he thereby simply puts me on a level with his cow. When he converses with me, he keeps respectful distance, and gracefully averts from me the annoyance of his breath by holding his hand before his mouth. I inwardly applaud his refined breeding, forgetting that I am a Pariah of Pariahs, whose soul, if I have one, the incense of his holy lungs might save alive,–forgetting that he is one to whose very footprint the Soodra salaams, alighting from his palanquin,–to whose shadow poor Chakili, the cobbler, abandons the broad highway,–the feared of gods, hated of giants, mistrusted of men, and adored of himself,–Asirvadam the Brahmin.
“They, the Brahmin Asirvadam, to him, Phaldasana, who is obedient, who is true, who has every faithful quality, who knows how to serve with cheerfulness, to submit in silence, who by the excellent services he renders the Brahmins has become like unto the stone Chintamani, the bringer of good, who by the number and variety and acceptableness of his gifts shall attain, without further trials, to the paradise of Indra: _Asirvadam_!
“The year Vikarj, the tenth of the month Phalguna: we are at Benares in good health; bring us word of thine. It shall be thy privilege to make sashtangam at the feet–which are the true lilies of Nilufar– of us the Lord Brahmin, who are endowed with all the virtues and all the sciences, who are great as Mount Meru, to whom belongs illustrious knowledge of the four Vedas, the splendor of whose beneficence is as the noon-flood of the sun, who are renowned throughout the fourteen worlds, whom the fourteen worlds admire.
“Having received with both hands that which we have abased ourself by writing to thee, and having kissed it and set it on thy head, thou wilt read with profound attention and execute with grateful alacrity the orders it contains, without swerving from the strict letter of them, the breadth of a grain of sesamum. Having hastened to us, as thou art blessed in being bidden, thou shalt wait in our presence, keeping thy distance, thy hands joined, thy mouth closed, thine eyes cast down,–thou who art as though thou wert not,–until we shall vouchsafe to perceive thee. And when thou hast obtained our leave, then, and not sooner, shalt thou make sashtangam at our blessed feet, which are the pure flowers of Nilufar, and with many lowly kisses shalt lay down before them thy unworthy offering,–ten rupees, as thou knowest,–more, if thou art wise,–less, if thou darest.
“This is all we have to say to thee. _Asirvadam_!”
In the epistolary style of Asirvadam the Brahmin we are at a loss which to admire most,–the flowers or the force, the modesty or the magnificence.
Among the cloistral cells of the women’s quarter, which surround the inner court of Asirvadam’s domestic establishment, is a dark and narrow chamber which is the domain of woman’s rights. It is called “the Room of Anger,” because, when the wife of the bosom has been tempted by inveigling box-wallahs with a love of a pink coortee, or a pair of chased bangles, “such darlings, and so cheap,” and has conceived a longing for the same, her way is, without a word beforehand, to go shut herself up in the Room of Anger, and pout and sulk till she gets them; and seeing that the wife of the bosom is also the pure concocter of the Brahminical curry and server of the Brahminical rice, that she is the goddess of the sacred kitchen and high-priestess of pots and pans, it is easy to see that her success is certain. Poor little brown fool! that twelve feet square of curious custom is all, of the world-wide realm of beauty and caprice, that she can call her own.
When the enamored young Asirvadam brought to her father’s gate the lover’s presents,–the ear-rings and the bangles, the veil and the loongee, the attar and the betel and the sandal, the flowers and the fruits,–the lizard that chirped the happy omen for her betrothal lied. When she sat by his side at the wedding-feast, and partook of his rice, prettily picking from the same leaf, ah! then she did not eat,–she dreamed; but ever since that time, waiting for his leavings, nor daring to approach the board till he has retired to his pipe, she does not dream,–she feeds.
Around her neck a strange ornament of gold, having engraved upon it the likeness of Lakshmee, is suspended by a consecrated string of one hundred and eight threads of extreme fineness, dyed yellow with saffron. This is the Tahli, the wife’s badge,–“Asirvadam the Brahmin, his chattel.” They brought it to her on a silver salver garnished with flowers, she sitting with her betrothed on a great cushion; and ten Brahmins, holding around the happy pair a screen of silk, invoked for them the favor of the three divine couples,–Brahma with Sarawastee, Vishnu with Lakshmee, Siva with Paravatee. Then they offered incense, to the Tahli, and a sacrifice of fire, and they blessed it with many mantras, or holy texts; and as the bride turned her to the east, and fixed her inmost thought on the “Great Mountain of the North,” Asirvadam the Brahmin clasped his collar on her neck, never to be loosened till he, dying, shall leave her to be burned, or spurned.
No man, when he meets Asirvadam the Brahmin, presumes to ask, “How is the little brown fool today?” No man, when he visits him, ventures to inquire if she is at home; it is not the etiquette. Should the little brown fool, having a mind of her own, and being resolved not to endure this any longer, suddenly make Asirvadam ridiculous some day, the etiquette is to hush it up among their friends.
As Raja, the warrior, sprang from the right arm of Brahma, and Vaishya, the cultivator, from his belly, and Soodra, the laborer, from his feet,–so Asirvadam the Brahmin was conceived in the head and brought forth from the mouth of the Creator; and he is above the others by so much as the head is above arms, belly, and feet; he is wiser than the others, inasmuch as he has lain among the thoughts of the god, has played with his inventions, and made excursions through the universe with his speech. Therefore, if it be true, as some say, that Asirvadam is an ant-hill of lies, he is also a snake’s-nest of wisdom, and a beehive of ingenuity. Let him be respected, for his rights are plain.
It is his right to be taught the Vedas and the mantras, all the tongues of India, and the sciences; to marry a child-wife, no matter how old he may be,–or a score of wives, if he be a Kooleen Brahmin, so that he may drive a lively business in the way of dowries; to peruse the books of magic, and perform the awful sacrifice of the Yajna; to receive presents without limit, levy taxes without law, and beg with insolence.
It is his duty to study diligently; to conform rigorously to the rules of his caste; to honor and obey his superiors without question or hesitation; to insult his inferiors, for the magnifying of his office; to get him a wife without loss of time, and a male child by all means. During his religious minority he is expected to bathe and sacrifice twice a day, to abstain from adorning his forehead or his breast with sandal, to wear no flowers in his hair, to chew no betel, to regard himself in no mirrors.
Under Hindoo law, which is his own law, Asirvadam the Brahmin pays no taxes, tolls, or duties; corporal punishment can in no case be inflicted upon him; if he is detected in defalcation or the taking of bribes, partial restitution is the worst penalty that can befall him. “For the belly,” he says, “one will play many tricks.” To smite his cheek with your leathern glove, or to kick him with your shoe, is an outrage at which the gods rave; to kill him would draw down a monstrous calamity upon the world. If he break faith with you, it is as nothing; if you fail him in the least promise, you take your portion with Karta, the Fox, as the good Abbe Dubois relates,
“Karta, Karta!” screamed an Ape, one day, when he saw a fox feeding on a rotten carcass, “thou must, in a former life, have committed some dreadful crime, to be doomed to a new state in which thou feedest on such garbage.”
“Alas!” replied the Fox, “I am not punished more severely than I deserve. I was once a man, and then I promised something to a Brahmin, which I never gave him. That is the true cause of my being regenerated in this shape. Some good works, which I did have, won for me the indulgence of remembering what I was in my former state, and the cause for which I have been degraded into this.”
Asirvadam has choice of a hundred callings, as various in dignity and profit as they are numerous. Under native rule he makes a good cooly, because the officers of the revenue are forbidden to search a Brahmin’s baggage, or anything that he carries. He is an expeditious messenger, for no man may stop him; and he can travel cheaply for whom there is free entertainment on every road. “For the belly one will play many tricks”; and Asirvadam, in financial straits, may teach dancing to nautch-girls; or he may play the mountebank or the conjurer, and with a stock of mantras and charms proceed to the curing of murrain in cattle, pip in chickens, and short-windedness in old women,–at the same time telling fortunes, calculating nativities, finding lost treasure, advising as to journeys and speculations, and crossing out crosses in love for any pretty dear who will cross the poor Brahmin’s palm with a rupee. He may engage in commercial pursuits; and in that case, his bulling and bearing at the opium-sales will put Wall Street to the blush. He may turn his attention to the healing art; and allopathically, homoeopathically, hydropathically, electropathically, or by any other path, run a muck through many heathen hospitals. The field of politics is full of charms for him, the church invites his taste and talents, and the army tempts him with opportunities for intrigue; but whether in the shape of Machiavelisms, miracles, or mutinies, he is forever making mischief. Whether as messenger, dancing-master, conjurer, fortune-teller, speculator, mountebank, politician, priest, or Sepoy, he is ever the same Asirvadam the Brahmin,–sleekest of lackeys, most servile of sycophants, expertest of tricksters, smoothest of hypocrites, coolest of liars, most insolent of beggars, most versatile of adventurers, most inventive of charlatans, most restless of schemers, most insidious of jesuits, most treacherous of confidants, falsest of friends, hardest of masters, most arrogant of patrons, cruelest of tyrants, most patient of haters, most insatiable of avengers, most gluttonous of ravishers, most infernal of devils,–pleasantest of fellows.
Superlatively dainty as to his fopperies of orthodoxy, Asirvadam is continually dying of Pariah roses in aromatic pains of caste. If in his goings and comings one of the “lilies of Nilufar” should chance to stumble upon a bit of bone or rag, a fragment of a dish, or a leaf from which some one has eaten,–should his sacred raiment be polluted by the touch of a dog or a Pariah,–he is ready to faint, and only a bath can revive him. He may not touch his sandals with his hand, nor repose in a strange seat, but is provided with a mat, a carpet, or an antelope’s skin, to serve him for a cushion in the houses of his friends. With a kid glove you may put his respectability in peril, and with your patent-leather pumps affright his soul within him. To him a pocket-handkerchief is a sore offence, and a tooth-pick monstrous. All the Vedas could not save the Giaour who “chews”; nor burnt brandy, though the Seven Penitents distilled it, purify the mouth that a tooth-brush has polluted. Beware how you offer him a wafered letter; and when you present him with a copy of your travels, let it be bound in cloth.
He has the Mantalini idiosyncrasy as to dem’d unpleasant bodies; and when he hears that his mother is dead, he straight-way jumps into a bath with his clothes on. Many mantras and much holy-water, together with incense of sandal-wood, and other perfumery, regardless of expense, can alone relieve his premises of the deadness of his wife.
For a Soodra even to look upon the earthen vessels wherein his rice is boiled implies the necessity of a summary smash of the infected crockery; and his kitchen is his holy of holies. When he eats, the company keep silence; and when he is full, they return fervent thanks to the gods who have conducted him safely through a complexity of dangers;–a grain of rice, falling from his lips, might have poisoned his dinner; a stain on his plantain-leaf might have turned his cake to stone. His left hand, condemned to vulgar and impolite offices, is not admitted to the honor of assisting at his repasts to the right alone, consecrated by exemption from indecorous duties, belongs the distinction of conducting his happy grub to the heaven of his mouth. When he would quench his thirst, he disdains to apply the earth-born beaker to his lips, but lets the water fall into his solemn swallow from on high,–a pleasant feat to see, and one which, like a whirling dervis, diverts you by its agility, while it impresses you by its devotion.
It is easy to perceive, that, if our friend Asirvadam were not one of the “Young Bengal” lights who do not fash themselves with trifles, his orthodox sensibilities would be subjected to so many and gross affronts from the indiscriminate contacts of a mixed community, that he would shortly be compelled to take refuge in one of those Arcadias of the triple cord, called _Agragramas_, where pure Brahmins are met in all the exclusiveness of high caste, and where the more a man rubs against his neighbor the more he is sanctified. True, the Soodras have an irreverent saying, “An entire Brahmin at the Agragrama, half a Brahmin when seen at a distance, and a Soodra when out of sight”; but then the Soodras, as everybody knows, are saucy, satirical rogues, and incorrigible jokers.
There was once a foolish Brahmin, to whom a rich and charitable merchant presented two pieces of cloth, the finest that had ever been seen in the Agragrama. He showed them to the other Brahmins, who all congratulated him on so fortunate an acquisition; they told him it was the reward of some deed that he had done in a previous life. Before putting them on, he washed them, according to custom, in order to purify them from the pollution of the weaver’s touch, and hung them up to dry, with the ends fastened to two branches of a tree. Presently a dog, happening to pass that way, ran under them, and the Brahmin could not decide whether the unclean beast was tall enough to touch the cloth, or not. He questioned his children, who were present; but they were not quite certain. How, then, was he to settle the all-important point? Ingenious Brahmin! an idea struck him. Getting down on all fours, so as to be of the same height as the dog, he crawled under the precious cloths.
“Did I touch it?”
“No!” cried all the children; and his soul was filled with joy.
But the next moment the terrible conviction took possession of his mind, that the dog had a turned-up tail; and that, if, in passing under the cloths, he had elevated and wagged it, their defilement must have been consummated. Ready-witted Brahmin! another idea. He called the cleverest of his children, and bade it affix to his breech-cloth a plantain-leaf, dog’s-tail-wise, and waggishly. Then resuming his all-fours-ness, he passed a second time under the cloth, and conscientiously, and anxiously, wagged.