Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 | Page 5

afford these things, nor can the sculptor afford them. A year is too great a sum to give for a statue of California. Better than that, the several portraits of valued men which might have been acquired,--one bust, even, like those which surprised and compelled the reverence of Thorwaldsen. Better the perfected ability which would have given his country the Webster he should and might have made than a hundred "Americas."
There are two considerations which may have misled Mr. Powers. One, a pecuniary one, which he should have disposed of as did Agassiz, when such was advanced to induce him to give lyceum lectures:--"Sir, I cannot afford to make money!" The other may have been the weight of the prevailing error that portrait-sculpture is a less honorable branch of Art.
Less than what? The historical? What finer history than Titian's Paul III., Raphael's Leo X., Albert Dürer's head of himself? What finer than the Pericles, the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, the Demosthenes of the Vatican, Chantrey's Scott, Houdon's Voltaire, Powers's Jackson?--Heroic? what more heroic than the Lateran Sophocles, the Venetian Colleoni, or Rauch's statue of Frederick the Great?--Poetical? What picture more sweetly poetical than Raphael's head of himself in the Uffizi, or Giotto's Dante in the Bargello? What ideal statue surpasses in poetical power Michel Angelo's De' Medici in the San Lorenzo Chapel? What ideal head is more beautiful than the Townley Clytie of the British Museum, or the Young Augustus of the Vatican? What grander than Da Vinci's portrait of himself?
No,--when the sculptor has wrought the adequate representation of the individual in its best estate, he may rest assured that he has achieved "high Art."
Let us not be unjust to Mr. Powers's ideal works. In the qualities of chasteness of conception, delicacy of treatment, temperate grace, and that rarer, finer quality of dignified repose, they have not been surpassed since the time of Greek Art. When the subject chosen has not been foreign to the artist's nature, as in the "Eve," nor foreign to the Art's province, as in the "California," his success has been very like a triumph.
But the success has not been that which he was entitled to grasp; the seeming triumph has precluded a real victory. We must believe that the highest lessons of ancient Art have, in a great measure, been unrecognized by Mr. Powers. The external has been studied. No man can talk more justly of that exquisite line of the Venus de' Medici's temple and cheek, or point out more discriminatingly the beauties of the Milo statue, or detect more quickly the truths of the antique busts. He has discovered, also, somewhat of the great secret of repose,--has perceived that it is essential, in some wise, to all greatness in Art, more particularly in his own department of sculpture. But beyond that simple recognition of the fact, what? That repose is dependent on power to act, and must be great in proportion to mightiness of power? No, he could not have seen this; else had his Webster come to us less questionable in intent, less remote in its merits from the massive self-possession of the man.
For what Mr. Powers became before he left America he cannot be praised too greatly. He carried with him to Europe just that knowledge of Nature and that executive power which prepared him to take advantage of the aid that all great Art was waiting to afford. Had he won "the large truth," he would have found the scope and purpose of his genius, as in America he had found that of his talent. He would have seen his specialty to be worthy of all reverence, for he would have attained to an appreciation of the high possibilities of portrait-Art. There would have been developed, under the influence of great principles, the power to make statues of great men,--colossal, instead of big,--reposeful, instead of paralyzed,--grand, instead of arrogant,--statues worthy of the hand that wrought the busts of Calhoun, Jackson, and Webster, worthy to rank with the few mighty embodiments of power, the Sophocles, the Aristides, and the Demosthenes. This he might have done; and this he may yet accomplish.

THE AMBER GODS.
STORY FIRST.
_Flower o' the Peach._
We've some splendid old point-lace in our family, yellow and fragrant, loose-meshed. It isn't every one has point at all; and of those who have, it isn't every one can afford to wear it. I can. Why? Oh, because it's in character. Besides, I admire point any way,--it's so becoming; and then, you see, this amber! Now what is in finer unison, this old point-lace, all tags and tangle and fibrous and bewildering, and this amber, to which Heaven knows how many centuries, maybe, with all their changes, brought perpetual particles of increase? I like yellow things, you see.
To begin at the beginning. My