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BJOGRAIMIICAL STUDIKS. 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON GREENE. 
 
 Mi fur mostrati gli spirit! magni, 
 Che di vedcrli in me stesso mi esalto. 
 
 DrVTNA COMMEDIA. 
 
 Ihr nalit euch wieder scliwankende Gestalten. 
 
 Fattst. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 G. P. FIJTNAM, iiO 
 
 'I860, 
 
 NASSAU STREET. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1859, by 
 
 GEOEGE W. GEEENE, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 
 
 District of New York. 
 
 
 B. CRAIGHEAD, . , , 
 
 Printer, Stereotyper, and ^lectrfttypej", 
 
 81, 83, OTKf 85 Centre Street. 
 
TO 
 
 MKS. MEDOKA THAYER, 
 
 gi Mhixtt 
 
 OP RESPECT AND AFFECTION 
 
 FROM 
 
 HER OWN AND HER HUSBAND'S FRIEND. 
 
 i?404:i 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Cooper, 9 
 
 Personal Recollections of Cooper, 51 
 
 Cole, 7-4 
 
 Crawford, 121 
 
 Irving's Works, 155 
 
 Trving's Washington 177 
 
BIOGIUrillCAL STUDIES. 
 
 COOPER. 
 
 ' Fides ct ingeni 
 Benigna vena est." 
 
 IIOR. Carm. 
 
 " Xamque hoc tempore 
 Obsequium amicos, Veritas odium parit." 
 
 Terence, Anclria. 
 
 Every reader of the "Pioneers" is familiar with Coo- 
 perstowii and the ricli forest scenery of Otsego Lake. One 
 thing is Avanting, however, to complete tlie picture of fifty 
 years ago, a gray-eyed, dark-haired, ruddy boy, nimble as 
 a deer and gay as a bird. You would have seen him on 
 the lake, plying his oar lustily, or trimming his sail to the 
 mountain breeze; and whenever he found a wave liigh 
 enough to lift his little boat, his veuis would thrill with a 
 strange delight, and he would ask himself whether this was 
 
10 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 like those ocean waves of which he liad heard such wonders. 
 Then perhaps he would pause to gaze on the green canoj^y 
 of the woods, with sensations that made his heart beat fast 
 and loud, or even called a tear to his eye, though why he 
 could not tell — those first revelations of the keener and 
 purer joys which nature reserves for those who love and 
 study her aright. When the breeze died away and the sun 
 came out in its strength, he would turn his bow towards 
 the shore. The forest leaves looked fresh and cool, and the 
 light fell so softly and soothingly under the broad branches 
 of the old trees. The deer would start and bound away 
 as they heard his nimble tread, but the birds would let him 
 pass unheeded, and sing to one another and hop from bough 
 to bough, as if they knew that they were made for sunlight 
 and song. And when they stopped for a moment, such a 
 silence would fall on those deep woods, that even the drop- 
 ping of a leaf would have something mysterious and thrill- 
 ing about it. There would be something, too, of strange- 
 ness and mystery in the sky as he caught glimpses of its 
 deep blue through the tremulous treetops, and a deeper 
 mystery still, in the long vistas under the pines where the 
 sight would wander on and on till it lost itself, at last, 
 in mingling leaves and shade. And when in the evening 
 circle he told the story of his roaming, they would warn 
 him against straying too far, tell stories of lost children, of 
 Indians that still lurked in the forests, and bears and cata- 
 
inOr.llAPHICAT- STUniKS. 11 
 
 iiK)mits and all the \\il<l sccmu's <»r jtioiicci- lire Liltlr <li'l 
 tlioy (Iroam what seeds they were dn)]»)»iiiL;,- Into llial, ynmiLC 
 mind, and the <lelii;'lit which thousands would ont; dayrceei\e 
 from the inipressions of this boyhood anioni^^ the woods. 
 
 Cooper was but an infant when lie was iiist caiTie*] to 
 Coopcrstown. His birthplace was Burlington, New Jersey, 
 where he first saw the light on the 15th of September, 
 1V89, and the little village, which was to be the home of 
 his boyhood and his final resting-place, had been built by 
 his father only three years before. Judge Tenipleton has 
 alw^ays been supposed to be an outline sketch of tliat 
 gentleman, and the "Pioneers" tells us what kind of a life 
 was led in this home which he had made for himself in 
 the wilderness. Perhaps the love of the water wdiich led 
 Cooper to the navy was first imbibed on the Otsego, and 
 the associations with which he has invested old ocean for 
 so many minds, would thus be owing, in part, to a (piict 
 little lake among the hills. Never was the "child" more 
 truly " father of the man " than in Cooper. 
 
 At thirteen he entered Yale ; too young, if that fiivorite 
 institution had been what it is now, but yet old enough to 
 prove himself an apt and ready scholar. The poet llill- 
 house was in the same class, and younger than he. Dr. 
 DTvaght was then President, with a well-won reputation as a 
 teacher, which has already outlived his claims as a poet. It 
 would be interesting to know how the stripling who was to 
 
12 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 become one of the real founders of American literature, 
 looked and felt in the presence of one of its earliest votaries. 
 The young poet was something of a rogue, the old one not a 
 little proud of his position ; and it is difficult to withstand 
 the temptation of indulging the fancy in some amusing 
 scenes between them. The culprit looking straightforward 
 with a funny mixture of drollery and indefinite dread of 
 consequences in his clear, gray eye, and the old doctor 
 bolt upright in his chair, with a thunder-cloud on his brow, 
 and measuring out his oppressive sentences with Johnso- 
 nian dignity. The only recorded expression, as far as we 
 know, of Cooper's opinion of the poetical merits of his old 
 master, is his answer to God^^dn's reference to the " Con- 
 quest of Canaan" and " Vision of Columbus" as the only 
 American poems that he had ever heard of, — " Oh, w^e can 
 do better than that now.'' 
 
 College then as now, and perhaps even more than now, 
 was the path to one of the learned professions ; and Cooper, 
 whose tastes led him to seek for a more adventurous career, 
 left it in his fourth year for the navy. There were no 
 schools in our navy then, and it was common for the young 
 candidate for nautical honors to make a voyage before the 
 mast in a merchantman, by way of initiation ; a custom 
 which Cooper, in looking back upon his own course from 
 an interval of forty years, is far from approving. In his 
 case, however, few will regret it. It was his first inter- 
 
r.i(>(.i:Ai'iii( Ai, sTi:i)ii:.s. 13 
 
 course willi sailors, his first initial ioii into tlic liar.KIiips 
 and e'lijoynu'iils, the j)ains aii«l thi' ph-asiircs ol' sea-life, 
 whic'li hi' surely eouhl never liave ))ainte(l so truthi'ully but 
 lor tliat year anil a hall" in the forecastle. 
 
 An old shipmate has recorded his fiist appearance, Mlien 
 he came down to the Sterling under the care of a merchant, 
 to look about him and sign the articles. The next day lie 
 made his appearance in his sailor's dress; the ship was 
 taken into the stream, and liis new companions came tum- 
 bling on board, a medley of nations, agreeing only in what 
 was then the almost universal characteristic of a sailor on 
 shore, the being or having been drunk. Night, however, put 
 them in sufficient working trim, and when all hands were 
 called to get the ship under way. Cooper was sent aloft 
 with another boy to loose the foretopsail. lie set Imnself 
 to his task with characteristic earnestness, and was tugging 
 stoutly at "the robins," when the second mate came 
 up just in time to prevent him from dropping his half of the 
 sail into the top. Fortunately the mate was too good- 
 natured to be harsh with a "raw hand," and the men too 
 busy with their own work to see what was going on alot't. 
 Ihit he soon found an "old salt" who taught him to kn(_»t 
 and splice, very much as " Long Tom" taught Barnstable, 
 and when they got on shore. Cooper repayed the debt by 
 historical anecdotes of the i)laces they visited together. 
 
 Cai)tain Johnston was a kind man, part owner as well as 
 
14 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 commander, and doubly interested in making a good voy- 
 age. The passage, however, was long and stormy, nearly 
 forty days from land to land, and Cooper's first view of 
 England was through its native veil of fog. The whole 
 country was in arms, for it was in the time of the threat- 
 ened invasion by Napoleon. As they passed the straits of 
 Dover at daybreak, they counted forty odd sail of vessels 
 of war, returning from their night-watch in those narrow 
 seas ; and everj one who remembers his own first impres- 
 sions of striking scenes, will readily conceive how deeply 
 the mind of a young poet must have been impressed by so 
 striking a scene as this. It Avas a practical illustration of 
 the watchfulness and naval power of the EngUsh which he 
 never forgot. 
 
 It was in a round jacket and tarpaulin that the future 
 guest of Rogers and Holland House first set his foot on 
 English ground, his imagination glowing with the recollec- 
 tion of all that he had heard and read of her power and 
 glory, and his heart thrilling with the thought that this 
 was the land of his fathers. He was soon at home in Lon- 
 don, ran through the usual round of sights, peered from 
 under his tarpaulin at the wonders of the Tower and the 
 beauties of the *' West End," and in the evening, amused 
 the forecastle with tales and descriptions from the scenes of 
 his day's ramble. 
 
 The voyage was long and successful. It gave him a 
 
niOGRAnilCAL STIDFKS. 15 
 
 rough expcriciu'i' of the l>:iy of I>isc:iy, c-;uTic'(l liim up tliu 
 straits, afVordod liini a riuiniiiLC view of tlic coasts of Spain 
 and Africa, iiiatlc liini familiar A\i(h tlie headlands and 
 coasts of the channel and the hazardous llaviL,^alion of 
 tliose crowded waters, stored his memory with scenes and 
 incidents and outlines of character, and while it fitted him 
 for the hnmediate duties of his j^rofession, prepared him, 
 also, for those vivid pictures of seadife which liavc made 
 ships as famihar to liundreds who never looked upon the 
 ocean as to those who Avere born upon its shores. 
 
 In the Bay of Biscay they were brouglit to hy a i)irate, 
 and only escaped by the timely appearance of an English 
 cruiser. They ran into the straits in thick westerly wea- 
 ther. Lord Collingwood's fleet was off" Cape Trafalgar, 
 and the captain, Avell aware of the danger of being run 
 down in the night, had come on deck, in the middle watch, 
 to see that there was a sharp look-out on the forecastle. 
 lie had scarcely given his orders, when the alarm of sail 
 ho! Avas heard, and a two-decker was descried through the 
 dark and mist bearing directly down upon them. The 
 ca^ttain ordered the helm "hard up," and called to Cooper 
 to bring a light. AVith one leap he was in the cabin, 
 seized the light, and in half a minute was swinging it from 
 the mizzen rigging. Ilis promptness saved the ship. The 
 two vessels were so near that the voice of the officer (_>f 
 the deck was distinctly heaid calling to his own <piarter- 
 
16 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 master to "port liis helm," and as the enormous mass 
 swept by them, it seemed as if she was about to crush 
 their raihng with the muzzle of her guns. While lying off 
 the old Moorish town of Almaria, Cooper was sent on 
 shore in the jolly-boat to boil pitch. As they were coming 
 off they saw that the sea was getting rough, and that they 
 would find it no easy work to get through the surf. But 
 their orders were peremptory, and delay would only have 
 made matters worse. So off they started, and for a minute 
 or two got on pretty well, when all of a sudden a breaker 
 " took the bow of the boat, and lifting her almost on end, 
 turned her keel uppermost." All hands got safe on shore, 
 though none could tell how, and launching their boat 
 again, made a second attempt with a similar result. It 
 was not till a third trial that they were able to force their 
 way out. 
 
 There was another kind of experience, too, which 
 Cooper added to his stock during this memorable voyage. 
 The Sterling had hardly dropped her anchor in English 
 waters before she was boarded by a man-of-war's boat, and 
 one of her best men taken from her to be forced into the 
 British navy, another of them only escaping by having a 
 certificate which the ofiicer could not refuse to acknow- 
 ledge, though he had refused to acknowledge his " protec- 
 tion." At London another Avas lost, and the captain 
 himseir Avas seized ]jy a press-gang. On their return 
 
i'.i(»(;uAi'iir< Ai, srri)ii:s, 17 
 
 passage, Just as tlicy were niiiiiiiiL;- out, ihcy wcru l)o:ir(lc<l 
 l>y a giin-l)c)al oHic-LT, wlio atU'ini»U'<l lo press a Swede. 
 Cooper eould not stand tliis insult t<> liis ilau', and was in 
 liigli words witli the En^^'lislnnan, when the captain com- 
 pelled him to restrain himself and be silent. Such were 
 some of his first lessons in this rough but manly school. 
 
 He now entered the navy, and continued the study of 
 his profession in its higher walks. How^ successful these 
 studies were lie has already proved by his writings ; and 
 years ago we heard him described by a brother ofiicer, 
 who kne\v him well, as active, prompt, and efficient, a 
 pleasant shipmate, always ready to do his duty, and rigor- 
 ous, too, in exacting it fi'om others. Many of his old 
 messmates are still alive. Why will not some of them 
 give us their recollections of this portion of his life ? As it 
 is, Ave can only judge it by its results; his sea tales and 
 " Naval History ;" the noblest tribute ever paid to a noble 
 profession. 
 
 And here, if I were writing a full life, the first and most 
 
 important chapter would end. The lessons of the forest 
 
 are blended with the lessons of the sea ; the rough tales of 
 
 the forecastle have mingled with the wild traditions of the 
 
 fi'ontiers; and the day-dreams of the woods and gentle 
 
 waters of Otsego have been expanded into the broader 
 
 visions of the ocean, and chastened by the stern realities 
 
 of actual life. The elements of his future career were 
 
 1-^- 
 
18 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 already combined, and awaited only the completion of that 
 sure, though silent process, by which nature prepares the 
 mysterious development of genius. 
 
 Few men have been more favorably situated during this 
 decisive period of life. In 1811 he resigned his commis- 
 sion, and married Miss Delancey, whose gentle character 
 and domestic tastes were admirably fitted to call out the 
 deep affections of his own nature, and favor that grateful 
 intermingling of action and repose which are so essential 
 to vigor and freshness of mind. He had established him- 
 self in a quiet little house, which is still standing, at Mama- 
 roneck, in Westchester county, not so near to the city as in 
 these days of railroads and steamers, but near enough to 
 make an excursion easy, and enable him to see his friends 
 whenever he chose. He loved his books, he loved the 
 quiet life of the country, he loved the calm sunshine of his 
 home, and the days glided smoothly away, scarcely reveal- 
 ing to him or to those around him, the powers which were 
 rapidly maturing in this voluntary obscurity. It was this 
 seeming monotony that furnished the occasion which first 
 revealed his real calhng. He was reading a new novel to 
 his wife: "Pshaw," said he, "I can write a better one 
 myself:" and to prove that he was in earnest, he set him- 
 self directly to the task, and wrote the first chapter of 
 "Precaution." "Go on," was Mrs. Cooper's advice, when 
 she had listened to it as a young wife may be supposed to 
 
moGi:APHR;AL studiks. 19 
 
 llstcMi to the first ]>:iixt'>^ iVoin her liiisbumrs ]»on. The 
 Work was cuiiipk-tcil : a iViLMid in wliose literary jii<lL;in.iil 
 lie placeil great cunliJoMce, the late Charles \Vilkes, gave a 
 favorable ()[)inioii, and "Precaution" was printed. 
 
 It can hardly be said to have been a successful Ijook. 
 The scene was laid in England. lie was drawing from his 
 recollection of books, rather than, his observation of life, 
 and the society which he liad undertaken to paint was 
 altogether unsiiited to that freshness of thought and 
 scenery in which his strength peculiarly lay. Yet the 
 work for him was a very important one. He had over- 
 come the first difficulties of authorship ; had framed a 
 plot and developed it ; invented characters, and made 
 them act and speak ; and learnt how" to make his pen 
 obey his will through two consecutive volumes. In au- 
 thorship, as in many other things, it is often the first step 
 that is the hard one. 
 
 His vocation was now decided. His active mind had 
 found its natural outlet, and yielding to the impulse of 
 his genius, he took his station boldly on his native soil, 
 amid the scenes of American history, and wrote the " Spy." 
 
 The time will come wlicn we shall feel far more deeply 
 than we now do, how great an event this was in the 
 history of American literature. It is easy to be an 
 author now. Literature has become a recognised pro- 
 fession, and brings its rewards as well as its trials. We 
 
20 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 have it, therefore, in all its forms, and abundantly. We 
 have its butterflies and its moths, its vampyres and its 
 jackals, and we have, too, earnest minds, and men who 
 think boldly and labor manfully in their high calling. 
 And we have them, because at the very moment when 
 we needed it most, there were a few minds amongst us 
 which had the energy ^nd the independence to mark out 
 for themselves a course of their own, and persevere in 
 it resolutely. But the task was a harder one than we can 
 fully realize. Cooper's strong American feelings were 
 so well knowr. to his friends, that they had not hesitated 
 to tell him how much they were surprised at his choice 
 of a subject for his first work. He accepted the censure, 
 and resolved to atone for his error. But the prospect 
 of success was so small, that it was not till several months 
 after the first volume had been printed that he could 
 summon up recolution to begin the second. Then, too, as 
 this was slowly making its way through the press, the 
 scarcely dried manuscript passing directly from the author's 
 desk to the compositor, the publisher became alarmed 
 at the prospect of a large volume ; and to calm his ap- 
 prehensions, the last chapter was written, paged, and 
 printed, before, half of those that were to come before it 
 had even been tliouglit of. 
 
 The success of the " Spy " was complete, and almost 
 immediate. It was not merely a triumph, but a revelation, 
 
i;io<;uAi'iii(Ai, sriDiMs. 21 
 
 for it slio\vo<l tliiit our own society :iinl history, young 
 as tlu'y were', eouid fui'iiish cliariu-tcrs ami iiu-idents lor 
 the HKXst iiivilini:; form of roiuaiK'e. Tliere was a trutli- 
 fulness about it wliic-li everybody could feel, and wliieli, 
 in some countries where it has been translated, has given 
 it the rank of a real history. And yet there was a 
 skilful groni)ing of characters, a happy contrast of situ- 
 ations and interests, an intermingling of grave and gay, 
 of individual eccentricities and natural feeling, a life in 
 the narrative, and a graphic power in the descriptions, 
 which, in spite of some commonplace, and some defects 
 in the artistic arrangement of the plot, raised it, at once, 
 to the first class among the novels of the age. But its 
 peculiar characteristic, and to which it owed, above all 
 others, its rank as a work of invention, was the character 
 of Harvey Birch. 
 
 Wordsworth had already shown how freely the elements 
 of poetry are scattered through the walks of lowdy life. 
 The " Wanderer " was a beautil'ul illustration of the 
 wisdom that lies hidden in brooks and trees, and the 
 pure sunshine of a mind that has chastened all inordi- 
 nate desires, and learnt to look upon nature and be happy. 
 But temptation had never presented itself to him in its 
 most dangerous form. His greatest peril had been a 
 lonely walk over roads that were never wholly deserted, 
 and his greatest self-denial, to throw off his pack when 
 
22 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 he felt that he had earned enough. Cooper was the first 
 to take the humble son of toil, whose daily earnings were 
 to be won at the daily hazard of life, and by plantmg 
 the holy principle of faith and sacrifice in his bosom, 
 raise him to the dignity of a patriot, without deprivmg 
 him of the characteristics of a pedler. It is in this that 
 he shows his genius. Many a happy conception has been 
 destroyed for want of this nice discrimination, or rather 
 this intuitive j^erception of the homogeneous elements of 
 character ; of what cannot be taken from it, and what 
 cannot be engrafted upon it, without destroymg it. Har- 
 vey is a pedler, with a pedler's habits and language, 
 and in all that was essential to the preservation of his 
 identity, a pedler's feelings. His pack is well filled with 
 goods skilfully chosen to meet the wants and excite the 
 desires of his customers. "When he opens it, he knows 
 how to bring them out with effect, and get the most he 
 can for them. You can see his eye twinkle with the 
 keen delight of a shrewd bargain ; and though he will 
 not cheat you, and can be generous upon occasions, you 
 feel that whatever it may have been that led him to trade 
 in the beginning, more than half his soul is in it now. 
 There is but one touch of poetry in him, and that is 
 rather the effect of his position than of any inward sense 
 of the poetical ; objective rather than subjective. I mean 
 the exquisite descri^Dtion of his feelings when led out into 
 
mor.RAPiiicAL STi i)ii:s. 28 
 
 tlie sunsliiiio to d'u'. liut lor lliis, mikI you would nliuost 
 laucy lljat lie had walked like IVler IJell lliroUL^h thu 
 loveliest scenes witliout any i)ereei)tioii of tlicij- l<jveliness. 
 
 Thus shrewdness, resolution, and ])Iain coinnKMi sense, 
 are the ajiparent traits of liis charactei-, and those, prohably, 
 by which he had been known among liis customers and 
 friends. Strange elements, it would seem, for the hero of a 
 romance, but essential, for all that, to the keeping and har- 
 mony of the author's conception. Did you ever, in your 
 journey ings, meet a brook, a calm, quiet, silent little stream- 
 let, with just Avater enough to keep its banks green, or to 
 turn a small grist-mill, and make itself useful ? And did 
 you ever follow that brook up to its birth-place among the 
 mountains, where it first came gushing forth from some 
 sunless cavern, and lay before you like a mysterious creation, 
 with the dark shadows of cliffs and crags, and giant old 
 trees on its bosom? It is the same brook still, the same 
 pure current, the same cool and limpid waters ; but if you 
 had never seen them except as they flowed tlirough the 
 meadow, you would never have known Iioav sweetly they 
 could mingle with the solemn grandeur of the mountains. 
 
 Setthepedlerandthe British general face to face, and let 
 him watch the eye and lips of the man who controls the fate 
 of thousands, as he would watch the changing features of a 
 customer that is haggling for a sixpence. Place him alone 
 in the midst of enemies who are thirsting for his blood, and 
 
24 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 give him the same coohiess and resokition with which he 
 had fliced robbers who asked him for nothing but his pack. 
 Let the same common sense which had been his guide in 
 trade, guide him still amid the crooks and tangles of policy, 
 and the dark passions of civil war ; let human life, and at 
 times, even the fate of a nation, depend upon his truth ; and, 
 cutting him off from every hope of honor, leave him no 
 stimulant but the love of country, and no reward but the 
 consciousness of duty well performed; and the pedler, 
 though a pedler still, becomes a hero. 
 
 The same origmality of invention and admirable dis- 
 crimination are fomid in his next great character, Leather 
 Stocking. In all that relates to his calling Leather Stock- 
 ing, Hke Harvey Birch, is a sunple and natm-al character. 
 They have the same judgment and common sense. But the 
 shrewdness which was so well placed in the tradesman, 
 would have shrunk into littleness and cunning m the man 
 of the woods. Simple-heartedness, and clear, quick percep- 
 tion, would be his natural characteristics. Resolution 
 would become fortitude and daring; and his days and 
 nights under the canopy of the woods, with the sunlight fall- 
 ing through the opening tree-tops as it frills on the vaulted 
 aisles of a cathedral, or the stars looking meekly out from 
 their blue dwellings, still and silent, and yet with some- 
 thing in their silence which thrills the heart like choral 
 symphonies, would awaken feelings that were unknown to 
 
i-.ioiJKAi'HirAi- sn i»ii:-. 25 
 
 those mIk) sleep uiHlfi- close Tool's, and ti-c:i<l llic «lusty 
 thoroughfares ol' lilc; aii<l ^'Leather Stockiiiir," to be true 
 to his nature, eoiiM not but he a [)()et. 
 
 The same may he said, in a certain degree, (»!' " Long 
 Tom," wlio looked upon the ocean as "Leather Slockujg" 
 looked upon the forest, nevei- feeling his lieart at ease until 
 the waves were bounding under him. God has spoken to 
 liim in the tempest, and lie lias bowed reverently to the 
 awful voice. The elements which he has contended with 
 from his childhood have a language for him. His eye reads 
 it in the clouds, and the winds breathe it in his ear. He 
 has looked upon the manifestations of their power till he 
 has come to feel towards them as if there were something in 
 them not wholly unlike to human passions and feelings; 
 and without ceasing to recognize them as the instruments 
 of a ]>ower still higher, he unconsciously extends to them 
 somewhat of the reverence which he feels for that power 
 itself. 
 
 But the life of a ship is not the life of the woods. Lonely 
 as it may seem, it is the loneliness of a narrow circle — not 
 the utter severing of social ties — which suggests the uncon- 
 scious soliloquies of the old woodsman. 
 
 Tom is always in the midst of his shipmates, separated 
 from them by many traits of character, but bound to them 
 by others, and with the example of human weakness con- 
 stantly before him. Sinqde, upright, and single-hearted, 
 
26 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 tenacious of his opinions, firm in liis convictions, and con- 
 stant in his attachments, he reminds yon of " Leather Stock- 
 ing" by these common traits of pure and earnest minds, 
 but differs from him in everything that should distinguish 
 the chikl of the ocean from the chikl of the woods. 
 
 We have, then, three characters from the common walks 
 of life, each admirably fitted for his humble calling, and all 
 equally raised above it by traits perfectly consistent with 
 Avhat it required or imposed. Love of country, pure and 
 disinterested, makes the pedler a hero ; the intrepid, loyal, 
 upright, and devout character of the scout gives a charm 
 and an authority to his words, which mere rank and wealth 
 can never command; and the simple-hearted coxswain, who 
 draws you to him in life by his earnestness and purity, the 
 defects as well as the beauties of his character, rises almost 
 to the grandeur of martyrdom in his death. This power 
 of elevating the lowly by the force of a high moral princi- 
 ple, was one of the most striking characteristics of Cooj^er's 
 genius ; and it is the more deserving of remark, inasmuch 
 as it is a power which he drew from the peculiar elevation 
 of his own moral nature. There has been but one man to 
 whom it was given to look down upon human nature, as 
 from some height that raised him far above its contamina- 
 tions, and painting it in all its forms, its lights and its 
 shades, its beauties and its deformities, leave you no other 
 clue to his own character but the conviction that the mind 
 
i;i«>(;KAriii( Ai, .srrj»ii:s. 27 
 
 •vvliic'li saw all things so truly, cduM not but love t]\.(' i:;n(.(l. 
 In all writings but Sliakspi-arc's, wc ju<lg(! tliu man l)y the 
 book; and tluTu arc lew who wouM conic out truin such a 
 trial so honorably as Cooper. 
 
 The ^^Spy" was published in 1821; the 'Tioneers^' in 
 1823; then came the "Pilot," cfcc; in 182G lie had covered 
 the whole ground of his invention by the i)uljlication of the 
 " Mohicans." It was not without some misgivings that he 
 had ventured upon the "Pilot," for he well knew that the 
 effect of a description depends upon the skilful use of 
 details, and here the details, if strictly professional, might 
 be unintelligible. The friends to whom he spoke of his 
 plan tried to dissuade him from it. They had been so 
 accustomed to look upon the ocean as a monotonous waste, 
 that they could not understand how it could be made inter- 
 esting. More than once he was upon the point of throwing 
 his manuscript into the fire. But the first thought of it 
 had come to him by one of those sudden impulses to which 
 Ave often cling more tenaciously than to designs that have 
 been carefully matured. Scott had just published the 
 "Pirate," Avhich Cooper admired as a romance, but was 
 unwilling to accept as an accurate picture of sea-life. The 
 authorship of the "Waverley Novels" was still a secret, 
 and one day, in discussing this point with a friend, it was 
 argued that Scott could not have written them, because 
 they displayed too minute and accurate an ac<piaintance 
 
28 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 with top wide a range of subjects. Where could he have 
 made himself familiar enough Avith the sea, to write the 
 "Pirate?" Cooper Avas by no means disposed to call the 
 literary merits of the " Pirate" in question, but felt himself 
 fully justified in disputing its seamanship. The only w^ay 
 of doing this was by writing a real tale of the sea, and the 
 result was the " Pilot." 
 
 The first favorable opinion that he received was from an 
 Englishman, a man of taste, and an intimate friend, but a 
 skeptic in all that related to American genius. He read 
 the sheets of the first volume, and to Cooper's great sur- 
 prise pronoimced it good. 
 
 As a still fuller test, he chose an old messmate for his 
 critic, and read to him the greater part of the first volume, 
 as Scott had read the hunting scene of the " Lady of the 
 Lake" to an old sportsman. The first half hour was suffi- 
 cient. As he came to the beating out of the "Devil's 
 Grip," his auditor grew^ restless, rose from his seat, and 
 paced the floor with feverish strides. There was no mis- 
 taking the impression, for not a detail escaped him. "It 
 is all very well, my fine fellow, but you have let your jib 
 stand too long." It was the counterpart of " He will spoil 
 his dogs," of Scott's hunting critic. But Cooper, fully 
 satisfied with the experiment, accepted the criticism, and 
 "blew his jib out of the bolt-ropes." 
 
 This was the period, too, in which he mingled most in 
 
lUOGUAlMirCAL STUDIKS. 29 
 
 the socii'ty of liis own coiiut r\ iikii. Williout .•il»s<»lu1cly 
 removing- lo llie city, lie }):issed a good i»nrti(.ii of tlic year 
 tliere, taking an active part in many things wliieli have left 
 pleasant recollections, if not deep im])ressions, behind them. 
 He was the founder of the " Bread and Cheese Club" of 
 which Bryant and Dr. Francis have given such agreeable 
 sketches, and of which much more might be told that the 
 world would be glad to know. He took a deep interest in 
 the reception of Lafayette — one of the few incidents in our 
 relations with the men who served us when service brought 
 no reward, to which we can look back with pride. It was 
 on this occasion that he gave that remarkable proof of his 
 ready power of composition which Dr. Francis has re- 
 corded. The *' Castle Garden Ball," was one of the great 
 manifestations of the day ; and Cooper, after exerting him- 
 self in getting it up, laboring hard all day in the prepara- 
 tions, and all night m carrying them out, repaired towards 
 daylight to the office of his friend, Mr. Charles King, and 
 wrote out a full and accurate report of the whole scene, 
 which appeared next day in Mr. King's paper. 
 
 He had already formed, as early as 1823, the design of 
 illustrating American scenery by a series of tales, and spoke 
 freely of it to his more intimate friends. Some of his 
 excursions were studies of locality. For " Lionel Lincoln," 
 he had visited Boston ; and it may not be uninteresting to 
 Rhode Islanders to know that part of that work was 
 
30 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 written in Providence, in a house yet standing, just on the 
 verge of the old elm trees of College Street * It was then, 
 too, probably, that he studied the scene of the opening 
 chapters of the " Red Rover." 
 
 Many a pleasant page might be filled with the records 
 of these days : his studies of Shakspeare in the wonderful 
 interpretations of Kean ; his conversations with Mathew ; 
 his rambles with Dekay; his daily chit-chats and discus- 
 sions with old messmates at the City Hotel ; and a thou- 
 sand other things, trifles often in themselves, but which, 
 acting upon a mind by which so many other mmds have 
 been moved, would have a deep and permanent interest. 
 
 It would be pleasant, too, to meet him once more on his 
 favorite element; follow him across the Atlantic; watch 
 the efiects of the scenery and society of the old world 
 upon a mind so familiar with those of the new, and see 
 how far the preference which he had so boldly avowed for 
 the institutions of his own country, would be able to resist 
 those temptations by which so many convictions have been 
 shaken. His, however, were of surer growth. 
 
 "When he sailed for Europe, in 1826, his American repu- 
 tation was at its height. The department which he had 
 chosen was so difierent from that of Mr. Irving, that no 
 fair-minded reader ever thought of comparing them. 
 
 * Then, as now, the residence of Mr. John Whipple. 
 
mor.KAnnrAL studtks. HI 
 
 Bryant and Ilalltn-k had publisliini;- iK.lliinu- in j.roso: and 
 the gracernl i.roductions of .Miss Sod.^wick, altlioui^di tlicy 
 belonged to tlie same class, seemed to suggest a eom]>a- 
 rison ^vitll Miss Edgewortli, rather than with him. His 
 countrymen were proud of him. His friends expressed 
 their sentiments by a public dinner — the first tribute of the 
 kind, we believe, ever paid on this side of the Atlantic to 
 literary eminence. And if ever ship went freighted with 
 proud hopes and kind washes, it was that which bore him 
 in his second visit to the old world. How different from 
 the first ! 
 
 His reputation had preceded him. Ho was met with a 
 kind welcome to the classic circle of Holland House ; was 
 soon on intimate terms with Rogers ; Scott sought him out 
 in Paris, and gladly renewed the acquaintance in London ; 
 he lived in friendly intimacy with Lafayette ; and found, 
 wherever he went, that kind of welcome which was most 
 grateful to his independent spirit. He was fond of society. 
 It was a pleasant study, and a kind of exercise that seemed 
 essential to him. His conversational powers were of a 
 high order, and he loved to bring them out. But he was 
 a good listener, and though tenacious of his opinions, a fair 
 disputant. He was naturally fond, therefore, of the society 
 of literary men, when he could meet them as men, and not 
 as lions. "You learn nothing about a man," we once 
 heard him say, "when you meet him at a show dinner, 
 
32 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 and he sits up to talk for you instead of talking with you. 
 When I was in London, Wordsworth came to town, and I 
 was asked to meet him at one of those displays ; but I had 
 seen enough of them already, and would not go." " But 
 you met him afterwards, my dear," said Mrs. Cooper. 
 " Yes, at Rogers's, and was very much pleased with him ; 
 but it was because I met him in a place where he felt at 
 home, and let himself out freely." - 
 
 Cooper has told the history of the greater part of the 
 next seven years in the ten volumes of his " Switzerland," 
 and " Gleanings in Europe ;" characteristic works, fresh, 
 firm, and manly, full of beautiful descriptions, important 
 remarks, and lively anecdotes, written exactly as he talked, 
 and giving an accurate picture of his own mind. The part 
 of his residence abroad to which he used to look back with 
 most pleasure, was his visit to Italy, of which his two sunny 
 little volumes are a true and delightful record. He had a 
 sino'ular tact in choosing^ his houses. In Florence he lived 
 in a delightful little villa just a stone's throw from the city, 
 where he could look out upon green leaves, and write to 
 the music of birds. At Naples, after going the usual 
 rounds, he settled himself for the summer in Tasso's villa, 
 at Sorento, with that glorious view of sea, and bay, and 
 city, and mountain under his eye, and the surf dashing 
 almost directly under his windows. 
 
 Two or three years after his return, I met him one day 
 
i;i(M;i;Ariii( Ai, sn i)iH>. 33 
 
 ill liioadw.'iy, just :is I wa^ ii|>ttii the |M)iii1 of sailiiiL^Mor 
 
 Eiii-ope a<;-aiii. He \\a-< \\alkiii<;- leisurely aloiiL,^, with his 
 
 coat open, aii»l a i;-i-eat striiiii; ol' (Miioiis iit his liaiid. I l)a<l 
 
 nearly i)asscMl l)y witliout i-eei)<i;iii/,iii!j; liim, wlieii seeiiiLC 
 
 several i)COi)le lurn to look at liim, and then speak to one 
 
 another as if lliorc was sonietliinL;" woilli ()l)serving, I 
 
 turned loo, and beliold, it was Cooper. " I liave turned 
 
 farmer," said lie, after the iirst greetings, and raising his 
 
 bimcli of onions, "but am obliged to come to town now and 
 
 then, as you see." I asked him if he had any commands 
 
 for Italy. "Kemember me kindly to Greenough. I ought 
 
 to write him, Ijut I never can make up my mind to write a 
 
 letter, when I can find any kind of a pretext for not 
 
 writing it. He must trust to the regard which he knows I ^ 
 
 really do feel for him." " Do you not almost feel tempted 
 
 to take a run back yourself?" " Yes, indeed. If there is 
 
 any country out of my own in which I would wish to live, it is 
 
 Italy. There is no place where mere living is such a luxury." 
 
 One thing, however, was very amioying to him, and that 
 
 was the ignorance and prejudices of the English in all that 
 
 related to America. It seemed to him, at times, as if they 
 
 would have been much more cordial to him if he had been 
 
 anything but an American. He never let an opi)ortunity 
 
 slip of standing up boldly and firmly for the institutions 
 
 of his native country. It was with this feeling that he 
 
 wrote the "Notions of a Travelling Bachelor" — a work 
 
 2 
 
34 BIOGRAPIIICAI. STUDIES. 
 
 which should have made his countrymen pause, at least 
 before they accepted the cakimnies which were heaped 
 upon liim for the patriotic though unwelcome truths of 
 some of his subsequent volumes. While he was living in 
 Paris a severe attack was made upon the economical sys- 
 tem of the American government. Cooper came forward 
 and refuted the ungrounded assertions of the royalists in a 
 pamphlet, as remarkable for accuracy of information as for 
 energy and literary power. Government, which was then 
 making war upon Lafayette, by calumniating the United 
 States, was exceedingly irritated. The official papers con- 
 tinued their attacks, and enlisted an American in their ser- 
 vice, who was afterwards rewarded by a Chargeship from 
 our own government. Cooper stood his ground manfully, 
 meeting every assertion by unquestionable statistics and an 
 array of facts and cogency of argument that, for candid 
 inquirers, set the question at rest for ever. 
 
 He was equally earnest in bringing forward the claims of 
 our poets. We have already alluded to his conversation 
 with Godwin upon American literature. He had been 
 exceedingly annoyed on that occasion, to find that his 
 memory, ever treacherous in quotations, would scarcely 
 furnish him with a line of Bryant or Halleck to bear him 
 out in his assertions. A few days afterwards he was to meet 
 a party at Rogers's, and resolving not to let his friends 
 suffer by his want of memory, took a volume with him. 
 
nior.HAl'IlICAL STUDIKS. 86 
 
 Tn Paris liis styK' of li\iiin" was an a<lmii-al)lci illustration 
 of his cuncepUons of the diitics and position of an Aincrican 
 L;\'ntk'nian. lie occupied part of a hands(jinc Jlolel in llie 
 *' rue St. INIaur," keeping his carriage, and the service 
 recjuired by a genteel and modest establishment. His doors 
 were always open to every American who had claims to his 
 society ; and you were sure to meet there the men of both 
 countries whom you Mould most wish to know. One of his 
 most intimate friends at this time was Morse, the inventor 
 of the Telegraph : and the contrast of the two in their 
 frequent rambles has furnished a lively and characteristic 
 jiaragraph in Willis's " Peneillings by the Way." He was 
 particularly fond of the society of artists, visiting them in 
 their studios, welcoming them to his house, and whenever 
 he felt that it Avas needed, giving or procuring them com- 
 missions. There is scarcely one, if there is even one, who 
 visited Europe during those seven years, but what has 
 brought back pleasant recollections of his intercourse with 
 Cooper. 
 
 Meanwhile nothing Avas allowed to break in ui)on his 
 literary duties. A portion of every day was set aside for 
 composition ; and by this systematic aiii)lication, every 
 twelve months told a tale of labor accomplished which 
 seemed a mystery to those who were ignorant of the secret 
 of his industry. The "Prairie" and "Red Pover'' ap- 
 ]>ear(<l when he had been abroad but little ovci* a year; 
 
36 BIOGExVPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 and five others were added to the list of his works before 
 he returned in 1833, without counting the "Travelling 
 Bachelor," the letters Avhich formed the basis of his ten 
 volumes upon Europe, and the controversy to which we 
 have already alluded. 
 
 His time, after his return to the United States, was chiefly 
 divided between ISTew York, Philadelphia, and Coopers- 
 town, in which last he had repaired the fine old mansion 
 which his father had erected when the first hearthstone was 
 laid on the shores of the Otsego.* Originally it stood alone, 
 
 * " Otsego Hall was built at the close of the last century by Judge 
 Cooper. It is a brick building, the bricks having been made for the 
 purpose at the outlet of the lake. The floors were of original forest oak. 
 It contains a large hall, accordmg to the favorite mode of building at 
 that day ; the room is nearly fifty feet in length by twenty -four in width, 
 and was occupied as the eating and sitting room of the family during the 
 last generation, Mrs. Cooper, Judge Cooper's wife, was very partial to 
 flowers, — a taste much less common fifty years ago than to-day; and 
 nearly a third of the hall was filled with green-house plants at the time 
 of her death, in 1817. The house received its name from Judge 
 Cooper, but for a long time was more frequently called the " Mansion 
 House " in the village. A double avenue of poplars reached formerly 
 from the gate to the house, the trees having been given to Judge Cooper 
 by Mr. Bingham, of Philadelphia, who first introduced them into America. 
 " On Mr. Cooper's return from Europe, the house passed into his 
 possession, and he immediately began repairing it. For some years 
 previous it had been uninhabited. The poplars, little suited to the 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 37 
 
 ■with tlie lake before its doors, and tlie forest, w]ii<'Ii lie lias 
 described so beautifully iu the l*ioneers, in full view on the 
 right. But gradually the hamlet had grown to a village, 
 and the village to a town, until the once almost solitary 
 representative of civilization was surrounded by all the 
 signs of a thriving and industrious population. Still, early 
 associations and its own natural beauty, bound him to the 
 
 climate, were all iu a condition that required they should be cut down ; 
 and the whole character of the grounds was changed by winding walks 
 and new plantations, Mr. Cooper setting out many of the trees with his 
 own hands. The house was thoroughly repaired and improved, although 
 the lower story remained much as it was built. Mr. Cooper was very 
 partial to its doors and window shutters of the native oak of the 
 country; entrances were also put up to protect the principal doors, 
 which Mr. Cooper considered necessary in our climate. The architectural 
 designs of the changes were all drawn by Professor Morse, an intimate 
 friend of Mr. Cooper, who was in Cooperstown at the time the work was 
 going on. An old block-house, the only building standing on the spot 
 when Judge Cooper came there, was found in the grounds now occupied 
 by the Hall; a few of the older apple-trees about the place are also 
 older than the village. The graves of two deserters, shot during Clinton's 
 expedition, were found within the grounds of the Hall ; and an old iron 
 swivel was also dug up in digging the cellars of a house, since burnt, 
 within the satne bounds." — The Author of liural Homes. On the death 
 of Mrs. Cooper, who survived her husband but a few months, the Hall 
 passed out of the family, and was enlarged for a boarding-house, and 
 soon after burnt. 
 
38 BIOGKAnnCAL STUDIES. 
 
 spot ; and to a mind like Lis, wliich looked upon the grave 
 Avitliout fear, there must have been a deep pleasure, though 
 a mekmcholy one, in the thought that his own would be 
 made amid the scenes which had suggested some of his 
 most beautiful creations. 
 
 In this quiet retreat Cooper Avrote seventeen new works 
 of fiction, partly in completion of his original design, and 
 some suggested by important questions of the day, in 
 which he always took a lively interest, unbiassed by local 
 or party j^assions. Here, too, or rather while dividing his 
 time between what he again called home and his two 
 favorite cities, he wrote his "Xaval History of the United 
 States," the " Lives of Naval Commanders," two or three 
 volumes upon government, and several pamphlets and 
 reviews, upon subjects connected, for the most part, with 
 naval history. Several of these works excited a spirit of 
 hostility, which gave itself vent in bitter criticisms upon 
 the author as vreli as upon his writings. Regarding this 
 as a wanton violation of private rights, he resolved to 
 appeal to the law on every occasion, and cany the respon- 
 sibility to the door of every calumniator. This necessarily 
 involved him in a contest with the daily press, and sub- 
 iected him to many petty annoyances, which would have 
 rtorn sadly upon a mind less resolute or independent. 
 But he came out of it triumphant, and with new claims to 
 I lie respect of those whose good opinion he covcteil. In 
 
iuo(;kaimii(\\l stldiks. 39 
 
 1st'.) he iii:i«l(' :in-:mL!;i'in('Hls uilli .Mi-. I*utii:iiii Tor llic 
 r('|»u]»lic:ili()ii of the *' LcatlicrstockiuL,^ Tiilcs " ;m<l )»:iil 
 of liis soa novels, Avitli new iiitrodiiclioiis and sucli correc- 
 tions as lie miirlit wish to make, before givini,' lli<Mn to the 
 woild ill tl\eirlast and permanent form. 
 
 Soon after, lie began to feel some indications of disease. 
 His feet became tender, and lie was unable to use them 
 as freely as he had been accustomed to do. He apologized 
 to me one morning at Putnam's for not rising to shake 
 hands. " My feet are so tender," said he, "that I do not 
 like to stand any longer tlian I can help." Yet when we 
 walked out together into Broadway, I could not help 
 turning every now and then to admire his commanding 
 figure and firm bearing. Sixty years seemed to sit as 
 lightly on him as fifty on the shoulders of most men ; and 
 when I remembered the astonishing proofs which he had 
 given of vigor and fertility, I could not but believe that 
 he had many a new creation in store for us yet. His last 
 visit to New York was in April, 1851, and the change in 
 his appearance was already such as to excite serious appre- 
 hensions among his friends. During the first few weeks 
 after his return he seemed to be gi'owing better, and wrote 
 favorable accounts of himself to his friend and medical 
 adviser. Dr. Francis. But soon the disease returned in 
 full force, rai)idly gaining upon the vital organs, and 
 terminating, at la.st, in dropsy. His death is yet too 
 
40 mOGRAnilCAL STUDIES. 
 
 recent to make his last hours a fit subject for description. 
 Dr. Francis has told all that can be told Avithoiit trespass- 
 ing too far on the sanctity of private feelings, and borne 
 ample testimony to the beautiful example which he gave of 
 resignation and faith. He died on the 14th of Septem- 
 ber, 1851, at half-past one in the afternoon. One day 
 more, and he would have completed his sixty-second year. 
 Bryant has truly said that Cooper's failings were of that 
 kmd which are obvious to all the world. They were the 
 failings of a strong, original, active mind, conscious of its 
 powers, patient of observation and research, but accus- 
 tomed, from early habit, as well as natural tendencies, to 
 self-reliance and independent judgment. His convictions 
 were earnest, for they partook of the earnestness and 
 sincerity of his nature, and he could no more conceal 
 them from others than he could disguise them to himself. 
 He was not an extensive reader, but he read thoughtfully, 
 and his memory, though defective in quotations, was singu- 
 larly tenacious of facts. His powers of observation were 
 remarkable, and he naturally learned to place confidence 
 in them. T have always fancied that power of observa- 
 tion was more or less modified by power of sight, and 
 surely that keen, gray eye of his saw things with won- 
 derful distinctness. Thus observation possessed a double 
 charm for him. lie loved it as the pleasant exertion of a 
 power which nature had bestowed upon liim in its highest 
 
iji<»<;k.\imii<'at. sti'diks. 41 
 
 ]>('rlc'cti()n, and lie 1(»V(m1 it too, liccimsc, for cvci'} lliiiii^ 
 \\Iiicli lay witliiii its scojn', lie could icly u]»oii it. 
 
 In sucli minds the jiowcr of original observation is gene- 
 rally acc"()nn)anic'd by tlie power of oriixina] tlionglit. 
 "What they see for themselves, they judge for themselves, 
 and Mith a promptness and vigor tliat are in exact pro- 
 portion to tlie clearness and accuracy of their pereei)tions. 
 In their intercourse with other men, they will express 
 boldly what they have thouglit independently, and their 
 earnest advocacy of their own opinions Avill often he inter- 
 preted into a haughty contempt for the o^tinions of others. 
 Thus Cooper's originality was often called pride, and his 
 independence overbearing. He was accused of conceit, 
 because he claimed an accuracy for his own observations 
 which he knew that they possessed, and taxed with obsti- 
 nacy because he would not give up an opinion without a 
 reason. But no man ever knew him well, who did not come 
 to feel somewhat of the same kind of confidence in him 
 whicli he placed in himself, or conversed with him often 
 without being convinced that everything which could claim 
 to be a reason would be listened to and examined a\ ith 
 respectful consideration. If his convictions had been less 
 earnest, or his mind less firm, we should still have had 
 many a long year to wait for " Leather Stocking " and 
 " Long Tom." 
 
 He was a firm believer in the right of property, lie 
 
 2* 
 
42 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 regarded it as an essential element of social organization, 
 which every good citizen was bound to uphold. Three 
 of his later works were written in fulfilment of what he 
 regarded as his ow^n duty in this question. He would 
 admit of no denial of the principle, but when any violation 
 of it that could be tolerated occurred on his o^vn grounds, 
 he could be lenient towards the offender, and even kind. 
 One day he caught a man stealing fruit from his garden. 
 The case was so flagrant a one that he might have pun- 
 ished it severely. But instead of flying into a passion and 
 sending for a constable, he rej^roved the culprit mildly, 
 told him how great a w^rong it was doing him to make his 
 neighbors believe that there Avas no other way of getting 
 at his fruit than by stealing it, and bidding him, the next 
 time that he wanted anything, come in at the gate like a 
 true man and ask for it, helped him fill his basket and let 
 him go. 
 
 His love of detail made him minutely exact in all his 
 business transactions. He was always open and liberal in 
 his bargains, but he loved to make them accurately, 
 discuss them in all their bearings, and draw up the con- 
 tract with liis own hand and a business-like method which 
 looked like anything but romance. This trait of character, 
 like all the other traits of a strong mind, pervaded his 
 whole intellectual organization. It was constantly break- 
 ing out in his conversation. I remember to have heard 
 
BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIKS. 
 
 43 
 
 him explain iniimlcly to :i loiviLCiicr wlio lia<l just uscmI 
 voyage tor passaice, tin' <liilV'reiico between tin; two words. 
 On another occasion, whik' lie was writini,^ the '' IJravo," 
 he stopped nie one morning to inquire how I'ar social usage 
 admitted of substituting signora for sif/norma in address- 
 ing an unmarried lady. It was the natural liabit of liis 
 mind, a conscientious exactness, extending to everything in 
 which lie engaged, and to which we owe the minute detail 
 and patient elaboration wliich make his pictures so truth- 
 ful It was the secret, too, of some of his faults ; leading 
 liim, even in some of his best works, to give too much 
 prominence to circumstances that were not essential to 
 the action, nor consistent with that harmony of propor- 
 tion wliich is essential to the general effect of a work of 
 art. 
 
 He was a generous man in the best and truest sense of 
 the word, liberal in the use of his money, but judicious 
 and discrimmating in his liberality. Money he regarded 
 as a means of gratifying his tastes, and he gratified them 
 to the extent of his means, living in a style suited to his 
 position and his purse, indulging his love for society, his 
 love of travel, his love of art, and all those elegant plea- 
 sures which contribute so much to the healthful action of 
 the mind. But he felt that it was also a responsibility, and 
 one that could not be lightly thrown off. He was always 
 ready to give, Avhere the gift was a succor to want, not an 
 
44 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 encouragement to voluntary idleness. He loved, too, to 
 encourage rising talent, particularly that of young artists. 
 He gave tlicni orders, opened liis house to them, and 
 cheerfully ackno\vledged their claims to his sympathy. On 
 one occasion his attention was called to a yonng artist who 
 was trying hard to find an opportunity of making himself 
 known. Cooper immediately gave him a small commis- 
 sion, and being convinced by the manner in which it was 
 executed that he had fallen upon a man of superior talents, 
 opened his house to him as to a brother, during his resi- 
 dence in the same city, and on leaving, gave him a free 
 letter of credit upon his banker in Paris. " I had occasion 
 to use it more than once," said the artist when he told me 
 the story, "and my drafts were all cheerfully accej)ted. 
 Since then my circumstances have changed, and I have 
 paid him ; though I am well convinced that he never would 
 have asked for the money, and that nobody but he and I 
 ever knew of the transaction." 
 
 Some of the controversies in which he was engaged, 
 have left, as controversies always do, ftxlse impressions of 
 him upon many minds. He was earnest, and was there- 
 fore supposed to be bitter, and the sensitiveness which he 
 w\as unwilling to acknowledge to himself or to others, often 
 exposed him to ungrounded and even unwarrantable sus- 
 picions. A single example will be sufficient to show how 
 far he rose above those vulgar and degrading passions 
 
wliifh wilful i.rcjudici" lias s.-mdiiiu's dared to atlrilnilc to 
 Jiiin. 
 
 It is well known tliat the acconnt wliidi lie has given of 
 tlie battle of Lake Erie, in Ills "Naval History," led to a 
 controversy with Lieutenant Mackenzie. In the heii^dit of 
 the discussion, and just as lie was carrying through the 
 press a severe examination of Mackenzie's version of the 
 battle, the Somers returned from lier ih-fated and memora- 
 ble cruise. Cooper instantly suppressed his paper at the 
 expense of a round sum to the printer. "The poor 
 fellow," said he, " will have enough to do to escape the 
 consequences of his own weakness. It is no time to be 
 hard upon hhn now." 
 
 In conversation with Cooper, you could not fail to be 
 struck with his fondness for realities. It seemed strange, 
 at first, that a man who, for full half his career, had 
 scarcely passed a day without writing two or three pages 
 ^f fiction, should, in what appeared to be the habitual 
 train of his thoughts, be so busy with the positive ques- 
 tions of hfe. He possessed one of those active minds 
 which find rest in change of object, rather than in repose. 
 He sought relief from invention in observation and discus- 
 sion. He loved calm inquiry. He loved to think, and his 
 thoughts have less of the ingenuity of the poet than of 
 the clearness and justness of the man of the world. His 
 opinions upon important questions of public policy and 
 
46 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 private duty, the definite rights of individuals, and the 
 complex and comprehensive interests of nations, were the 
 result of study and reflection, and he held to them firmly. 
 He was firmly attached to the institutions of his country, 
 not merely from habit and as a duty which his birth im- 
 posed upon him, but because he believed in them ; and he 
 believed in them because reading, observation, and reflec- 
 tion had taught him that they were better adapted than 
 those of any other age or nation to promote the best inter- 
 ests of mankind. But he was painfully aware of our faults, 
 which he laid bare with a boldness which posterity will 
 admire, though his contemporaries repaid him for his 
 frankness with calumny and neglect. 
 
 Cooper's literary habits were in many respects like 
 Scott's. He never laid out a careful plan beforehand and 
 worked up to it by regular progression. His first concep- 
 tion was an indefinite outline, relating rather to the general 
 object than to the details. The characters once conceived, 
 the incidents rose from them as their natural development. 
 Alfieri tells us that all his tragedies were invented at the 
 opera. Scott used to " simmer " over his morning task in 
 his dressing-room. Cooper was a great walker, and seldom 
 failed, when alone, to be turning over the subject of a chap- 
 ter in his mind so as to come to his task with something 
 like definite preparation. But his imagination once excited, 
 became strangely wilful in her flights, and the page that 
 
luixiKAriiKAi, sTiri)ii:s. 47 
 
 l^vcw under his pen was ol'tcii vcM-y iiiilikr the menial sketch. 
 He wrote rapidly, l)iil corrocled :iinl (Utered with a care 
 whieli seems ahnost ineredihle when we c()nsi(h'r how much 
 lie has written. At one time lie had set lor liimseif a (hiily 
 stent, but I am unable to say bow long be adhered to it. 
 In most cases his manuscript went to the compositor cbapter 
 by cbapter, as fast as it was written, and tbe work once 
 fairly off bis bands, be was glad to lose sight of it and pass 
 to something new. In tbe early part of bis career, be was 
 in the habit of consulting bis friends, but practice and 
 success gave him confidence, and few, we believe, if any of 
 liis later works, ever went beyond bis family circle till they 
 were actually publisbed. 
 
 I would gladly go furtber, and speak of otber qualities 
 wbich are no less deserving of record, tban tbose wbich I 
 have touched upon so cursorily. But I have already 
 exceeded my limits, and this imperfect sketch must be 
 brought to a close. Yet I cannot bid adieu to a subject on 
 wbich I feci so deeply, without expressing the hope that 
 this great man will soon receive at the bands of bis own 
 countrymen tbe same reward which be has already received 
 from foreigners. No productions of the American mind 
 have been spread so extensively as the writings of Cooper. 
 In every country of Europe you will find them side by side 
 Avith its own favorite classics. In a volume fresh from tbe 
 leading publishing house of Paris, we find tbe prospectus of 
 
48 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 a new edition of all his novels, with vignettes, and in the 
 favorite form of fashionable typography, on the same sheet 
 with the announcement of new editions of Beranger, Lamar- 
 tine, Thierry, Thiers, and Scott. An eminent physician of 
 our city was called the other day to attend some emigrants 
 recently arrived from Germany. He was anxious to learn 
 w^here they had got their knowledge of the country of their 
 adoption. " We learnt it all from Cooper," was the reply. 
 "We have four translations of his works in German, and we 
 all read them." " Have you anything new from Cooper ?" 
 " What is Cooper writing now ?" are questions that have 
 been asked me again and again in Italy, where his works are 
 as well known as those of any native. And this, let it be 
 remembered, is not the transient interest excited by a clever 
 sketch of some new scene, which palls upon the taste the 
 moment that the novelty has ceased, but a reputation 
 sustained and confirmed by repeated trials in a period of 
 unexampled literary fertility. 
 
 And where are the records of our gratitude for this 
 great work which he has done for us? Where are the 
 busts and the statues which are to tell posterity what a 
 noble form was once the tenement of that noble mind? 
 The columns and the tablets that point out to the pilgrim 
 and the stranger, his favorite haunts and the scenes of his 
 labors ? At Florence, in the great square of the Cathedral, 
 within the shadow of Giotto's tow^er, one of the first things 
 
inrK^.HArnrcAT, stidtkr. 49 
 
 to wliicli your :i1tciiti.)ii is (lircc(c(l, is :i lilll«' sl:il> oi' wliih; 
 iii:n-l)le witli tlu- siini'li' inscription of " Sasso di Dante." 
 Tliero is notliin-- liistorically positive about it, but an oM 
 tradition says, tliat lliis was the i)lace' wlierc Dante loved to 
 sit in tlic cool of evening and gaze on liis"l)el San* Gio- 
 vanni," and repentant Florence, jealons of every record of 
 tlie son whom she condemned to exile and the stake, jnit up 
 this little tablet on the spot, to tell by what feet it had been 
 hallowed. 
 
 And now that the grave has closed, for the first tinief 
 amongst ns, over a man great in those things which make 
 nations great for ever, shall his dust mingle like common 
 earth, with the unknown thousands who lived for themselves 
 and are forgotten ? Shall he thus pass from amongst us in 
 the fulness of his maturity, and the year of his death bear 
 no record in our annals ? It cannot be that where wealth 
 is lavished Avith eager competition in processions and pa- 
 geants and vain displays, which fade from the memory with 
 the last shout of the weary multitude, there should not be 
 enough of manly pride to pay the debt of gratitude and 
 justice. It cannot be that the wealth and lil)erality of 
 New York, should fuHn this freshness of her exi)anding 
 magnificence, to find some means of connecting the mani- 
 
 * "Mio bel San Giovanni." Bivina Commedia^Inferno, c. xix. 17. 
 f This was written in 1852. 
 
50 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 festations of her own power, with the memory of one of 
 the best and truest of her sous ; or that men Avho look 
 forward with trust, and labor with earnest hearts in the 
 cause of their country, should forget that the surest pledge 
 of the future, is the full and grateful recognition of the 
 past. 
 
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF COOPER. 
 
 I SHALL never forget the first day that I saw Cooper. It 
 was at good old General Lafayette's, in that neat little 
 apartment of rne d'Anjon, whieli has been the scene of so 
 many things that have hallowed it in so many memories. 
 And the scene of that morning was a striking one, too, and 
 not easy to be forgotten. Some of my readers may 
 remember that, many years ago, the demon of si^eculation 
 led one of those reckless white men who have abandoned ^ 
 their own homes to live among the Indians, to parade some \>si^ 
 half dozen Osages throngh Europe, filling his j^urse at the ^ 
 expense of the poor natives, who believed all the while 
 that they were enjoying the free hospitality of their lathers 
 beyond the sea. Lafayette's kind heart was disgusted by 
 this knavery, and he had granted them an audience at his 
 own house, in the hope of persuading them to return home 
 while it was yet in their power. I will not attempt to 
 describe the scene : the groups that clustered in tlie liall, 
 the crowd that tlu-on£i:ed the street, the venerable f(.)rin of 
 
52 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 that great and good man, who had done so much and suf- 
 fered so much, and who stood there with that cahn and 
 noble bearing, that winning smile, and that air of serene 
 self-possession which is said never to have abandoned him, 
 either in triumph or in trial — the bright faces and bright 
 eyes, the curiosity of some, the kindly symj^athy of others, 
 and the unconscious objects of all this gathering, seated, 
 with all that they had left of their former life, their wild 
 costume and habitual apathy, on the couches of a Parisian 
 saloon. As I was gazing on this singular scene, with 
 feelings more easily imagined than described, I saw a 
 gentleman enter, whose appearance immediately called off 
 the General's attention from the special guests of the hour. 
 He was evidently in the prime of life, and of that vigor 
 which air and manly exercise give, and with somethmg in 
 all his movements which awakened in you an instantaneous 
 conviction that the mind and will which governed them 
 were of no ordinary energy and measure. I could not 
 withdraw my eyes : I had seen heads of great men, and 
 there were some great men close to me at that very 
 moment — but there was none with such a full, expansive 
 forehead, such strong, massive features, a mouth so firm 
 without harshness, and an eye whose clear grey seemed to 
 read you at a glance, while it met yours with the imflinch- 
 ing look of one that fears not to let you read him in turn. 
 "Who is he?" I whi.speied to a grand-daughter of the 
 
l!H>(;i;.\i'iii(\\L sii DiKS. h'.i 
 
 OoiiornlV, wlio stood wvav inc. "'Mi', ('oo)irr: do you not 
 know Mv. ('o<t|»or? — let, iiu' iiilrodiicc you to liiin." 
 *H'oo[)C'r," said 1 to myself, '"can it he that I am williin 
 five paces of Cooi)er, ami tliat tlicri', too, arc tiie feeble 
 representatives of the race around which his u^enius lias 
 shed a hah* like that of llomei-*s own heroes!" 1 was 
 fresh from the "Mohicans," and my hand tiemhled as it 
 met the cordial grasp of the man to whom 1 owed so many 
 pleasing hours. I aske<l him about the Indians. "They 
 are poor specimens," said he, "fourth-rate at the best, in 
 their own woods, and ten times the worse for the lives 
 they have been leadhig here." I would gladly have pro- 
 longed the conversation, but the guests were beginning to 
 move, and were both borne onw^ard by the throng. 
 
 A day^ or two afterwards I met him in the General's bed- 
 room, and I mention it here, as it afforded me an opportu- 
 nity of witnessing his first interview with Beranger, and see- 
 ing how warmly the great poet welcomed him. And next 
 I met him at Florence, in his beautiful little villa, just a 
 stone's throw from the walls. Two years had passed away, 
 and he had been working all the while in the rich mine 
 >\ hich his own luuids had opened. His face showed it, and 
 his manner showed it. Tliey were the face and manner of 
 a man whose mhid is ever busy with somethhig that he 
 loves, who comes to his task cheerfully, and still feels bright 
 and cheerful when he lavs it aside, Ijecause he knows that 
 
54 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 there are new pleasures in store for liim, when he returns to 
 it again. One evening I particularly remember, and I am 
 glad to record it, as it gives me the opportunity of ^paymg 
 a brief tribute to the memory of a common friend, who like 
 him has smik, in the fulness of good deeds, into the grave 
 for which he was so well prepared, — I mean the late George 
 Cooke, well known to all the lovers of his noble art; 
 admired by all who had witnessed his mnvearied assiduity, 
 his admh'able judgment and rare social endowments; and 
 widely beloved for all those kind and genial qualities which 
 make friends and bind them fast. Cooke was with me 
 that evening, enlivening our walk by his rich conversation, 
 and feeling like myself that there was a peculiar j^leasure 
 in passing an hour with such a man in such a spot. Cooper, 
 always brilliant when he chose, w^as more so than I had 
 ever seen him ; and I could not help thinking that what- 
 ever chapter he had struck off that day, it must have been 
 a good one. Art, for which he had a deep feeling and 
 singular justness of appreciation, came in for a share of 
 his eloquence — for eloquence is the true word ; and though 
 I have often heard its own great masters speak of it, and 
 Thorwaldsen among them, yet never did I see it awaken 
 a nobler and purer enthusiasm than then. At last, we 
 came to poetry — a transition always natural, but on that 
 calm summer evening, within a few minutes' walk of Santa 
 Croce, with those Italian stars looking down upon us from 
 
mOORAPIIICAL STLTDIKS. 65 
 
 their own matcliless sky, and tlic soft breeze that 8wei)t 
 gently over the vineyards of Val d'Arno, breathing sweetly 
 througli the open casement, and making meet nmsic in the 
 tree tops ; yes, there and then, the transition was natural, 
 indeed. He spoke of Wordsworth, Avhoni he had seen an<l 
 liked, and Byron who loved so fervently his own favorite 
 clement, lie spoke, too, of our own poets, his fellow- 
 laborers in a new and difficult field, then so few, though 
 now they fill so many volumes. Bryant and Percival ^vere 
 already the first names of our Parnassus. Percival he praised 
 for the richness of his fancy, and the melody of his verse — 
 though he condemned the indisthictness and vagueness into 
 which he so often falls. But for Bryant he had nothing but 
 praise. Bryant had just published the "Skies" — where 
 Cooper saw it, I do not remember ; but I well remember that 
 he had had it copied. Neither Cooke nor I had ever seen it, 
 and cclad enouG^h we were when he asked for the common- 
 place book, and seating himself by the light, read in a clear 
 full voice, with 2)erfect modulation of tone and a depth of 
 feelhig which showed itself in voice, manner, and all, that 
 nol>le consecration of our own lovely heavens. When he 
 had finished, he went back and selected, verse by verse, the 
 parts which had pleased him most. Certain expressions 
 seemed to have taken a peculiar hold of his imagination, for 
 he repeated thoni over and over, and nnalyzod them with 
 an almost iiilimllle deliuht. It was a beauliful tribulo and 
 
56 BIOGliAnilCAL STUDIES. 
 
 a beautiful lesson — one great poet praising another, and 
 seeming to rejoice that there were other names to inscribe 
 upon that sacred scroll, where his own stood so high. 
 
 I have often heard Cooper speak of poetry, and hardly 
 ever without bringing in something about Shakspeare. He 
 was the most enthusiastic admirer of " Xature's darlmg" 
 that I ever met. "Shakspeare," he said to me one day, "is 
 my travelling library. When I have got him with me, I 
 never feel the Avant of any other book. Whatever humor 
 I am in, he is sure to have something just suited to it. 
 Grave or gay, practical or dreamy, lounging or Avide awake, 
 it is all one, for he has scenes and characters to fit them all. 
 To a novel writer above all, he is an mvaluable friend. Pub- 
 lishers will have mottoes for every chapter; and how I 
 should get along without Shakspeare I cannot conceive. I 
 like to take them from my contemporaries whenever I can, 
 and particularly from our own poets. It is a kind of com- 
 pliment which they have a right to, and I am always glad 
 when I can pay it. Sometimes, however, it is no easy thing. 
 Many a page have I turned over and over without behig 
 able to find anythhig to my purpose ; but I never yet turned 
 over three hi Shakspeare without hitting ui)on just what I 
 wanted." 
 
 It was delightftil to hear Cooper 4,alk about his own 
 works; he (li<l it witli such a frank, fresh, manly feeling. 
 I never knew him to bring them into the conversation 
 
KIOCIIArillCAT. STUDIES. 57 
 
 liiinsi'lt; Mild yet, mIicii iiilnxliiccd, lie was perfectly willini; 
 to speak about, tliein. lie was altogether free IV.. in that 
 Cf^otisiu which makes many cliarmin<;- writers the very worst 
 of eoiiipanioiis, and e(jually free from that other si)ecies of 
 coxcombry tor which Voltaire gave CNiiigreve so sharp a 
 reproof. His habits of life may have had something to do 
 with tliis. He liad been a sailor — an officer — had mingled 
 with the Avorld— had studied mankind in actual life, and, 
 though uncommonly patient of research, had always trusted 
 more to observation than to books, for his knowledge of 
 human nature. He had never been a recluse student, with 
 all that he has written. His works were thrown off rapidly ; 
 generally in the morning, and with a resolute application of 
 his powers that made his daily task a light one, although the 
 results were so great. Consequently his mind had leisure 
 and freshness to busy itself with other things. AYhen he 
 left his desk he left his pen in it. He came out into the 
 world to hear and see what other men were doing. If they 
 wanted to hear him, there he was, with no opinion that he 
 was not perfectly ready to express, whether it concerned 
 men or things, liis own books or those of others. But he 
 never seemed to feel that his authorship gave him a right to 
 make himself the hero of the piece ; and more than once I 
 have been half-vexed with him for it, though it was im- 
 possible not to respect his motive. But it is so pleasant to 
 hear a ^reat man talk about his feelings and motives, tell 
 
58 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 little anecdotes of liis own experience of life, lay bare the 
 secrets of those processes which you have only been able to 
 guess at by their results, and show you how strong the 
 ties are by which he holds to our common nature. Auto- 
 biographies are the most fascinating of all books, and woidd 
 be equally fascinating in coua ersation, if you could only 
 have them from the right man, in the right time and place. 
 I have always regretted that I did not make a memoran- 
 dum of my last conversation with Cooper. It was at Put- 
 nam's that I met him — just after the appearance of the first 
 volume of the new edition of his works ; an edition which, 
 with that of Mr. Irving's, would, to all who know the his- 
 tory of them, have been sufficient to associate the puMish- 
 er's name with the annals of American literature, even if 
 he had given no other proofs of his right to a place there. 
 Cooper was in excellent spirits, though the disease which 
 not long afterwards assumed so fatal a form, was just begin- 
 ning to make itself felt. We walked out together, and, 
 after a short stroll, Avent to his rooms at the Globe, and sat 
 down to talk. I had never found him so free before upon 
 the subject that interested me most — his own works and his 
 literary habits. He talked about "Leather Stocking" — 
 confessed freely his partiality for that exquisite creation of 
 his happiest moments, and told how glad he had been to 
 revive him again. " I meant," said he, " when I brought 
 him on the stage anew, to have added one more scene and 
 
IMOCn.M'HK'Ar. STl'DIICS. 59 
 
 iutrodiiciMl liiiii in t lie Ucvolut ion ; Iml I tliou^lil lliat tlic 
 ]>ul)ru' li:nl had ciioiii;-]! of liiiii, aihl iicvci* venture"! it."" I 
 tried to persuade liini tliat the |>ul»lie interest liad lieen 
 excited, rather tlian satiated, ])y this resuscitation ot" tlieir 
 ohl I'axoiite, and that tlie great questions ot" tliat great 
 l)eriod wuuKl suggest things to the earnest, single-hearted 
 woodsman, which, combined with the interest of the leal 
 historical characters that might be introduced, would aftbrd 
 him, perhaps, fuller scope than he had ever yet ha<l lor the 
 development of his original conception. Washington and 
 Xatty ])umpo ; another revolutionary battle, described like 
 Lexmgton and Bunker Hill ; and some scene that l)elongs to 
 real history engraved in our memories by the same graphic 
 power which has consecrated so many that owe their 
 existence, as well as their interest, to the imagination of the 
 poet. " I have thought a good deal about it," said he, " and 
 perhaps I may do it yet." But the works he had already 
 in hand claimed his immediate attention, and before he 
 found himself free for new labors, the progress of his disease 
 had become too rapid to leave much room for other 
 thoughts than those with which his mind, naturally inclined 
 to devotion, had long been familiar. 
 
 Disease and death! It is difficult to connect such things 
 with such a man. I OAve some of my purest enjoyments 
 to Coo2:)er. ]\[y first recollections of that glorious world 
 of imagination, to which I liavc since fled so often for 
 
60 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 refreshment and strength, are connected with his earliest 
 works. I can remember the " Spy," and the mixed feel- 
 ings of delight and astonishment which it excited. I can 
 remember how eagerly the papers of the day filled their 
 columns with scenes and even chapters from his works, as 
 they were making their way through the press. I can 
 recollect the long parallels that were drawn between him 
 and Scott, then still in the freshness and fulness of his 
 strength. I can remember the pride with which I used 
 to pronounce his name in Europe, and the familiar aspect 
 which his familiar pages gave to languages which had not 
 yet lost their strange and half repulsive air. And now, to 
 take up one of his volumes and think that he is dead — to 
 read those pages, so full of life, and remember that his has 
 reached its close — to recall those scenes and characters that 
 bear such enduring testimony to his creative powers, and 
 feel that the mind which created them will create no more 
 — to look upon those woods and waters which he has painted 
 in all their varied aspects, and made so lovely to us by 
 imparting to our minds the same deep emotions which they 
 excited in his own, and reflect tliat no feelings or emotions 
 of this world can ever reach him again — oh, it is indeed as 
 if a glory had passed from the earth, and something was, 
 and ever must be, wanting to the thought of life and the 
 sweet face of nature herself " I do not see Irving often,^' 
 said Cole to me one day, as we w^ere speaking of Irving 
 
r,i()<;KAi'iii('AT. s'n inKS. 01 
 
 :iii(l Cooper, "but as I pass liis lioiisc in my sails up .'hkI 
 down tlic Hudson, it is a plfusuro to tliink that lie lives on 
 its baidvs/' And a pleasure it always is to genial minds to 
 teel that they who liavc ('oiitril)utt'(l to their ha])i)iness are 
 still within the reach oi' their gratitude ; that tlu'V can still 
 enjoy as man enjoys, and draw some portion of their plea- 
 sures from the full though not umningled fountain of human 
 delights. We know how insecure — we know how ehequerecl 
 they arc; we know that they cannot, for a moment, be 
 compared Avitli those of another world. But betwixt us 
 aiul that world lies the grave Avitli its untold mysteries ; 
 and however eloquently reason may appeal or laith may 
 plead, nature still shrinks and shudders on its cold and 
 silent brink. 
 
 Thorwaldsen, in the course of his long and brilliant 
 career, had treated nearly every subject within the range 
 of his art. His studio Avas like the Vatican itsell^ — an almost 
 countless line of gods and goddesses, and all the beautiful 
 conceptions of the i)oetic mind of Greece, intermingled with 
 heroes, and statesmen, and poets, and (what the ^'atican 
 has not) the saints and apostles of Christianity, in all the 
 varieties of bust, and full drawn figure, and bas-relief But 
 towards the close of his life, he began to draw his subjects 
 more exclusively from the Scriptures, and fmd his chief 
 pleasure in Avorking out his own conceptions of the human 
 manifestation of Christ and the divine power. One of the 
 
62 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 last, if not the last, of his great series of bas-reliefs was 
 from the life of the Saviour. I never saw the original ; but 
 one morning, in one of those pleasant hours which it was 
 more than once my privilege to pass with the great artist 
 in his own private studio, he took out the drawings, and 
 showed them to me. They formed a long roll of many 
 sheets, which he unfolded carefully, and seemed to dwell 
 upon with peculiar pleasure, as he called my attention to 
 l^articular groups and figures in the series. They were 
 beautiful indeed, and Avorthy of him; but strong as the mi- 
 l^ression which they made upon me at the time was, there 
 was one which was still stronger. It was in his private stu- 
 dio, as I have already said, — a small square room adjoining 
 his bed-room, hung round with casts, but with no other fur- 
 niture than two or three chairs, an old bureau, a table, and 
 his modelling stand. Here he had passed the greater part 
 of his life — his happiest, his proudest, his most thoughtful 
 hours. Here he had made those great works which have 
 carried the proofs of his genius to distant parts of the earth, 
 and will transmit his name with undiminished lustre to 
 remote posterity. Here Byron had come to sit for his por- 
 trait to one whose imagination was as bold and as vigorous 
 as his own. Here, too, kings and princes had brought their 
 tributes of admiration and applause ; and here, after a tri- 
 umph such as no other artist had ever met before, the old 
 man had returned, to pass a few more days in the quiet plea- 
 
inOORAl'lIlCAL STIDIKS. C3 
 
 siires ;ii)(l LTciiial occiijiatioiis of liis carlid- inaiilmod. As T 
 l(.(.k(Ml ar..iin.l uic, aii<l tlioii-lit of all thai that linl<- room 
 liad \\iliU'SvL"<l, and tluai, (miiiiii;- to llial ve'iieniblc lurm — 
 the lrau(|uil l»ro\\ — tlic clcai-, cahii eye — tlie strong cast, 
 but withal iiiihl and benevolent features, and long grey 
 loeks that sha<led them, — drew to myself a hasty parallel 
 betwixt the past and the present, I felt that there was 
 something exceedingly beautiful in these closing hours of so 
 beautiful a life. ]>eautiful and meet, indeed, that this long 
 series of great works should close Avith works like these ; 
 that the thoughts which had ranged so freely with the glow 
 of \ outh and fervor of manhood, should thus become con- 
 centrated upon the only subject that can cheer and sustam 
 the faltering steps of age ! 
 
 These wdio have read Cooper carefully will find that in 
 his mhid, also, the religious sentiment, through never dor- 
 mant, became stronger and more definite as he drew nearer 
 to the grave. It has been truly said, that there is nothuig 
 in his works which could embitter his dead-bed. From the 
 first, they breathe a pure and liealtliy morality, and an ear- 
 nest sense of higher duties and obligations. Nothing can be 
 more beautiful than the religion of "Long Tom" and 
 "Leather Stocking." There is a beautiful mixture of sim- 
 plicity and grandeur in their eoneeptions of the Creator. 
 They have studied him in his own works; they recognise 
 his power, for they have seen it manifested in its sublimest 
 
64 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 forms ; they seem almost to grasp that suUimity itself in 
 their strong conceptions, and read its awful lessons with a 
 throbbing heart, but unaverted eye. They love him, too— 
 for they love the glorious works that he has made; and 
 that love, pervading their whole nature, gives worth and 
 estimation to the meanest production of his will. And from 
 this arises a sense of duty so deep and so firm— a perception 
 of right so instinctive and so true — such love of justice, and 
 such fearlessness of purpose — that, without ceasing for a 
 moment to be the humble coxswam or unlettered scout, they 
 are men at whose feet the best and wisest may sit meekly 
 and learn. 
 
 But these sentiments, which are merely scattered at inter- 
 vals though his earlier works, are more clearly interwoven 
 with the web and texture of the later. The " Pathfinder" 
 is everywhere devout ; but " Hetty," in the "Deer Slayer," 
 is formed of materials which required a strong rehgious 
 conviction to handle aright. Genius might have formed 
 some beautiful conception, but would never have given to it 
 that truthfulness and nature, which almost make us forget 
 the intellectual deficiencies of the poor maiden in the pure- 
 hearted and earnest simplicity of the believer. 
 
 It could not well have been otherwise in a mind so strongly 
 characterized by earnestness and imagination. Indeed, if 
 I were called upon to mention any two qualities as pecu- 
 liarly characteristic of him, these are the two which I 
 
JUOtlliAl'lIlCAL STLl>li:S. 5 
 
 should iiMiiK'. 'PIk'I-c was iiodiiiii:; morose or ici.ulsivcly 
 g-ravo alndil him; hut \]\v\-r was no li-iiliiiu- (.-illuT. What- 
 ever lie set ahoiit, he set about it sniously ; whatevei- he 
 (lid, he did it in earnest. It was something to he done; an<l 
 till it was done, his mind was iilled with it as with a reality. 
 lie dcseribes an imaginary seene with tiie same minute aeeu- 
 raey with whieh he relates a real event. No historian ever 
 weighed and balaneed testimony more cautiously, and no 
 poet ever entered, more earnestly or deeply hito the world 
 of his own creation. He seems to have conceived witli an 
 intensity of creative power which made his characters 
 living beings to him, and his scenes actual occurrences. It 
 is almost impossible, at times, to persuade yourself that he 
 does not believe all that he is writing as sincerely as we all 
 did Robinson Crusoe, the first time we read it. It is one 
 of the secrets of his power ; and, when combined with such 
 a delicate perception of the beautiful, and such a deep feel- 
 ing for the sublime, forms one of the rarest, as well as 
 greatest, traits of the poetical mind. He never crowds inci- 
 dents upon one another, or trusts to a rapid and constant 
 succession of new combinations for exciting your interest. 
 The outline of his stories is very simple ; the plot a very 
 easy one to sketch or recall ; btit the incidents are all told 
 with such an air of sincerity, the details are so minute, 
 everything seems to rise so naturally from the original con- 
 ception, and follow with so little artifice or efibrt, that you 
 
 3* 
 
66 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 yield yourself up to his sway without a misgiying, and go 
 with him, as a matter of course. 
 
 It is a proof of the yigor of his imagination, that this 
 scrupulous accuracy of detail seldom clogged or impeded its 
 flight. Feeble wings lag and sink imder such burthens. 
 The second-class poet — we yenerate Horace too much, to 
 say the middUng — rejects them as prosaic, or falls into 
 something worse even than poetic prose, if he attempts to 
 lift them. But the true poet feels how closely his art is 
 allied to truth and nature, and never puts forth his strength 
 more triumphantly than when he draws from real life, and 
 man as his Maker has made him. His ideal is no yague 
 and indistinct conception, hovering mist-like before the 
 dreamy eye, with nothing in it that bears the semblance of 
 earth or heaven, of man or beast ; but clear, tangible, defi- 
 nite — true m its outline, true in its detail, and only deserv- 
 ing the name of ideal because, the creation of his own mind, 
 it still has something about it which he can never embody 
 or make visible, as he would wish, to the minds of others. 
 
 Compare Cooper's conception of sea-character with Mar- 
 ryatt's. You feel at once that each is drawing from some- 
 thing that he has seen and studied. Occasionally in some 
 old gallery you will come upon a picture with a head in it 
 that you feel at once to be a portrait, and not merely a por- 
 trait, but a good likeness. You cannot always tell why you 
 think so ; sometimes it would puzzle a painter himself to do 
 
r.i()(ii;.\i'iii<AL siri)ii:s. »>/ 
 
 it. r»iit iiciilici- lie, iKM- yoii citlici-, it" voii know :in\ t liiiii; 
 :il)()ut ui'I, ^\■(>ul<l hcsitad' to |»ionoiiiico it. llu.' laillil'iil d'-li- 
 ncatiou of .soiiie laci' that once liad a I'cal cxiste'iice. Now 
 this is i)rc>cist'Iy the case with llic sea-portraits of .Marryatt 
 and Co()})ei". U'hey are tlie likenesses of real lueii, and trne 
 to the hfe, — true in eostunu', kmguage, thou^i^ht, and every- 
 thing which goes to make up tlie indiviihial of a i)eculiar 
 class. There is the sailor's tenacity, his freedom from all 
 prejudices but such as arise from his own calling ; his frank- 
 ness and heartiness and restless longing for change; his 
 recklessness of danger and improvidence of the future ; with 
 now and then a trait that in a landsman would look like 
 want of common feeling; and occasional touches of a 
 deeper nature and of a softness like that of Avoman. They 
 are consummate artists both, and even if you had never 
 seen a sailor or a ship, you would feel sure that the portrait 
 was true. 
 
 But here the parallel stops. The limner's task is done, 
 and you ask for the poet. You have seen the individual as 
 he is, acting and speaking just as thousands have acted and 
 spoken ; displaying all the qualities which the attentive eye 
 can discover from the closest point of view. But tliere are 
 other materials there which have not been used, — powers 
 and capacities which have never been called fortli, — a 
 harder and a nobler task, which none but the poet can 
 accomplish. You will tind parallels in Marryatt for Bolt- 
 
68 BIOGRAPHICx\L STUDIES. 
 
 rope, or Field, or almost any of the characters which 
 observation can supply; but none for long Tom, or the 
 Rover, which the creative power of imagination alone could 
 conceive. 
 
 Take the scene, too, of the sailor's life, and see how the 
 sea and a ship look in the two writers. You find again the 
 same detail, the same truthfulness — the same characteristics, 
 in a word, of the observant and careful painter. But here, 
 too, the parallel ceases. The ocean for the one is merely an 
 element for his ships to float in, and subject to the vicis- 
 situdes of calm, and breeze, and gale. He loves the sea 
 undoubtedly, and is glad to find himself on it ; but there 
 is no bounding of the blood at the touch of the old friend. 
 He launches his ship and manoeuvres her, and that skil- 
 fully. He brings out the thousand incidents of cruise and 
 voyage, and the natural dangers — the lee shore and the 
 yaw^ning wave. There is a poetry in the ocean which com- 
 municates itself to everything that it touches, and it is hard 
 to conceive of a description of any of the great incidents 
 of sea life which can be true, without awakening some 
 poetical feeling. Thus far Marryatt is a poet. But you 
 must not ask him for that higher poetry which proceeds 
 from the mind itself, enabling it to invest even familiar 
 objects with a poetic coloring, and revealing new sources of 
 beauty and grandeur in the beautiful and the grand. You 
 must not ask him for this, for it is not in him. 
 
iii<»i;i:Ai'iii(jAL .siri>ii:s. <>'.) 
 
 Villi for Cooper, tlu' ocean was a izhnlmss aiul a Ionc. 
 Ik' conu'S to it as you draw niuli to yoiii- lioiiic, uilli llir 
 certainty that there are Joys thei-e which no other spot can 
 U^ive, and i<.'elings wliich notliiiiLi: else can awaken. His 
 heart secins to bound with the wave, and liis veins to tliiill 
 as the g-alo that lias heen eareering so wildly over spaces 
 immeasurable falls with its ocean fragrance on his Ijrow. 
 Tliere is a music for him in the dashing wave — a human 
 sympathy in that ceaseless heaving of the mighty billows. 
 The calm is full of gentle thoughts and quiet longings 
 which bring their own reward. Sky and ocean seem to 
 mingle together, and, as the distant clouds that floating in 
 seeming idleness through space, are still adding to their 
 stores and moving onward towards the spot Avhcre they are 
 to burst in wdiirlwinds, or fall in beneficent showers, so his 
 dreamy eye roams listlessly over the heaving mass, dra\\ ing 
 in thoughts and images, and strength to bring them forth. 
 His gales are as terrilic as sky and ocean and human feeling 
 combined can make them. He watches the gathering 
 clouds, and reads the fearful omens that lie written on their 
 darkening folds. Xature hushes in silent awe, and the 
 ocean itself, as if conscious of the awful part that it is 
 about to perform hi this fearful war of elements, stills for a 
 moment its throbbing, and awaits in solemn suspense the 
 siernal of strife. Then come lurid fleams in the skv, and 
 sudden darkness, and from afar, a hollow roaring of the 
 
70 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 rushing winds. The billows leap np in their joy to meet 
 the wild gusts that give forth their own triumphant shout 
 as they catch the spray on their wdngs, and speed it 
 through the air. And tossing wildly and helpless like 
 that spray, now yielding tremblingly to the shock, and 
 now breasting the relentless billows with desperate energy, 
 is some noble offspring of human genius, with its mingled 
 charge of human fears and human hopes. And it is in the 
 midst of these that he places you. It is from that wave- 
 washed deck, your frame quivering with the quivering hull, 
 your ears stunned by the sullen roar of the billows and the 
 ominous sounds which the wmds call forth from spar and 
 rope, that you look forth into the gloom and strive eagerly 
 to read the fate that lies hidden in its mysterious depths. 
 And thus intermingling human interests with the interest 
 which is inseparable from the great phenomena of nature, 
 and while he gives reality to everything by the accuracy of 
 his details, awakening the solemn sense of the awful and the 
 sublime, by calling up the mysterious train which follows 
 the path of the storm, and those forms, felt, but unseen, 
 w^hich pervade immensity as with a bodily presence, he 
 forms the most powerful pictures that ever have been 
 drawn of nature in her grandest and most terrific aspects. 
 
 It should be observed, too, that this is not the only 
 remarkable characteristic of his descriptions. They are as 
 varied as they are truthful and poetical. He has intro- 
 
)U<m;i:.\1'iiual stiiuks. 
 
 Tl 
 
 ducc'd slorms into all of liis si-a novels, and yet tli<-i-.' aro 
 not two of thcni thai are aliki'. TIk- mat dials of c(jurse 
 arc till' sanu — winds, watef, aii<l a ship. lint his study of 
 nature had hoon so careful, an«l his observation so minute, 
 that without CVLM- ceasing to he truthful, he sel(h)m repeats 
 a circumstance that he has introduced Ijcfore. He felt like 
 Scott, tliat the true source of al)un(hince is in a careful 
 study of real objects, and tliat the imagination is never 
 more vigorous than when it is nourished by extensive and 
 cautious observation. Every otlier path leads to manner- 
 ism and endless repetitions. Raphael, in a curious letter to 
 liis friend Castiglione, complains of the difficulty of getting 
 good models, and says that to help himself out in the work 
 which he was then painting, the exquisite frescoes of the 
 " Farnesina," he drew from a certain ideal (una certa idea) 
 which he had formed for himself But there was scarcely a 
 position in which the human form can be placed which he 
 had not studied again and again from the living model : 
 and the heads in some of his finest studies still bear witness 
 to the scrupulous MeUty with which he performed his task. 
 The truth of the ideal depends upon the truth of the real ; 
 and though broader in its bearings, and more enduring in 
 its nature, it can never wholly shake ofi" its dependence 
 upon that lunnble oftspring of earth. 
 
 But it Avas not to attempt an analysis of Cooper, either 
 as an author or as a man, that I took up my pen. What 
 
72 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 Bryant lias done so happily in his address, as remarkable 
 for the just conception which he had formed of his office, 
 as for chastened beauty of execution, it would be pre- 
 sumjition in me to rej^eat. It has been proposed that a 
 monument should be erected to Cooper, and his statue 
 placed in some spot where the stranger may see how Ame- 
 rica honors the sons who have proved themselves worthy 
 of her. A subscription for this purpose has been already 
 opened, and there are names on the list which are a monu- 
 ment in themselves. Can the effort fail in a city where 
 money is daily lavished for things that perish and are 
 forgotten. One great tribute has already been paid — the 
 most solemn, the most beautiful page in the history of 
 American literature. Webster, Irving, Bryant, Bancroft, 
 Halleck — the statesman whose voice, in our greatest peril, 
 has been raised triumphantly for our salvation ; the writer 
 whose pen, like that of his own favorite, has touched 
 nothing which it has not adorned ; the poets who have 
 drunk from the same pure fountains from which Cooper 
 drew the freshness and vigor of his own inspirations ; the 
 historian who has told the marvellous tale of our country's 
 progress, in pages of generous sympathy and gorgeous 
 * eloquence ; all uniting to give in the presence of sympa- 
 thizing hearers their tribute to the name, at the side of 
 which their own will one day be inscribed so honorably. 
 Surely such an appeal will not have been made in vain. 
 
r.KHlKAI'IIiCAI, STl'DIKS. 7 ;{ 
 
 Tills outpouriii!^ (^t'^('(•liIl^• iVoni llic urcat :iii<l the Ik.ik.iciI, 
 must be lollowcd by sonir (iKliiriiif^ tesliiiKJiiial of juiblic 
 a]^|)robali()ii. Tlu* ixriH'Ti shade ol' some one ol" our j)arks 
 will yet be adoiiied with the I'ailhl'ul rej)resentati()n in 
 marble, or in bronze, of those noble features which we shall 
 never see again. It will stand where we can gaze ujion it, 
 while we listen to the niuruuir of the gushing waters, and 
 strengthen ourselves by the refreshing indulgence of gi'a- 
 titude and admiration. The trav'eller from distant lands 
 who has been lured to our woods and prairies by the magic 
 of his pen, will come liither with his offering of praise. 
 And all they who love their country and look trustfully to 
 the future, wdll find new^ sources of trust and hope in this 
 public recognition of our duties to the past. 
 
 ^S^G trust that some other friend of Cooper will follow the example 
 of Dr. Francis, and give the world his recollections. The Doctor hiraself 
 cannot have exhausted his store, and if he could but tind time in the 
 midst of his professional labors, to fill up the sketch which he has begun 
 with so much good taste and such admirable judgment, he will add greatly 
 to the important services which he has already rendered to the cause 
 of pure and healthy literature. 
 
COLE. 
 
 " Oh, who would change these soft, yet solid joys 
 For empty shows, and senseless noys ? " 
 
 Cowley — The Garden. 
 
 There are few lives in the history of art or literature which \ 
 , afford a more beautiful illustration of the elevating influr,. 
 I ence of a noble purpose than that of Thomas Cole. He 
 was born in humble life and received his first impressions of 
 the world from scenes of privation and toil. His early 
 companions were men who lived for the day, and who felt 
 that its duties were ended when its stated task had been 
 done. His only gUmpses of better things were caught from 
 holiday rambles with his sister through the green lanes 
 and fields of his native island : and the first to minister to 
 the growing wants of his imagination was one who had 
 grown grey in the labors upon wliicli he was just enterin^g. 
 It was only after many vicissitudes, and as it were by sue-; 
 cessive revelations, that his peculiar talent was made known 
 to him ; but no sooner did he become conscious of it, than 
 he devoted himself to its cultivation with an enthusiasm 
 which no obstacle could repress, and a purity and single- 
 
hi<>(;kai'iiicai. stidiks. 75 
 
 ness of |)ur|«»s(' wliicli i-iiscd hiiii •.\]u)\v llic :illin-cimTil s of 
 vanity .-iiid (lie love of _L;;iiii. His life fdl slimt l>y nearly a 
 thiril of llic full iiicasuro of our uHoUimI «linati<>ii; and \vas 
 iilknl, even in its most prosi)ei-ous years, with anxiety and 
 care; but wlien it e]ose<l, a i^reat work lia<l l)eon accom- 
 jilislu'd ; and tiie name that liad Ijeen fii-st lis|)e<I in an Inun- 
 ble cottage, liad l)eeome associated for ever witli the great 
 names of art. 
 
 Tlionias Cole was Lorn at Bolton-le-Moor, Lancasliire, 
 Eiighand, on the 1st of February, 1801. Ilis father was a 
 cotton nianufiicturer, who proving unsuccessful in business, 
 was sorely straitened to provide for a large family in a 
 country where labor was cheap and food and education dear. 
 After his failure at Ijolton he removed to Chorley, a town 
 of the same shire, and placed Thomas, who was in his tenth 
 year, and the youngest but one of eight children, at a school 
 in Chester. The future artist was a delicate and sensitive 
 boy, and it Is not surprising that the hard fare and bad 
 treatment which he met with in this first separation from 
 home, should have made a lasting impression upon his min<l. ' 
 Fortunately he did not remain there long; for it was neces- 
 sary to prepare him as quickly as possible to make his own 
 way in the world, and accordingly he was recalled to Chor- 
 ley and put into a calico factory to draw figures for the 
 prints. His father, who would have i)referred a surer road i 
 to fortune, tried to prevail upon him to enter an iron foun- | 
 
76 BIOGRAPHICAL STLTDIES. 
 
 dry, or at least to bind himself to an attorney. But his 
 eye had been caught by the colors and figures of the print 
 works, and fortunately for his immediate as well as his 
 future happiness, he was allowed to follow his own taste. 
 
 In the history of genius there are always some names 
 associated with the development of it which are endeared 
 to us by their symj^athy Avith its first efforts. The mature 
 mind may bring forth its fruits in solitude ; but youth 
 requires the support and counsel of genial natures. Cole's 
 first poetical friend was a fellow-workman in the print fac. 
 tory, an old Scotchman, who used to repeat ballads to him 
 while they were plying their task together, and who gave 
 liim a relish for those simple and touching stories, which are 
 so stimulating to a young imagination. But his favorite 
 companion was his youngest sister, whose mind possessed 
 many of the more delicate characteristics of his own. With 
 her he used to ramble about the lanes and fields on holi- 
 days, enjoy the fresh air and sweet landscaj^e, and accom- 
 pany her songs with his flute. And so perfectly did their 
 feelings harmonize that, years afterwards, when they met at 
 Philadelphia after a long separation, she was able to tell 
 . him at once which of all the trees in Washington Square he 
 loved best. 
 
 Thus his childhood and boyhood passed away. He could 
 draw a little ; could play a little on the flute ; had begun to 
 write poetry ; and had indulged his taste for the beauties 
 
i{i(»iii:Ai'ni('AL sir DIES. 77 
 
 of nature till it had bt'coiiu' a i)assi(>ii ; when in tlio courso 
 of liis rcadinLT, l"<>r lil<-i' all boys of liis tcnipci-ajHL'nt lie was 
 a lover of books, he met with a description of the Ohio and 
 the scenery of our Avestern forests, which excited his ima- 
 gination and awakened in him a strouLr desire to come and 
 make his liome in America. His father, wlio had ])Ut little 
 hope of bettering his fortune in his native country, was 
 easily persuaded to try his chance in a new field ; and as 
 soon as the necessary preparations could be made the whole 
 liimily took passage for rhiladelphia. On the 3rd of July, 
 1819, he first landed in the country which was to become 
 the seat of his affections and the birth-place of his fame. 
 
 His father engaged immediately in business, and he began 
 to seiek a support by making woodcuts for the booksellers. 
 One of them is still preserved in his family : a figure of 
 Grief leaning on a monument under the shade of a willow 
 tree : and many others perhaps might still be found in the 
 illustrated works of the time, sad records of a period, of 
 which, if we consider only what he might have done under 
 more auspicious circumstances, Grief and her willow-shaded 
 monument are the only fitting emblems. Little did the 
 booksellers dream whose brain they were coining to enliven 
 a dull description or eke out an imperfect page. 
 
 Still he was Hght-hearted and cheerful : always working 
 with his flute by him ; and every now and then laying down 
 his Gcraver to refresh hhnself with an air. In the autunm. 
 
78 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 when his parents and sisters moved to Ohio, he went to 
 board in a Quaker family, where he quickly became a great 
 favorite with young and old. His room-mate was 'a law 
 student, with whom he became very intimate, and who 
 has lived to bear Avitness to the spotless pnrity of his 
 character. Early in the next year the health of his new 
 friend requiring a change of climate, Cole accompanied him 
 in a trip to St. Eustatia, which gave him an opportunity of 
 studying the gorgeous scenery of the south. On the 
 outward passage, as they were sailing along in the tropics, 
 of a soft moonlight evening, they were boarded by a pirate : 
 but though Cole used to relate the adventure in after years 
 with a great deal of spirit, he had too little of Salvator Rosa 
 about him to make a picture of a mere scene of violence. 
 The scenery of the island, however, made an impression 
 upon his imagination, which has left its trace in many of 
 his maturer works, particularly in that glowing landscape 
 of shrubs and flowers, which he has made the emblem of J 
 youth in the first picture of the " Voyage of Life." Here, 
 too, he made his first attempt in art ; a copy of a picture 
 of the harbor of St. Eustatia : and the first of those foot 
 excursions, by which, when he had taken up his pencil in 
 earnest, he used annually to enrich his portfoUo and refresh 
 his imagination. 
 
 Meanwhile his fiither had established himself at Steuben- 
 ville, hi Ohio, where he had opened a manufactory of paper- 
 
HioraiArmcAL studiks. 79 
 
 liMiiLi'mLis ; and Tlioiiias iTliinrmLC <<> tlic Knitcil Stales in 
 j\I;iy, set out on loot to join liis lamily. It was a merry 
 joui-nt'y, with a cliccrful companion, fresh starts at (lay- 
 break, welcome rest at noon, and sweet walks in the pensive 
 twilight. For the true lover of nature there is no travelling 
 like travelling on foot. 
 
 The next two years were, perhaps, ihe most imi»ortant 
 of liis whole life. His only ostensible occupation was to 
 make designs and arrange colors for his lather, Ijut he was 
 doing at the same time, and all unconsciously, a far greater 
 work for himself. lie had always loved solitude ; but never 
 before lived where he could indulge his taste for nature 
 ■without trespassing upon domains which had long been 
 appropriated by society. 'Mow he could wander where he 
 chose and as far as he chose, through forests Avhich had 
 never been shorn by the hand of civilization, and where 
 every scene was filled with wild luxuriance and savage 
 grandeur. It was what he had read of, and dreamed of; 
 and he gave himself up to the enjoyment of it Avith an 
 enthusiasm which drew fresh strength from the indulgence 
 of its impulses, lie loved to sit under the mighty trees, 
 listening to their communings with the wind, and watching 
 the play of sunshine and shade on their leaves and on the 
 ground at their feet. He would pass whole days on the 
 banks of the river, or p^lunging into the depths of the forest, 
 wander on and on without caring whither, moved only by 
 
80 BIOGEAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 the delicious sensations wliich glow^ed and thrilled along his 
 veins. Idle boy, the wise ones doubtless said, you will 
 never come to anything good. 
 
 Meanwhile new thoughts began to rise in his mind, and 
 his breast was agitated by feelings which he was unable to 
 express. The world was changing for him and as it were 
 under his very eyes, and yet he knew not how. The sun- 
 shine grew brighter and more full of promise : there were 
 softer voices in the murmurmg leaves, and a deej^er meaning 
 in the pensive hours of twilight. At times he would take 
 his dute and try to give vent to his feelings in music. Then 
 again he would seek relief in j^oetry, and endeavor to 
 describe the scenes Avhich moved him so strangely. But 
 the world without him and the world within had become 
 blended and intertwined in a way that neither music nor 
 poetry could mterpret. 
 
 At this critical moment a portrait-painter, by the name 
 of Stein, arrived in Steubenville and opened a studio. 
 Cole saw him paint. There was somethhig wonderful to 
 his untrained eye, in that mastery over colors, which could 
 make a piece of flat canvass the faithful expression of a 
 human face. But a book upon painting, which Stein lent 
 him, told him of wonders still greater ; revealing the laws 
 of composition, and analysing the works of Raphael and 
 other mighty spirits of the great age of art. He resolved 
 that he would try his own hand at painting. A chair- 
 
COLE. 81 
 
 maker Ini- wlioin lie lia<l <l()iic soiiu' oi-iiaiiiciit al \\(jrk, siip- 
 ]»Iii'.l him with C()h)rs. Partly makiiiLi; and j.artly hnrrow- 
 ino- 1h' |)r<>\i.l('<l himscll' with l»iaishi-s. A rou^li easel and 
 palette uere easily made, and uith a swelliuL!: lieart he 
 seated liimself for the first time before a canvass, 
 
 Drawini;- he already had some idea of. He lia<l eo](ie<l 
 the figures on china vases, drawn froiii engravinirs, heads, 
 ruins, and all sorts of things ; Imt tliis was color, the Avarm, 
 glowing color; ])lue that might be made to imitate the soft 
 sky, into whose depths he loved to gaze ; green that might 
 spread over his canvass the smile that makes earth so 
 bright ; and hues of various mixture, which when his hand 
 should have grown cunning in their use, would shed the 
 golden sunshine over clouds of his ow^n creation, and flow 
 in transparent meanderings, through scenes of faery loveli- 
 ness. I can see him at his Avork — no longer a task — those 
 thoughtful eyes of bluish grey ; that ami)le forehead, still 
 shaded by soft brown locks ; the nose with its clear outline 
 and expanding nosti'ils, that corresponded so well to the 
 firmness and vigor of the mouth, all — even to the pallid 
 cheeks — lighted \\\) with the first thrill of realized hope, 
 while the nervous tremulousness with which he always 
 approached a new pleasure, gradually changes, as his 
 thoughts grow clearer and his conceptions more vivid, into 
 a serene earnestness — the calm and majestic consciousness 
 of power. 
 
82 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 He first tried landscape ; not copies, but recollections ; 
 and succeeded so well that a gentleman who had once 
 studied with Stuart gave him some brushes and colors, and 
 lent him a palette. But as he could not afford to paint 
 merely for his own gratification he was compelled to turn 
 his attention to the only branch of the art that was in 
 demand, and panit portraits. Even in this line he could 
 not hope to find employment in Steubenville, where Stein 
 had gleaned the narrow field before him ; and accordingly 
 one clear frosty morning in February, with his clothes, 
 brushes, colors, and flute all crowded together in a green 
 satchel, he set boldly out, on foot, to try his fortune as 
 an itinerant portrait painter. 
 
 The first stage in his progression was St. Clavisville, about 
 thirty miles from Steubenville. Here he found to his dis- 
 may that he had been preceded by a German artist, who 
 had come in while the field was fresh and painted half the 
 village. However a few choice heads were left ; a sad- 
 dler, who sat to him five days in succession and paid him 
 with a new saddle; a tradesman who gave him a watch 
 chain and key, which looked like gold, but jjroved to be 
 copper ; and a militia ofiicer, who was painted with a fiery 
 battle scene in the background, which apparently delighted 
 him exceedingly, for he outstripped all his predecessors in 
 generosity and rewarded the artist with an old silver watch. 
 He was called in, too, to retouch one of his rival's portraits, 
 
COLE. P3 
 
 lor which he LC<>t a dollar ami a pair of >li<.is. Tlicii liis tliiU- 
 procured him admission to the clioicc circles of llic village, 
 and the rank of honoi-ary nicmhcr of the village singing 
 school. IJui all this fame still left him with a liglit purse, 
 and following the suggestion of a new Iriend, he replaced 
 his wardrobe and brushes in his trusty satchel and started, 
 for Zaiiesville. 
 
 It was a three days' walk — a hundred miles; but spring 
 liad come, the Avoods Avere fresh and green, the birds were 
 singing from morning till night ; and blessed, like George 
 Wakefield, with a " happy knack at lioping," he walked 
 merrily on, never doubting but what all would turn out 
 right in the end. 
 
 But, alas, here too, the German was beforehand with him. 
 The town was literally painted through. The very walls of 
 the inn at which he took up his lodgings were gleaming 
 with fresh portraits in all the brilliance of red and varnish. 
 A ray of hope was left. The landlord, whose artistic sense 
 had been awakened by the sight of his own face on canvass, 
 with his wife and daughters around him, gave him to under- 
 stand that he might pay his board by a history piece ; and. 
 looking upon the suggestion as a promise, Cole unpacked 
 his satchel and opened his painting room. 
 
 His first sitter was the gentleman at whose invitation he 
 had come. We have no record of the others, except that 
 they came at long intervals. But he made friends, as he 
 
84 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 always did, wherever he went, and among them was a 
 young law-student, whose love for art, though not strong 
 enough to draw him away from his surer profession, made 
 him look upon an occasional use of the pencil as a legitimate 
 enjoyment. With him Cole took long walks, talked of art 
 and nature ; and found so much congeniality of feeling in 
 him, that they painted a picture together ; a landscape with 
 figures, in which the figures were painted by the amateur, 
 as the most skilful of the two. In the midst of these enjoy- 
 ments he was suddenly recalled to the real gloominess of 
 his position by discovering that his landlord's enthusiasm 
 for art had evaporated, and that instead of paying for his 
 board by a history piece, he was expected to meet the full 
 amount in money. Remonstrance was vain, and but for 
 the intervention of his friends he would have been sent to 
 jail. With their assistance he escaped this humiliation, and 
 started for Chilicothe with warm recommendations to some 
 of the principal families of the place. " Here goes poor 
 Tom," he said, as he drew near the end of his three days' 
 journey, "with only a sixpence in his pocket." The tears 
 started to his eyes ; but instead of giving way to the sud- 
 den depression which the sound of his own voice had occa- 
 sioned, he drew out his flute and seating himself on the 
 trunk of a tree, played himself into tranquillity again. 
 
 He was once more doomed to disappointment ; not on 
 account of the German, but because there was little or 
 
COLE. 86 
 
 iiotliinL^nor him lo do. He (U-livcrcd liis IcUci-s :iii«l was 
 rt'C'civod kindly; ()])ciu'd liis studio and IouikI a i'cw filters 
 and a Irw i)uiiils in diawin^; niiiiizicd in society and niad(; 
 lU'W iVit'iids; but his carninLiS were not sulllcicnt to covur 
 his expenses, and liis scanty wardrobe LTiadually shruidc lo 
 a sinyle suit. Then came discouraging tidings from liome ; 
 for liis iiither's success had been no greater than liis own, 
 and the family were preparing to remove to Pittsl^urgh. lie 
 began his journey homewards with a ])urse still ligliter than 
 he had started with. At Zanesville his friends were cordial 
 in their Avelcome, and foi-getting his painful circumstances, 
 he stayed there long enough to paint a picture for the young 
 law-student ; a feudal scene, remarkable, it is said, for free- 
 dom and boldness of execution ; and in spite of all his disap- 
 pointments his hopes were still as buoyant as ever. The 
 hours which he had passed at the easel had given him a fore- 
 taste of the pure joys of invention, and the impression was 
 too. strong to be effaced. With that buoyancy of confidence 
 which is called (Quixotism in those who fail and strength of 
 Avill in the successful, he had resolved to throw himself 
 boldly upon a broader field, and fight his way to distinction. 
 Tlie morning of his departure he passed an hour in unfold- 
 ing his plans to his friend and trying to prevail upon him 
 to relinquish the dry and knotty law for the keener delights 
 and nobler rewards of art. Blessed enthusiasm ; nurse of 
 generous thoughts ; source of pure aspirations, thou that 
 
86 BIOGEAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 nourisliest thy votaries with long hopes and mouldest their 
 hearts by self-denying virtues ; that teachest them to meet, 
 in the serenity of abiding trust, the harsh judgments, and 
 derision of the cold-hearted ; forsake not those that have 
 followed thy noble impulses ; withhold not thy genial rays 
 from the solitary chamber ; nor thy quickening influences, 
 from the weary heart I Fear not, doubt not, falter not, 
 generous enthusiast ! Thou but treadest the path which 
 thousands have trodden before thee ; rough, thorny and 
 painful to the feet, but cheered at times by the purest 
 beams of heaven's own light ! 
 
 Trials came in quick succession. While his family 
 moved to Pittsburgh, he remained behind to paint the 
 scenes for a Thespian company, and anything else that he 
 could find to do. The recollection of his debt at Zanesville 
 weighed upon his conscience, and he flattered himself that 
 he might yet earn enough to pay it before he followed his 
 family. The scenery was painted, but the pay was barely 
 sufficient for his current expenses. He then resolved to 
 send pictures in lieu of the money. One was already com- 
 pleted, and two others nearly ready, when, on a Sunday 
 afternoon, some mischievous boys broke into his room, cut 
 and tore his paintings, mixed up his colors, and destroyed 
 his brushes. His courage began to sink. " The gay 
 and bright prospects I once pictured to myself are all 
 faded except some faint lingering lights of hope." In the 
 
COLE. 87 
 
 Sl)^iIl^• 111' joiiKMl liis i-miily. His lailici- lia-l eiii^ui^a-d in tlic 
 inanuractiiriii-- ofllooi- clollis, aii.l tiaic to his filial instinct^ 
 lie felt bound to join in the work. 
 
 A still liardcr struii:i;-I(' was a]»])roacliiiii:-. Tims lar liis 
 bi-nsli had hrouuht him nothing- hut disappointment, as tlie 
 world measures success ; loi- what were tlie ])rogress lie 
 had made in art, and the few hours of ex(juisite enjoyment 
 it had o-iven him, comi)ared Muth what lie might have done 
 in a more substantial profession ? So reasoned his father, 
 and tried with all the weight of parental authority to 
 enforce his exhortations. Ilis motlier, with a mother's 
 trust, believed that he might yet succeed in the art that he 
 loved. 
 
 Meanwhile in his solitary walks on tlie banks of the 
 Monongahela, he had examined himself carefully on the 
 principles of art and the method of study which he had fol- 
 lowed thus far. He soon saw that instead of painting from 
 his imagination, he should have begun with an accurate 
 study of nature ; storing his memory with real forms, and 
 training his eye and hand in the reproduction of the 
 minute details no less than the graiuh^r outlines of scenerv. 
 He began at once, filling his sketch-book with careful 
 studies of nature in all her infinite varietv, and laborin«>- 
 with a painful accuracy to give each object its distinc- 
 tive characteristics. These were happy hours. The more 
 deeply he penetrated into the secrets of beauty, the more 
 
88 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 liis love of nature increased, and the more fiilly did his 
 mind become imbned with that pure and earnest spirit, 
 wliicli was to rise by a natural progression from the simple 
 landscape to the grand teachings of the " Voyage of Life " 
 and the " Cross and the World." 
 
 Still his lather was dissatisfied with him, and it soon 
 became necessary to decide whether he would be an artist, 
 or a mere drudge for fortune. His filial sentiments, as has 
 already been said, were nncommonly strong, and for a 
 moment his resolution to devote himself to art was sliaken. 
 It Avas hard to disobey his lather, it was hard to give up a 
 profession which he loved passionately, in spite of the pri- 
 vations it had already imposed, and the still greater ones 
 which it might yet have in store. In this state of mind, as 
 he was walking one day on the banks of the Monongahela, 
 after a Avarm discussion with his fjither, he suddenly stopt, 
 picked up a couple of pebbles, set one of them upon the 
 top of a stick and stepping back ten or twelve paces, talk- 
 ing all the while to himself aloud, said : " If I can throw and 
 knock it off" with the other I will be a painter: if I miss it, 
 I will give up the thought for ever." He threw and the 
 stone fell. " Boy's play !" Xo : for many of life's gravest 
 questions are so nicely balanced even for the clearest and 
 strongest minds, that the veriest hair's weight may turn 
 the scale of duty. 
 
 ITaviuir once taken his resolution it was not hi lis nature 
 
com:. X'.) 
 
 to lose time in at'lcrlliou^lit, Ixit Iddiliii-- his laiiiily l^-mh1 hye 
 hi' si'l out on ioot for l*liihi(h'l|ihia, willi a clnlh tahlc-covcr 
 on his shoulders in lieu of overeoat, six dolhii's in his purse, 
 and his light stock ot'elothes and l)aintin^• mali'rials packed 
 together in a small trunk which his lellow-traveller, a 
 quarrelsome waggoner, carried I'or him on his waggon. 
 The long and wearisome Xovember journey, with the 
 brawling and drinking scenes which he was compelled to 
 Avitness at his stopping-places, and the damp, chilly mornings 
 and evenings, against which his scanty clothing formed an 
 imperfect protection, was a fitting prelude to the dreary 
 winter that was to follow. 
 
 Shall I attempt to describe the suiFerings of that winter ? 
 tell how a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water Avere his 
 food and drink ; how he slept at night on a bare floor, with 
 no covering but the clothes he had worn through the day, 
 and the table cover which had served him as a cloak during 
 his journey ; how, with nothing for furniture but the indis- 
 pensable imj^lements of his profession, he toiled, day after 
 day, in a little garret room, warming himself by thrusting his 
 leg^s throucfh the oven of a half-heated stove, or bv running 
 up and down a narrow^ alley and threshing his benumbed 
 hands, till the blood began to move again. How he bore all 
 this till rheumatism seized him in its most pahiful form, 
 leaving him penniless and helpless ; and yet that he ceased 
 
 not to hope, and clung tirmly to his art, and struggling reso- 
 
 *4* 
 
90 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 lutely through all with unwaverhig faith, studied and 
 worked, and at last became known ? 
 
 His works were small landscapes and bar-room scenes ; 
 
 recollections, perhaps, many of them, of painful parts of 
 
 his own experience, but which readily found a place in 
 
 barbers' shops and oyster-cellars. After a while, too, he 
 
 got regular employment as an ornamental painter, and 
 
 decorated bellows and brushes, and Japan ware, w^ith figures 
 
 and birds and flowers ; sighing now and then as he bent over 
 
 his task, but trusting still that the better days would yet 
 
 come. Once he was called to paint a portrait from a corpse, 
 
 and after toiling several days, was compelled to go to law 
 
 for his pay. Spring, summer, and autumn came, but 
 
 brought no sweet hours of repose in the forest shade, or on 
 
 the cool banks of mountain streams ; but he would wander 
 
 through the squares at evening, when his work was done, 
 
 and study the trees. And with that overflowing love ol 
 
 nature, which neither toil nor penury could chill, he marked 
 
 them all out as individual objects of aflection, to which his 
 
 feelings clung the more closely, as there was little else 
 
 around him to call them forth. There was another bright 
 
 side, too, — the hours he passed at the Academy, drawing 
 
 from the casts, and studying the landscapes, which seemed 
 
 to hira full of an unattainable beauty ; and the occasional 
 
 composition of pieces in which he could indulge his memory 
 
 and give a freer play to his imagination. 
 
roLK. 91 
 
 And (lay 1»y day liis hand urcw iVcci-, liis eye truer, liis 
 touch lirniiT, and the lahors ol" llial Iiai'd wintci- pi-cjiar* d 
 liini to place liiniscH", liy a lew more well directed cllort-^, in 
 llie lir.st rank ol" his })roi(L'ssion. 
 
 The bitterness of the struggle was ])ast. In the s]»ring of 
 1825, lie renioN'ed to New York, wliere liis laniily were 
 already established ; and in a garret of his father's liouse in 
 Greenwich street painted the lirst small landscapes which 
 opened his way to fame. They were five in number: two 
 of which are marked on a half-effaced memorandum as 
 compositions ; one as a " Storm," one as a " Fire," and the 
 fifth and last as " a Battle Piece." An acquaintance lent 
 him the use of one of his shop windows to exhibit them in, 
 and there they fortunately caught the eye of Mr. George 
 Bruen, who not only bought three of them, but was so 
 much pleased with his purchase that he gave the artist the 
 means of resuming his studies from nature. 
 
 Halleck had not yet sung of the beauties of Weliaw- 
 ken when Cole began those studies of the scenery of 
 the Hudson which were to enrich liis canvass with such a 
 variety of lovely forms. He studied at West Pomt and 
 followed the river upward to Catskill. He was not unfa- 
 miliar with mountain scenery. He had seen the luxuriant 
 vegetation and gorgeous hues of the tropics. Pie was 
 familiar with all the aspects of the ocean, and had travelled 
 through the solitude of our western forests. But nowhere 
 
92 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 had he found a combination of tlie grand and beautiful that 
 impressed him so deeply as hi that quiet little village, Avhich 
 nestling on the banks of the Caterskill, looks forth on one 
 side upon the broad bosom of the Hudson, and on the 
 other, oA'er the loveliest of valleys, to mountains that change 
 their hues Avitli every variation of the atmosphere and shed 
 over the landscape an air of calm repose and solemn gran- 
 deur. Many a time have I seen liim turn from a long and 
 earnest gaze at the grand mountain scenery of Rome, ex^ 
 claimmg, "Beautiful! grand! — but after all I lov^e the 
 Catskills." 
 
 He returned to his little painting room and there by the 
 light of a dormer window painted his view of " Fort Put- 
 nam," The Falls of the Caterskill, "A Lake with Dead 
 Trees," and a scene from some spot of which the name has 
 not been preserved. When they passed from his dim little 
 garret to the broad hght of the shop window, they caught 
 the eye of Col. Trumbull, who immediately purchased the 
 "Falls" and hung it up in his own painting room. The 
 same day, meeting Dunlap, he called his attention to this 
 new-born genius ; and then seeking out Cole himself, invited 
 liim to his studio, and asked Durand to come and see the 
 picture and the artist. "Young man," said the veteran to 
 the shrinking youth, "you surprise me, at your age, to paint 
 like this. You have already done Avhat, with all my years 
 and experience, I am unable to do." 
 
rou:. 93 
 
 From tills <lay liis success was complete. Pictures were 
 Sold as Cast as tliey couM lie painted, oi-ders came in IVoiii 
 all sides. Mverv lover olWineiicau sceiieiy >-ecme(l to take 
 l)ride ill showiiii;- tlial lie knew liow to a])preciate these 
 faithful tianscripts of its loveliness. They Ijecaine tlie chief 
 attraction of the juihlic exhibitions, and you could always 
 tell, by the throng around them, in what ]»art of the i-oom 
 they hung. ''1 could tell one of these pieces," said Cooi)er, 
 "as far as sight enabled me to see it. On one occasion I 
 remember to have been misled as to the artist and t(j have 
 stood before a small landscape that was said to have come 
 from another hand. 'Here, then, is another artist,' I said, 
 ' who has caught the spirit of Cole.' After all it turned 
 out to be a picture by Cole himself; no one else could paint 
 such a picture." 
 
 In the days of his adversity Cole had barely escaped a 
 gaol: one of the early fruits of his prosperity was a patron. 
 This was a man of wealth, who owned a large mansion on 
 his own broad lands near the head waters of the Hudson. 
 With him Cole agreed to pass the winter, ha})py in the 
 thought of enriching his portfolio with new studies and 
 painting in the midst of nature. But his protector, as it 
 proved in the secpiel, was a vain, colddiearted, and not 
 very honest man, whose chief aim in giving the invitation 
 was to raise the reputation of his own estate by having its 
 best parts painted by an artist of unquestionable standing. 
 
94 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 Vexation, annoyance, liumiliation, and materials for many 
 ludicrous stories which, when he Avas in the vein, none 
 could tell with a happier effect than Cole, were the results 
 of this unfortunate experiment — the first and last of the 
 kind that he ever made. 
 
 He travelled, too, extensively, and almost always more 
 or less on foot, — true artistic exploring expeditions, with 
 knapsack and sketch-book, carrying him over a wide range 
 of scenery, and storing his portfolio with elaborate studies 
 of the i^eculiar characteristics of American landscape. His 
 pen was equally busy. Blank leaves of his sketch-book 
 were filled with descriptions of scenery and records of the 
 day's adventures. The love of poetry seemed to grow 
 in him with his progress in art, and he wrote as he painted, 
 in obedience to an irresistible impulse. Some of his com- 
 positions are long poems, others brief effusions, thrown off 
 under the action of a strong feeling, but all equally the 
 expression of pure thoughts, noble aspirations, and exquisite 
 sensibility. 
 
 At first, he seemed disposed to confine himself, in his 
 paintings, almost exclusively to uncultivated nature. His 
 landscapes, whether gentle or grand, are scenes into which 
 civilization has never penetrated ; and if human life appears 
 in them in any form, it is in that of nature's own child, the 
 untamed Indian. You cannot help feeling that he would 
 have been an excellent friend for Leatherstocking, so deeply 
 
roi.E. 0.. 
 
 nro Ills pi('(ur(>s iml)iu'il witli tlic same spirit wliicli ii)spiitMl 
 sonic ot'Cuo}»L'r\s liiu'sl pages. 'I'licsi' wore llie works wliicli 
 made liini iiiiiiiediately jiopulai-. They were iiol <jiily full 
 of trulh and beauty, hut they were }»erfectly intelligible; 
 and few amongst us looked for anytliing in art, beyond the 
 quiet ])leasure wliieli arises from the accurate representation 
 of familiar tilings. 
 
 With liini, however, this was not enough. It was not 
 merely an agreeable sensation that he asked from nature, 
 but invigorating thought. When he had painted things for 
 a M'hile as tliey are, he came to ask himself how they might 
 be : why the crag, that he had found in one spot, might not 
 be combined with the torrent or lake that he had seen in 
 another ; and why, by these combinations, natural objects 
 might not be made to speak a language as intelligible as 
 any other form of poetry. It was with this feeUng, though 
 perhaps not yet fully developed even in his own mind, that 
 he painted the "Garden of Eden," and the "Expulsion;" 
 imperfect expressions of his conception, but beautiful har- 
 bingers of what he was soon to do. 
 
 A natural consequence of this progress was a strong 
 desire to see and study the great schools of European art ; 
 for his mind was too philosophic^al, and his range of 
 thought too extensive, to allow him to cherish the silly 
 delusion that, in a world like ours, in which the present 
 is but a link between the past and the future, the man 
 
9b BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 who wilfully neglects what has been done by others, can 
 ever hope to accomplish anything of permanent value 
 himself. At first, he had counted upon the sale of two 
 new pictures for the means of passing a year or two m 
 Europe. But in this he was disajjpointed ; for, although 
 he had bestowed great labor upon them, the style w^as 
 too new to please immediately. It was a serious disap- 
 pointment ; but a friend, Avhom he had made by his pen- 
 cil, came to his aid, in a manner equally honorable to 
 them both. This generous man, whose name I place 
 on record for the important services which, by his judi- 
 cious patronage, he rendered to American art at a critical 
 period of its development, was Robert Gilmor, of Balti- 
 more, to whom we owe one of Greenougli's earliest pro- 
 ductions, the beautiful figure of Medora. The spring 
 of '29 was one of great excitement for Cole. " I am liv- 
 ing in anticipation," he says, in a letter to Mr. Gilmor, 
 "but my anticipations are not all pleasing; for, in going 
 to study the great works of art, I feel like one who is 
 going to his first battle, and knows neither his strength 
 nor his weakness.'' And then, suddenly checking him- 
 self, with that modesty which never forsook him, he adds: 
 "Perhaps I betray some vanity in what I have just 
 said ; for I am not going to fight, but to learn to figlit." 
 Before he started, he painted a picture to take with 
 him, " Hagar in the Wilderness," which, at the moment. 
 
lie Ii()|hm1 would proxc liis ^' hcst clloi-l ,*' iIk.ii'jIi lie niter- 
 wards Ix'camc dissalisiicd, and |»aiiilcil anoilicr iMcliur 
 ovri- it. He Weill lo Xiaiiara, too, as if to take one more 
 full drauo-hi (roiu the Ih-sli fountain of iiatui-c, Ix-lnrc lie 
 seated liiniself at the feet of the ^■^eat masters of art; 
 and then, on the first of June, set sail for London. Feel- 
 iugs straiiij^-ely mingled must have erowded into his mind 
 as lie sailed down the bay, and gave a farewell glance 
 at the scenes whieh had taken «o strong a hold u])on his 
 affections. The laud that he was leaving had hecome 
 dearer t(^ him tlian the land of his birth. Ten rears 
 before he ha<l come to it a stranger, i)oor, friendless, and 
 unknown. .\nd now he was leaviug behind him warm 
 friends and a brilliant name of his own making; while 
 the prospect before him Avas filled v.ith everything that 
 could gratify his taste or flatter his ambition. I^ryant's 
 beautiful sonnet is a faithful expression of the feelings 
 of his friends, and the l^est record of the ])lace that Cole 
 had taken among those whose i)raise is immortalitv. 
 
 In England he passed nearly two years, studying in his 
 own way, not by copying, but by carefully examining the 
 Avorks of the best masters, and trying rather to catch their 
 si)irit than to imitate their manner. Claude and (hisj.ar 
 Poussin delighted him. lie admired many things in Turner ; 
 but the English school of art seemed to him false and umia- 
 tural ; a striving after brilliant eflects, instead of a careful 
 
98 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 study of nature. "They have a mania," says he, "for 
 what they call generaliziug, wliich is nothing more nor 
 less than the idle art of making a little study go a great 
 way." The sceneiy he enjoyed and studied carefully; 
 but with the exception of Lawrence, who received him 
 kindly, though he died shortly after Cole's arrival, and 
 Roccers, to whom he had been introduced by Cooper, he 
 found but little sympathy either among artists or their 
 patrons. At the exhibitions his pictures were hung in the 
 worst places, and the labor of weeks thrust into an 
 obscure corner to make room for some meretricious thing 
 that has long been forgotten. 
 
 In Paris, he unfortunately found the old pictures covered 
 up by the modern exhibition. But his quick eye readily 
 detected the noble compositions of Scheifer amid the 
 crowd of "Battles, Venuses, and Psyches," tlie bloody 
 and the voluptuous, which annually fill the spacious halls 
 of the Louvre. 
 
 Tlien came Italy. As he glided down the Rhone, on 
 his way thither, he remembered tlie Hudson; and gazing 
 t]ioughtfully at the remnants of feudal days that lie scat- 
 tered along the banks of the noble stream, saw visions 
 of the past which sank deep into liis memory, to revive 
 ao^ain in some of the loveliest of his compositions. His 
 journals and letters cont:iin beautiful recoi'ds of tlie feel- 
 ini^s with which he first looked on tlie Mediterranean, 
 
COLK. 99 
 
 sailed nlDiiu; tlic niMJ».'st'u* coast of Lii^niria, niiidc liimaolf 
 a lioine in Floi-cncc, stiidicMl uikIim- tlic Cvcloiicaii walls 
 of Voltcrra, looki'd out ii|>(ni Koine iVom the i-oom in 
 which Claude had painted, dfaiik to the riill IVoin the licli 
 scenery of Naples, and then, returning again to Florence, 
 threw oft' picture after })icture 'svitli a surencss of toucli 
 and a fuhiess of feeling, whicli made him exchiim, when he 
 looked back upon it in after Acars, " I was in the spirit of 
 it. Oh, tliat I were there again, and in tlie same spirit !" 
 The winter of '32-''3 found liim at home again, with his 
 pictures ranged around him in ids exhibition rooms, at tlie 
 corner of Wall street and Broadway, noble records of the 
 last three years. And we have named tlie spot, for it was 
 there that he formed the acquaintance of Luman Iiced, the 
 most liberal and intelligent among the patrons of xVmerican 
 art, one of the few who feel how honorable it is to give 
 genius the opportunity of Avorking out its own conce23tions, 
 and that wealth is never so well employed as when it opens 
 new sources of })ermanent enjoyment. A commission for 
 an Italian scene was the first result of this acquaintance, 
 which, (piickly ripening into the free communion of friend- 
 ship, aftorded Cole the opportunity, he had long desired, of 
 expressing his views of the power and oftice of art to one 
 capable of appreciating them. It is to this circumstance 
 that Ave owe the "Course of Empire," a subject whieh he 
 had conceived several years before, but with little ho})e of 
 
100 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 ever being able to paint it. The feelings with which he 
 ai^proached this great Avork, the conscientiousness with 
 which he labored upon it, the doubts and hopes and diffi- 
 culties, the fluctuations of spirits, and yet the unwavering 
 faith with which lie brought it to its termination ; and with 
 it all, his deep grief when he was called to follow his 
 generous friend to the grave, before he could prove how 
 well he had deserved the confidence that had been placed 
 in him — are beautifully portrayed in his letters and journal. 
 The brief entry of October 29, 1836, is so characteristic 
 that I will venture to extract it: "I have just returned 
 from the city, where I have been with the series of pictures 
 painted for Mr. Reed. When I took them, I was fearful 
 they would disappoint the expectations of my friends. I 
 have been greatly surprised, for they seem to give universal 
 pleasure." 
 
 The place to which he "returned" was Catskill, which, 
 from a summer retreat, had become almost a permanent 
 residence. Hither he hastened with the first buds of sj^ring, 
 and here he lingered till the mountain tops were white with 
 the first snows of Avinter. He could not bear the city when 
 the fields were green, or the forests clad in those wonderful 
 autunm hues which he has painted so beautifully; and he 
 Avould as soon have thought of going Avithout his daily food 
 as of living the year round Avhere he could not see the sun 
 rise and set. Soon, too, Catskill acquired another claim 
 
COLE. 101 
 
 Upon liiin, i1k' stronp^est oi' :ill claims ioi- a licart jtiirc, 
 ttMidor, and conlidiuLC ^il<^' J'i^- -^ iiainc tliat occurs once or 
 twice in liis journal, and an occasional allusion, arc tlic only 
 traces of the new feeling which had come to mingle its 
 happy influences with Iiis love of nature and art. ]>ut on 
 the 22d of November, 18-3G, while his lieart was yet glowing 
 with the success of his " Course of Empire," he was married 
 to Maria Barto, and, for the first thne in his life, had a 
 home of his own. 
 
 The time now passed swiftly and happily. He painted, 
 wrote, made from time to time long excursions to study 
 some new scene, came occasionally to town to exhibit a 
 picture, or pass a while within reach of his friends, Bryant, 
 Durand, Huntington, Ver Bryck, and then returned again 
 with renewed vigor to his quiet home and beloved moun- 
 tains. In a few months he was at work ui)on one of his 
 noblest pieces, "The Departure and the Return." "The 
 Past and the Present" soon followed ; landscapes of various 
 kinds filled up the busy interval, and then came the 
 " Voyage of Life." 
 
 It is not my intention to follow out the order and origin 
 of his numerous works, and still less to enter into a critical 
 examination of them, ]Mr. Noble's fervid volume, and 
 Bryant's inimitable funeral oration, contain all that can be 
 asked in description and general criticism. Therefore, 
 passing by many things which would naturally come into a 
 
102 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 fuller view, we find him, in 1841, preparing for a second 
 visit to Europe. Hard work, and still more, the necessity 
 of adapting himself to the spirit of the times, and painting 
 little pictures in order to live, when his mind was teeming 
 with great compositions, had broken his health. Few think 
 what a wasting power this longing for better things has, 
 and how the mind, constrained to live in an atmosphere 
 which is not its own, exhausts its strength in little efforts, 
 loses the relish of present enjoyment because it sees nothing 
 to look to in the future, strives, strnggles, resists; escaping 
 now and then to its own world, to shudder and shrink as 
 the cold reality comes and forces it back again to its 
 dungeon ; and dragging on through life, wearied and 
 disheartened by the bitter consciousness that it has the 
 capacity to do great things which it will never be permitted 
 to do. 
 
 And men look on and langh at the impractical spirit 
 which would pretend to mould things according to its own 
 views. "The more fool he ! If he can't do one thing, let 
 him do another. It is the law of life, which he cannot 
 hope to change, and the sooner he makes up his mind to 
 accept it, the better. If not, why, let him pine and die, 
 too, if he choose ; the world will be none the worse off 
 for it." 
 
 Perhaps not. And yet, would we not like to see what 
 Chatterton midit have done for ns with a mind at ease ? 
 
COLK. ^ 103 
 
 Tens of thous;m<ls li:\\c' owed soiiio of their lKi]»itifSt 
 iiioiiK'iits to the ''\'icar of \V:ikt'tk'l<I." WouM the sum 
 of human enjoyment have gained notliincc, if Gohlsmith liad 
 been allowed to write for mankind instead of writing f(jr ) 
 the houksellersV Dryden wrote plays, to adapt himself to 
 the times, and Burns was set to gauge beer as a reward for 
 his poetry, and Arnold exhausted npon a scliool the energies 
 that niiglit have given ns a perfect liistory of Rome. The 
 spirit of tlie times is a big word, and men love to use it, 
 sometimes as a pretext, and sometimes as an apology. But 
 there are evil spirits that Avalk the earth, as well as good 
 ones ; and none among them more evil and more accursed 
 tlian those "which wantonly deride the earnest mind, and rob 
 the world of things which would have made it happier and 
 better. 
 
 Cole's health and spirits, as we have already said, were 
 drooping under these evil influences, and he resolved to try 
 the effect of another visit to Europe. Elastieity of mind 
 returned with change of scene. He enjoyed the ruins and 
 feudal relics of England better than he had ever enjoyed 
 them before. AVhen he found himself once more in the 
 Louvre, no longer with the modern exhibition, but with the 
 masterpieces of the best ages of art aroimd him, he ''felt 
 more of an artist than he had done for years.'' In his first 
 visit he had not seen Switzerland ; but now, though the 
 season was far advanced, he gave a glance at Lake Neuf- 
 
104 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 chatel, the Bernese Alps, the Jura, and Geneva : then 
 retraced his former route down the Rhone, stavmg long 
 enough at Avignon to make a careful study of Vaucluse, 
 and hurried rapidly onward to Rome. 
 
 There were still some old friends to welcome him back, 
 Gibson and Wyatt ; but the American cn-cle, a very small 
 one on his first visit, had now become an important element, 
 in the resources of a Roman winter. Craw^ford was just 
 finishing off the Orpheus in marble ; Terry had been 
 working for months on his first large composition, "Christ 
 disputing with the Doctors ; " Rossiter had come with Cole 
 himself; every Aveek brought tidings of what Greenough, 
 and Powers, and poor Clevenger were doing in Florence ; 
 and students from every part of the country, all diligently 
 Avorking in the life-academies and galleries, showed Avhat 
 rapid progress the love of art had made amongst us during 
 the last ten years. There Avere social circles, too ; Avinter 
 visitors and permanent residents ; Avith Avhom, apart from 
 his high reputation (and in Rome, it is the great artist that 
 is the great man), his pleasing address and instructive con- 
 versation always made him a Avelcome guest. 
 
 UnAvilling to lose an hour in a spot Avhere every hour Avas 
 so precious, he immediately sought out for himself a quiet 
 little studio in the Babuino, Avith a bedroom on the same 
 stairAvay, and Avent to AA^ork. Yaucluse was still fresh in 
 his mind, and, Avith the studies he had made on the spot 
 
COLE. 1 05 
 
 before Inm, lie |):iiiite<l it on liirLTe eaiivass, willi '^rcat force 
 and truth. He felt a |»le:isui-e in j.aintinLC I*t't rarcli's 
 herniita<_:;e in llic^ city wliicli lia<l calKMl tbiMli sonic ol* liis 
 noblest strains. Then he returned to the '' Voyai^e of 
 Life," which he painted over ai^ain, partly from niemoi-y, 
 and i)artly from the sketehes lie bad brought Avith him. 
 These, witli a small landscape, an vVutumn scene, from some 
 spot, if wc remember right, near Catskill, were the finished 
 works of the winter. Uut many hours were given to the 
 Vatican and Capitol, to the rich landscapes of the Doria, to 
 careful studies of Rome from St. Onofrio and the Pincian, 
 sketches of the Campagna, with its ruined aqueducts, and 
 towers, and tombs, and temples, and the glorious monntains 
 in whose shadow it sleeps ; to the grand old ilexes of Villa 
 Borghese, which the pencil will never draw again,* and the 
 pines of Doria Pamfili, and all those w^onderful combinations 
 of art and nature which lie so thick around you, at every 
 step you take in Rome. Ilis mind was always full, and his 
 imagination always on the wing. It was delightful to sit by 
 him and see him paint, for his thoughts never seemed to 
 flow more freely, or clothe themselves in happier language 
 than when his brush was in his hand. It was a pleasure, 
 
 * They were cut down during the siege of Rome, and they who lay the 
 blame at the door of the Republic will do well to remember the words of 
 
 Demosthenes — 5 n J' au to Trpayjia avTo dvayKa^Tj, tovtov Tijv atriav uvrdi can 
 6Uaioi c^(^£iv roiovrov aycova c.'aTijrTdjUvog. — De Corolia. 
 
106 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 too, to visit the niins with him ; for, though not a classical 
 scholar, he had read much and carefully, and there were few 
 whose minds those records of joys and sorrows that have 
 passed away, stirred more deeply. Xever shall I forget the 
 tremulous tones of his A^oice as we followed our guide 
 through the catacombs hy the dim light of tapers, or the- 
 expression of his countenance when we emerged from those 
 silent chambers and caught the first glimpse of the bright 
 blue sky and the soft outline of the Alban mount sleeping 
 sweetly in its purple veil. But the greatest pleasure of all 
 was to walk with him at sunset, and through the long 
 twilight, till the stars came forth and the moon rose. Then 
 Avould all the fervor and earnestness of his mind awaken, 
 and his beautiful fancy sport with exhaustless fertility. 
 How happily would he trace the analogies of the moral 
 and physical world ! What delicate similes would he find 
 ill the objects that lay before us, for feeUngs and thoughts 
 within, and with what an exquisite perception would he 
 point out every change in the clouds, and on the mountain 
 tops, and over the vast city, as the waning light slowly 
 faded from them ! It was on these occasions, too, that he 
 loved best to talk of his art, and the pictures that he would 
 paint if he could but follow it according to his OAvn con- 
 ception of its ofiice. 
 
 One of those evenings I particularly remember. About 
 a mile and a half beyond Porta Pia, there is a little bridge 
 
COLE. 107 
 
 over tho road, the old Xomciiliaii i-oiul, wliidi leads to llu* 
 "Sacrod mountain," and skii-ts the line hy wIi'k-Ii IlanniUal 
 rode U|) to tlic walls oji that t'carliil day, wlicn, lor the first 
 lime in lono- years, the RomaJis looke(l d<j\vn fVoni their 
 bidwarks on an cnemyV canij). A low parapet proteets tlic 
 sides of the bridge ; and on this parapet Ave took onr seats, 
 as the sun, just smking behind the Vatican, was shedding 
 liis last rays on the mountain tops. On onr left lay the 
 Nonientian l)rido-e, with its old arch and tower built np 
 again from the devastation of Totila; and on the o})posite 
 side the low brow of the "Sacred mountain," rising gently 
 from the desolate bank of the Anio, to lose itself in the 
 peculiar undulations of the Camjiagna; and still further on, 
 the stern ban-ier of the Sabine mountains, swelling peak 
 above peak, and mingling far off with the snow-capped 
 Apennine. Before us lay the Campagna, with the Anio 
 rushing rapidly, with many a bend and curve, between its 
 narrow banks ; Tivoli gleaming out from its oHve orchards ; 
 and Palcstrina just beyond, where young Marius took 
 refuge when Sylla came back to avenge himself on his ene- 
 mies, and Horace sat him down to read Homer in the 
 shades that he loved; and still a little further on, and with 
 a yet larger interval of Campagna between, the Alban 
 mount, with broad forests growing out from its volcanic 
 masses, and lakes rising up from the depths of its silent cra- 
 ters, and Palazzola stretching brightly along its slope, and 
 
108 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 Monte Cavi looking down as proudly from its wooded cone 
 as when the cities ot* the Latins assembled in its shade, and 
 Roman generals rode up over its triumphal Avay to sacrifice 
 upon the altar of Jove. The city lay on our right, a few 
 towers alone visible, mingUng with the arches of the Clau- 
 dian aqueduct. 
 
 We sat and watched the lingering day. We saw the 
 shadows slowly stealing up from the valley, and the last 
 sunbeams meekly fadhig into twilight. We saw that 
 second glow which bursts forth when the sun is gone ; the 
 last look of expiring day at the scenes which it had glad- 
 dened by its smile, swathing the mountain sides in golden 
 floods, and playing along their rugged crests like lightning 
 on the edges of a cloud. Then this, too, passed away, and 
 through the mountain gap above Tivoli rose a soft and sil- 
 very gleam, gradually extending over the horizon, and 
 growing purer and brighter, till the full moon came forth 
 unveiled, and shed her beams so gently on all that magic 
 scene, that the rough mountain side seemed to smile at their 
 touch, and the dank vapors, that floated cloud-like far and 
 wide over the Campagna, looked like islands of liquid light. 
 
 We spoke of the past ; of the thousands who had come 
 from distant places to look upon that scene ; of the mys- 
 terious decree which had crowded so large a portion of 
 the w^orld's destinies within that narrow circle. We sum- 
 moned the plebeians of old to people once more the 
 
COI.K. 
 
 loa 
 
 desertca liill on wliicli llicy Icid ciIUmI into liiV- the second 
 element of 1 toman greatness. We pitclic'<] the tent of the 
 Carthag-iiiiaii on the hanks of the Anio, and watch(Ml llie 
 beams that fell on the gray monnds that once were the 
 Tuscnlnm of Cicero. And as we asked ourselves why all 
 this had been, and why it had been so, and not otherwise, 
 Cole's thoughts went back to his " Course of Empire," 
 and the conception from which it had sprung, and how he 
 had hoped to make landscape speak to the heart by the 
 pencil, as it was speaking to us, there, of the great ques- 
 tions of life. lie talked, too, of the works which he had 
 planned, in which nature w^as to tell a story of vaster import 
 than the rise and fall of human powder— the triumph of 
 religion. And as he spoke, his heart seemed to glow with 
 the conception, and his imagination called up wonderful 
 forms, and his words flowed fast and with burning elo- 
 quence, for it was a thought which had long been dear to 
 him. He had clung to it through disappointment and 
 depression. When compelled to force himself down to 
 little tasks for his daily bread, it had still been with him a 
 burning aspiration and a strengthening hope; and a few 
 years later, when he laid down his pencil for the last time, 
 the third picture of the first of that wonderful series stood 
 yet unfinished on his easel.* 
 
 * I have said the first of a series, for the plan, if my memory serves 
 me, comprised more than one, and that upon which he was engaged at 
 
110 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 When we returned home, he asked for a copy of Bryant, 
 and read the " Thanatopsis," and the "Hymn to the North 
 Star ;" and as his mind grew calmer under the influence of 
 the poet he loved most, his thoughts turned homewards 
 to gentler and famiUar scenes, and he went on with the 
 " Rivulet," and " Green River," and others of those exqui- 
 site pieces, which reflect the sweet aspect of nature so 
 truthfully, that their melody steals into the heart with 
 the balmy freshness of nature's own soothings. 
 
 Cole remained in Rome till April. The "Voyage of Life" 
 had always been one of his favorite compositions and he 
 felt a peculiar pleasure in painting it over again in Rome. 
 
 When the first three pictures were finished and the 
 fourth nearly so, Terry lent him his studio in the Orto di 
 ISTapoli to exhibit them in, and he became anxious to have 
 Thorwaldsen see them. As I had frequent opportunities 
 of meeting him, I undertook to arrange an interview 
 between the two artists. Thorwaldsen accepted the invi- 
 tation at once, and fixed upon the next morning for his 
 visit. Crawford, Avho neglected no opportunity of convers- 
 ing with his great master, ofiered to show him the way, 
 and I went before to see that all was ready. 
 
 The moment that he entered the room, I could see by 
 the lighting up of his clear, blue eye, that he felt himself 
 the time of his death, "The Cross and the World," was not composed, as I 
 am assured by Mrs. Cole, till after his return to the United States. 
 
COLE. Ill 
 
 at lioinc; :ui<l before Cole could do nTiylliiii'j: more than 
 iiaiiU' the subject of the series, lie to()k up the iut er)»reta- 
 tiou himself, and read the slory olV IVoni the canvass, uilh 
 a i-eadiuess Ihal iiia<le Cole's eyes uioisleii wilh delii^ht. 
 When he came lo the lasl, he paused and i;aze<l ; llien 
 returned to the iirst, passed slowly before tlieni all ; and 
 coniino- l)ack to tlie hist again, stood before it for a long 
 while without uttering a word. It seemed to me as if lie 
 felt that he, too, had readied that silent sea, and was com- 
 paring the recollections of his own eventful career, with 
 the story of the old man ;md his shattered bark. And to 
 this day, I can never look upon that picture, without fan- 
 cying that I still see Thorwaldsen standing before it, with 
 his gray locks falling over his shoulders, like those of the 
 hero of the picture, and his serene features composed to 
 deep and solemn meditation. It Avas the old man, in 
 Young, w^alking — 
 
 "Thoughtfal on the silent, solemn shore 
 Of that vast ocean, he must sail full soon," 
 
 When, at last, he spoke, it was in the strongest terjns 
 of gratitication : and often as we used to meet during those 
 last two years of his life in Koiue, he never forgot to 
 inquire after Cole ; always ending with — "• Great artist, 
 great artist." 
 
 And soon — too soon — the solemn summons came — and in 
 
112 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 the ripeness of his fome — with an imagination still gloAving, 
 and a soul unchilled by seventy-four winters, his mighty 
 spirit passed away. Cole soon followed, and the year has 
 not yet completed its round since I saw the grave close 
 over all of Crawford that was mortal, in the prime of his 
 manhood and the full vigor of creative genius. 
 
 They were afterwards exhibited at the annual exhibition 
 in the " Piazza del Popolo," and produced a strong impres- 
 sion. Then, leaving his pictures behind him, he went to 
 IN'aples and Sicily, ascended Mount Etna, visited Syracuse 
 and Agrigentum, and nearly all the celebrated spots on 
 the island, and came back to us with his imagination all on 
 fire with the wonderful things he had seen. I wish that 
 my space would allow me to describe his last day in Rome, 
 as he sat down with his sketch-book, on a sweet afternoon 
 of full blown spring, to make one more study of the Cam- 
 pagna. But I have already overran my limits, and must 
 hasten to a close. Leaving it, therefore, to the reader's 
 imagination to follow him on his journey northward, 
 including a fuller tour of Switzerland, and a sail down the 
 Rhine, we find him, in August, at Catskill, and once more 
 at his work. 
 
 His first pictures were the immediate fruits of his tour. 
 Moimt Etna, Temples at Agrigentum, Tor di Schiavi, the 
 Campagna, and other scenes which he had studied care- 
 fully on the spot with the intention of painting them, or 
 
COLE. 1 l:J 
 
 which had m:l<h' a (lc'('|) iiiipi-cssioii upon liis iimuhm \. In 
 the Nvintt'i- of '44, lu^ coHcctiMl as many ol" liis jtieturcs as 
 lie could ohtain the use of, and e\hil)ile(l them toi^ether, 
 in tlie old oaUery of the "Academy of Design" at Clint<jn 
 Hall ; and not beinu; able to have the " Course of Emijire," 
 lie painted in a week a large view of Etna frc^m Taormina, 
 "a miracle," says Bryant, "of rapid and p(nverful execu- 
 tion." In the spring his affections met a heavy blow in 
 the death of Yer Bryck. " Where shall I turn," says he, 
 in his journal, "for the companionship of so congenial a 
 mind?" 
 
 Busy as his pencil was, his mind was still busier. "I 
 have been dwelling on many subjects," he writes in '44, 
 "and looking forward to the time when I can embody 
 them on canvas. They are subjects of a moral and 
 religious nature. On such I think it is the duty of the 
 artist to employ his abilities." Sowing and Reaping, in 
 four pictures, and Life, Death, and Immortality, in three, 
 were among them. But instead of these, he was com- 
 pelled to confine himself to small pieces, views of Italian 
 and American scenery, exquisite in themselves, and strik- 
 ing examples of facility of execution, and truth to nature, 
 but not the subjects he was longing to paint. " Circum- 
 stances," he writes, in the sunnner of '46, " circumstances 
 have waylaid and robbed me of nnich precious time." 
 
 At last he resolved to break throuo-h his trannnels. 
 
114 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 paint the first of his great series, and trust to heaven for the 
 result. He built himself a new studio, looking out upon 
 his favorite view of the Catskills, and there he *' promised 
 himself much enjoyment, and great success in the prosecu. 
 tion of his art." There is something very touching in the 
 first mention of it in his journal : " I ought ever to hear 
 in mind that the night cometh when no man can work." 
 And the night was near. But one more year was granted 
 him, a busy, checkered year, with his mind in the full 
 vigor of its maturity ; and what precious results it gave ! 
 — the finished portion of the "Cross and the World," 
 "Prometheus bound," "Proserpine gathering Flowers in 
 the fields of Enna," several smaller scenes, and among 
 them, the most perfect of his minor pieces, " The Lord is 
 my Shepherd." 
 
 He had overworked himself with the "Cross and the 
 World," and was trying to get a little rest by painting 
 upon the "Proserpine." It was Saturday, the 5th of 
 February, 1847. He worked till his usual hour, giving the 
 finishing touches to an Italian pine, one of those trees 
 that he had studied so often from the Pincian at sunset; 
 and then, looking cheerfully forward to the morrow, for 
 Sunday with him was truly a day of rest, he cleaned off 
 his palette and closed his studio for the last time. That 
 Sunday was communion day. In the night he was taken 
 violently ill. The disease soon proved to be an iuflam- 
 
( oil:. I !•'> 
 
 inallnii of iJic lunii's. lis piM.- rcss \\;is x. ia|."hl llinl, «-n 
 tlir lliird <l;iy, lie hcciiiii!- chin iiic<Ml lli.it it, uoiiM \,v, 
 l:it:il, Mild l)(>Li:iii calmly to make liis jirciiarat ioiis lor 
 ili'atli. On Friday ovciiiiiLC >'<' ''^''^ ^''^i' ^'"" in<>">*'"1 ^vas 
 lU'ar, and asked canR'slly for llic <'(.iiiiiiiiirHMi. Wiicn lli(3 
 scrvico was over, lie sank l»;ick npoii liis pillow, sayinu; — "I 
 want t(j l>c <niic't/' 'I'licsc were liis last words. Al, ei.<;ht 
 o'clock he c\])ircd, aged lorty-seveii years aii<l a few days. 
 The sad tidings spread ra]>id]y, cverywliere calling forth 
 the deepest regret. In Catskill, on the day of his I'unenil, 
 the shops Avcrc shut, the Avhole coniniunity uniting witli 
 one accord hi the only testimony they could now give of 
 their admiration and love. At New York, the *' National 
 Academy of Design" requested Bryant, one of the most 
 intimate and cherished of his friends, to pronounce his 
 euology; and Bryant wrote a funeral oration Avhich will 
 ever remain as a beautiful expression of dee}) and ear- 
 nest feeling, condjined with exquisite description, judicious 
 criticism, and the happiest appreciation of character. As 
 speedily, too, as it could he done, his paintings Avere col- 
 lected and exhibited together in the rooms of the "Art 
 Union." There were many of his earlier pieces; there, 
 witli few exceptions, were his maturer productions; there, 
 too, was seen, for the first time, the "Cross and tlio 
 World," three finished pictures and two sketches, sad but 
 precious records of his last yoar ; and, in the midst of 
 
116 BIOGKAPHICxVL STUDIES. 
 
 them all, his own portrait, by the hand of a friend, look- 
 ing down, as it were, upon these fruits of an earnest lite, 
 with a serene and gentle thoughtfulness that called forth 
 many a tear. 
 
 As an artist, Cole's endowments were of the highest 
 order: a vigorous and fertile imagination, a rich and 
 lively fancy, an intuitive perception of beauty in all its 
 various manifestations, a reverential love of truth, which 
 made the assiduous study of nature an exhaustless source 
 of dehght, a line eye for color, a singular felicity of com- 
 bination, and that power of distinct and forcible concep- 
 tion, which enables the great artist to produce the 
 greatest results by simple means. Art, for him, was a 
 shrine at which he knelt devoutly, and in singleness and 
 purity of heart, holding it as the highest of privileges 
 that he was permitted to consecrate himself to the service 
 of God and his fellow-men, through one of the purest 
 mediums of usefulness. The time has not yet come for 
 him to take the stand which really belongs to him. Art, 
 with us, is as yet too much a thing of transient amuse- 
 ment, aiming at little things, and narrowed down to suit 
 the size of our drawing-rooms and the vanity of our 
 purse-holders. But the time will come when every true 
 lover of nature will go to Cole as one of her most favored 
 interpreters, blessing hhn for the deeper insight which he 
 has given to her beauties, the sweet thoughts which he has 
 
O.I.K. 117 
 
 iniiinU'(l l()r lis with inoiii and noon, and liis own favoiite 
 hour of sunset, and tlic cahn oftichl and forest and <_''entl<! 
 stream, ^\hi(•h he has hroUij,])! into our hoiufs, even amid 
 the (hist and din oC tlie city. 
 
 As a writer, ciioUi^h lias ])eeii })uh]islicd to show 
 that his merit was ii:rcat, and tliat tlie turn of tliought 
 and expression a\ liicli characterize his Avritten pieces, are, 
 as mielit naturally have been expected, of the same cast 
 Avith those of his paintings. Some of the descriptions in 
 his journals and letters have much of the vigor and 
 truthfulness of his landscapes ; and many of the poems 
 are full of that earnestness and purity of feeling which 
 led him to look upon natural objects with such responsive 
 tenderness. The lines on the death of his mother, and 
 to his son Theodore, on his birth-day, are exceedingly 
 beautiful. But it is only as specimens that we look upon 
 the pieces which Mr. Noble has interwoven so judiciously 
 with his own narrative. It is to be hoped that for the 
 honor of our literature, and the sake of sound and heal- 
 thy views of art, a more copious collection will soon be 
 given us from the abundant materials that remain. 
 
 As a man. Cole was one of the gentlest, kindest, most 
 amiable of beings ; — a companion Axliose society never fa- 
 tigued, a friend who never grew weary in good offices; 
 full of kindly sympathies and cheering words at the right 
 time, playful with you in your mirth, rejoicing with you 
 
118 BIOGRAPHIGiVL STUDIES. 
 
 in your joy, tender and soothing in your sorrows, gentle 
 and affectionate always. He had the purest mind I ever 
 knew, — intuitively habitually pure, — such as you would 
 always wish to find in one so exquisitely sensitive to the 
 beautiful, and living in constant companionship with nature. 
 The peculiar charm of his manner lay in its simplicity 
 and heartiness. He would meet you with a " good morn- 
 ing'' that quickened the blood in your veins. His laugh was 
 one of those clear, cheerful ones that come with the freshness 
 of a bird's song in spring. He had as quick an eye for 
 the ludicrous as for the beautiful, and would tell a hu- 
 morous story with a kind of contagious merriment that 
 was irresistible. And yet his feelings were singularly 
 subject to external influences, particularly the influences of 
 the weather, which appeared to act upon him as directly 
 as it does upon a harp-string. The clouds seemed, at 
 times, to shut out the sunlight from his soul as completely 
 as they do from the landscape. The sight of the cold, 
 naked earth, in winter, chilled and disheartened him, and 
 he would long for the snow to come and hide it, till it 
 was time for it to put on its green again. 
 
 His earnestness was the earnestness of the heart, extend- 
 ing to all things. He looked upon the whole circle of 
 his duties in the same serious light, keenly alive to all 
 the responsibilities of citizen, husband, father, child, and 
 friend. It was this earnestness, acting upon a highly poet- 
 
ical toin])eraincnt, whicli k-d li'mi to i'nnn siicli cIcNatcd 
 c'()iu'('[)ti()ns of tlu' ort*U'(> of his :ii(. He couM not Ix-licvi; 
 lliat bcautil'iil tilings avltc spread around us so l;i\isiily 
 merely to L;ive a transient pleasure; but rather as instru- 
 ments of moral cultui-e, and elements to be woven, by 
 the skilful hand, into emblems and illustrations of holy 
 trutlis. 
 
 Religion seemed a natural growth of Ids mind, like a 
 seed falling into a genial soil and springing up under 
 kindly skies. His whole nature was imbued with it. The 
 spirit of devotion pervaded all his thoughts and actions. 
 It was with a feeling of devotion that he looked upon 
 the physical world and listened meekly to its teach higs. 
 It was for this that he loved to wander among the moun- 
 tains, and yield up his spirit to the solemn influences that 
 rise from them like anthems. It was for this, too, that 
 he sought out the remote valleys and found a sabbath 
 promise in their repose. And it was Avith this glow of 
 fervent love that he studied all the phenomena of nature, 
 thanking God for their beauty, and drawing freshness and 
 strensjth from his G^ratitude. 
 
 It is delightful to contemplate such a character, and 
 dwell upon such virtues. I would gladly speak of them 
 still, and tell, too, of other qualities : of his love of poe- 
 try, his sure taste in general literature, how well he had 
 read some parts of history, how profoundly he reasoned 
 
120 BIOGKAPUICAL STUDIES. 
 
 upon the laws of the beautiful and the principles of art, 
 his general thirst for knowledge, and his cordial recogni- • 
 tion of merit. How many instances of goodness crowd 
 upon my memory, how many excellences which ought not 
 to be forgotten! 
 
 Twelve years have passed since he rested from his 
 labors, and the places that he left desolate are desolate still. 
 Where shall we find the artist that shall bring the same 
 pure and earnest heart to the service of the beautiful and 
 the true? Where the genial companion, who shall fill up 
 the intervals of labor with discourse so sweetly tempered 
 to every mood, or rouse the flagging spirit by such gentle 
 admonitions ? How shall I revive the hopes which faded 
 when he ceased to cheer them, or find again that charm 
 in nature or in art which they wore to my eyes when he 
 "was here to point out their beauties and participate in 
 my enjoyment? Twelve years! and death no longer 
 sounds strangely as associated with his name ; but the 
 cloud which came over me with the first utterance of 
 that fatal word can never pass away. 
 
CRAWFORD. 
 
 lulmeret in nieutibus quasi seculonmi quoddam augurium futuroruin ; 
 idquo in inaxiinis iugeniis altissimisquc aniinis et existit inaxiinc et apparet 
 facillimo. — Cicero, Iki^culanarum. 
 
 Sprichst du von Natur uud Kunst, 
 Ilabe beide stets vor Augen. 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 Ix selecting a subject for the hour that we are to pass 
 together this evening, I have thought that you woukl not 
 unwillingly listen to a short sketch of the life of one of our 
 countrymen, whose brief and brilliant career was a strikhig 
 illustration of the difHculties and the dangers, the trials and 
 the rewards, which attend the steps of the American artist 
 in his struggle for fame. The artistic life of Thomas 
 Crawford contains, in its narrow circle of twenty-four years, 
 revelations of deep interest for the thoughtful admirer of 
 genius, lessons of the greatest value for the student of art, 
 and suggestions which deserve the careful consideration of 
 all those whose position enables them to exercise a control- 
 
122 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 \iu<r influence over the lot of the artist. Twenty-four years 
 
 ago he was an apprentice in the shop of a marble cutter in 
 
 ^/ Broadway, working for daily wages upon tombstones and 
 
 mantel-pieces ; and now, the productions of his chisel have 
 
 won for him a place by the side of Thorwaldsen, and his 
 
 name, like those of Sparks and of Irving, has become 
 
 enduringly associated with the great name of Washington. 
 
 Thomas Crawford was born in the city of Xcw York, on 
 
 the 2 2d of March, 1813, about a year and a half after the 
 
 arrival of his parents in this country. His childhood was 
 
 that of a vigorous boy, in whose veins the blood flows with 
 
 a healthy current, diftusing a cheerful energy throughout 
 
 the system, and fitting him for a keen relish of pleasure, 
 
 and a resolute acceptance of the burthens that life may 
 
 impose upon him. As with most men of genius, the love 
 
 of his art may be said to have been born mth him. The 
 
 pictures and engravings that met his eye were seized upon 
 
 with more than childhood's eagerness. The pleasure that 
 
 he found in them seemed to grow in him as he gazed, and 
 
 by looking at them again and again, he soon awakened that 
 
 sense of discrimination and those habits of thouglitful 
 
 observation, which form the first and the most diflicult step 
 
 in the art of study. Very soon all his pennies were laid 
 
 out in prints, and the most welcome gift that could be 
 
 made him was a figure or an engraving. His other studies 
 
 were far less attractive. Our common schools had not 
 
CI{A\VF<>IM). 123 
 
 yet attained their j)r('S('iit execlleiiee, aii<l there was no 
 "Free Academy" to :illure liiiii l)y the j)i-osj)('ct of tlic 
 highest forms ol' education. Fortunately, liowever, lie had 
 a sis ter near enouu^h to him in au^e to enter into his pastimes, >^ 
 and yet far enough advanced to have overcome many of 
 the difficulties with Avhieh he was still contending, and to 
 liave learned the importance of many things which he was 
 still unable to appreciate. They went to the same school, 
 studied their evening tasks at the same table, and began, 
 all unconsciously, to exercise upon each other that reci- 
 procal influence of heart upon heart and mind upon mind, 
 which forms one of the purest incentives and greatest 
 blessings of life. She loved pictures and engravings as y 
 much as he, and poetry more. While he Avas copying a 
 figure or coloring a print, she was equally busy with some 
 favorite volume ; each pausing, from time to time, in his 
 own pursuit to take a part in that of the other. And to 
 these influences, begun so early, and never wholly inter- 
 rupted, we must attribute, in part, the strong hold Avhich 
 poetry always had upon his mind, and its happy effect in 
 familiarizing him, from the beginning, with that ideal world 
 which is equally the home of the artist and the poet. 
 
 With such tastes, commerce and the ordinary profes- 
 sions had no attractions for him ; and at the age of sixteen, 
 when it became necessary to fix upon some regular occu- 
 pation, he chose for himself wood-carving, and devoted 
 
124 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 himself to it with an energy that soon gave him a dextei> 
 ous use of the chisel. In a mind that had already begun 
 to inquire into the relations and harmony of form, the 
 study of the decorations of building soon led to the study 
 of building itself, and, by a natural and easy transition, 
 wood-carving brought him to architecture. Upon this, 
 too, he entered with the impetuous laboriousness that he 
 carried into all his pursuits, copying, designing, and doing 
 everything that his limited means allowed, to make him- 
 self master both of processes and principles. And soon, 
 also, he began to reap the fruits of his taste for reading, for 
 he found it impossible to study so constantly the works of 
 great men without feeling his interest awakened for the 
 workmen themselves. The study of the lives of the artists 
 opened a new field for his aspirations, giving definite form 
 to his indistinct longings; and while it held up the prize 
 to his kindling imagination, revealed, with painful accu- 
 racy, the toils and privations by which alone it could be 
 won. But his brave heart held every obstacle cheaj), or 
 rather, girded itself up like the strong man for battle. It 
 was no sudden ebullition of an excited imagination that 
 made him an artist. Firmly, resolutely, with a calm eye 
 and an unshrinking spirit, he read the teeming record of 
 neglected genius, disappointed hopes, solitude of the mind, 
 and cold insulation of the heart, and felt that the rewards 
 of successful art were an abundant compensation for them all. 
 
TRAWFOltD. 125 
 
 At nineteen lio cnfcrt'd tlic studio of ^Nfessrs. JVazee and 
 Launitz, to leani liow to woi-k in niaiMi'. His eye was 
 already partly fornuMl l)y a year in a drawing scliool, and 
 liis liaiid, iVcsli IVoin wood-carving, was well iindt-r con- 
 trol. A lew months made liini e([nally fatniliar with this 
 more enduring substance, and he soon was able to carve 
 wreaths and flowers with accuracy and elegance. From 
 time to time, too, there was a bust or a small figure to 
 work upon, giving him an opportunity to study the folds 
 of drapery and learn how to make marble look like tb'sh. 
 The delicacy of finish and full command of the ornamental 
 parts of his art, which he thus obtained, were acquisitions 
 of which he often spoke in after years with grateful appre- 
 ciation. As he screw strons: in the use of the chisel he 
 felt his resolution, too, grow stronger, and his views of art 
 expand. 
 
 " I am now placed in a situation," he wrote in a memo- 
 ran(bim whicli fortunately has been preserved to bear 
 witness to the earnestness and elevation of his character, 
 "I am now placed in a situation which requires that 
 I should become more studious than heretofore, and 
 that my mind should be directed to some principal 
 object. Let me ask myself what this object should 
 be. It was my intention, when I entered the studio 
 of a sculptor, to become, if possible, celebrated in that 
 art. How am I to attain this object ? First, it is 
 
126 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 necessary that my whole time and thoughts be directed, 
 in some measure, to the attainment of knowledge. Now 
 what kind of knowledge is necessary? 
 /"A knowledge of anatomy. 
 
 j "A knowledge of the principles of true Beauty. 
 V'An acquaintance with the rules of perspective. 
 " As for anatomy, that knowledge is within my reach. 
 I possess a book which, with a good anatomical figure, 
 and close observation of the antique statues and of 
 nature, will, I think, with the attention paid to model- 
 ling which it deserves, be sufficient for that purpose. 
 
 " To become acquainted with the principles of perfect 
 beauty, both in appearance and expression, is not so 
 easily attainable, because it requires more thought, more 
 real study, and closer obseiwation. This is the know- 
 ledge which all artists have aimed at and so few ac- 
 quired. I shall now lay down a few rules which I 
 think Avill answer for the purpose. 
 
 " I must collect all tlie opinions of artists and eminent 
 writers on the fine arts concerning this subject, make 
 a selection from the same, write these opinions in a 
 book, and read tlicm attentively. 
 
 " I must examine the statues, bas-reliefs, fine engrav- 
 ings, &c., which may happen to come within my reach, 
 and by so doing endeavor to discover the merits of 
 each, and wherein consists the indescribable. This kind 
 
of C'X.'iiiiiii.'ilioii will iiHjM'fnc my tiistc, ;m<l cii.iMc mo 
 to jn<lLr<^* corri'dly conccniiiii:;: (]\c talents oi' tlic scrJptoi" 
 and tlie painter. I must obsei-ve, willi '^vcxi altcntion, 
 the i(M-m of even' feature, evei-y luusele in the liumaii 
 ligure, ;ui(.I, by so doing, iix tliose foi'ins in my min<i. 
 
 "I must bring my thouglits to l)ear ujjon any object 
 wliieh I may liave in view, and not allow my mind to 
 wander from it until I have considered the said object 
 as attentively as it niay deserve.'' 
 
 AVitli such views of his profession it may well be sup- 
 posed that lie never was idle. ]\[ost of his time, the 
 whole of his daylight, l)elonged to liis employers. But 
 the evenings were his own : and how happy was he 
 when the wanhig sunlight, slowly creeping up the wall, 
 announced the approach of the hour that was to set him 
 free : and when, hurrjdng home for a hasty meal, he 
 could take his sister under his arm, and return to the 
 studio for his evening labor of love. If c^f the hundreds 
 that hourly passed by that lunnble door, in the pursuit 
 of pleasure or gain, some curious one had stopped to 
 look in, he would have seen a young man about five 
 feet eleven inches liigh, of a slight, but vigorous frame, 
 with prominent eyes of clear blue, ample forehead, lips 
 full, but firm, cheeks flushed with an excitement that 
 heightened the ruddy glow of health, the muscles of the 
 face already farmed to^ the expression of deep feeling 
 
128 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 and elevated thought, the thick chestnut hair sprinkled 
 with marble dust, a modelling tool in his hand, and on 
 the stand before him, a head in clay, on which the light 
 fell imperfectly from a candle strongly fastened to his hat. 
 He would have seen that there was no common earnest- 
 ness in that face, no common skill in that hand ; and oh, 
 why, of the hundreds revelling in superfluous wealth, 
 could not one have discovered in the toiling youth the 
 future author of the Orpheus, and, devoutly thanking 
 God for the privilege, held out a brother's hand to help 
 him in the hour of his need, over the rugged pass that still 
 divided him from the full possession of his powers! 
 
 He had not proceeded far in this larger course of 
 study, before he began to feel that if he would take the 
 rank in art that he aspired to, he must make himself 
 femiliar with the ancients ; and that, in the only place 
 where it can really be done — in Ri)ine. This made ne- 
 cessary a long separation from his family ; and the thought 
 of "the anguish it would cause them," as he afterwards 
 wrote, " sometimes almost maddened him." Two years 
 he revolved this painful thought in his mind. But the 
 more he reflected, and the more he learnt of art, the 
 firmer he grew in his resolution. And well do I remem- 
 ber his triumphant smile when, many years afterwards, 
 Thorwaldsen told us, in one of those hours of confiden- 
 tial intercourse that it was occasionally my privilege to 
 
( KAWFOKI). 129 
 
 pass Avilli liim, llial lie always counted liis l»irlli«lay from , 
 the day of liis arri\al in Konic. .Vnd well nuL;hL Craw- 
 ford smile li-ium]»lianlly. Tlie anu^uisii of sei>aralion was 
 abundantly atoned for. Jle could go back in memory to 
 tliat May morning of 1835, wlien lie stood on the deck 
 of a little brig in Burling sli[), and caught in the " God 
 bless you^ Crawford I''"' of his friend and teaclier, Launitz, 
 the tones of the hxst familiar voice that he Avas to hear 
 for months — perhaj^s for years ; to the physical suffering, 
 the mental struggles of the long and tempestuous pas- . 
 sage ; to the tumultuous sensations with which he first 
 touched, the soil of Italy; first trod tlie streets of Kome; 
 first breathed the air of the Vatican, memory-laden and. 
 fragrant with inspiration ; to the long years through 
 whose toilsome flight lie was still compelled to confess, 
 that althougli this was hideed his liome, he was yet a 
 stranger hi the midst of liis kindred. And now there 
 were familiar voices to greet him, of those whose greet- 
 ing was praise; opposite to him, talking and listening 
 to him Avith the familiarity of an ap])reciating tViend, sat 
 the man whose glory had kindled his youthful imagina- 
 tion with kindred yearnings ; and already from beyond 
 the distant Atlantic, like an echo of the immortality to 
 which he aspired, came the iirst joyful recognition of his 
 native land. 
 
 In his first attcm^tts nothing had perplexed him more 
 
 
 
130 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 tlian the want of good guides. Impressed with tlie 
 necessity of forming his taste by a careful study of 
 principles, be read Alison and Burke, but soon turned 
 from them with a deep sense of disappointment. His 
 mind had already been agitated by creative imaginings, 
 and he felt the want of wise counsel to help him in ex- 
 pressing and judging them. In Flaxman he found more : 
 but novv^here what he really needed. He soon found it 
 in the studio of Thorwaldsen, who had kindly received 
 him as a pupil. He had begun to copy a figure from 
 the antique; for Thorwaldsen, avowing as the result of 
 all his studies, that there was something in the ancients 
 which no modern had ever approached, " something," he 
 used to say, "that I feel, although I cannot define it," 
 never allowed his students to copy his own works. Full 
 of enthusiasm, Crawford set himself to the grateful task, 
 working with all the skill that his imperfect opportunities 
 had enabled him to acquire, and with the feeling, not 
 unmixed with awe, that lie was to be judged by the 
 master himself At last, in the daily round through his 
 various studios, in which nearly fifty men were constantly 
 employed in all the different stages of the laborious pro- 
 cess, by which clay and marble are transformed into the 
 life-like semblances of the human figure, the great Dane 
 came to the stand where the young xYmerican was model- 
 lino-. For a few moments he bent his clear, blue eyes 
 
CRAWFOIM). 131 
 
 ii|)(~)ii tlio ('l.'iy, rra»lily (Ictcctiiii;- llic iiu'rits as wc'l) as 
 the* cMTOfs of llio work, an<l llicii liii'iiiiii^ to tlic yoiitlil'iil 
 artist A\illi that iK'iii^-iiaiit smih' tliat sat so i^raceriilly 
 upon liis noble Icatures, cxplaiiUMl to liim, hi siiiii)le 
 words, cMiforccil, to liis yot iiutraiiuMl car, by si<i:iiiticaiit 
 gestures, the nature of masses and tlic law of propor- 
 tions, giviui;- liiui, as Crawford afterwards wrote, " a 
 greater insiglit into liis art by tliis short lesson, than all 
 else that he had ever seen and beard.'' 
 
 Another study in which he engaged with a full sense of 
 its importance, was drawing from the life at the French, / 
 Academy. lie had never before had an opportunity of 
 studying from the living figure, and it was not unfortunate 
 for him that he began it at a time when his taste was 
 receiving the severe discipline of a daily study of the 
 antique. In this way, and aided by judicious reading, he 
 made himself master of all tliat part of anatomy which can 
 be advantageously applied to art ; without, however, form- 
 ing such a taste for it as to make him lose sight of higher 
 objects in striving after muscular display. 
 
 But all Koine was his school. Every step revealed 
 something new to admire. Every hour brought with it 
 some fresh incentive to exertion. He woke in the morning 
 to see the sun gilding the craggy summits of the Sabine 
 mountains, and hear the sounds of life already rising on 
 every side from a city which, still in her morning hours, 
 
132 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 preserves, in part, the traditions of her better days. As he 
 ascended the marble steps of the Pincian could he refrain 
 from turning to look a moment upon the thick-set roofs 
 and spires beneath ? upon the majestic dome of St. Peter's ? 
 and the soft background of the Janiculum, clad in its 
 mantle of perpetual verdure? Could he pass by that 
 house, as familiar to the Roman of to-day as to him of t^^o 
 hundred years ago, by the hallowed name of "House of 
 Claude," without feeling his pulse quicken under the shadow 
 of this touching proof of the consecrating power of Genius ? 
 A few steps more brought him to the j^rivate residence of 
 Thorwaldsen, that unpretenduig dwelhng where kings and 
 princes, the mighty in power and the mighty in mind, had 
 come to bring their tribute of admiration to the greatest 
 of modern sculptors ; where, in the small square room next 
 to that in which that grand old man had slept for more 
 than thirty years, Byron, already revolving in his mind the 
 grandest canto of " Cliilde Harold," had come, day after 
 day, to sit to him for his bust ; and where, as the marble 
 slab at the head of the stairway attests, Piranesi, the great 
 architect and great illustrator of art, had lived before him. 
 And, as he drew nigh the study gate, could he fail to give 
 a passing glance at the fountain on which the capricious 
 genius of Bernini had lavished its richest invention, and 
 thus carry with him to the studies of the day a lesson of 
 admonition and warnino-v Then to work in the midst of 
 
CUAAVIYUM). 133 
 
 sights and sounds tlial told of nothing but art; to listen to 
 the wor(ls of dcliulit and admiration lliat fell, like <inick(*n- 
 ing dew, iVoni the lips of strangers drawn ihillici- from the 
 older marvels of Ivome to ^-aze on this wondrous rene\\al 
 of her glories ; to see, at stated hours, his niastei', with 
 hands fresh from some new creation, move tlioughtfully 
 from group to group, correcting one, helping another; 
 and sometimes pausing as a new idea struck him, take 
 up a modellhig tool, and almost forget himself in the 
 pure joys of invention. And when the labor of the day 
 was done, to drink freely from new fountains of delight in 
 the wondrous hues of Italian sunsets, and the thrilling 
 stillness with which the stars look down on Rome. 
 
 Thus passed the first months of his Roman life, each day 
 adding something to his knowledge of principles and power 
 of execution. A quick ear, the result of a natural taste 
 for music, enabled him to learn the language with great 
 facility; and, though he never madefy serious attempts 
 to attain to grammatical accuracy, few foreigners spoke it 
 so readilj", or i)ronounced it with so little accent. He soon 
 formed acquaintances among the artists; representatives of 
 all the nations of Christendom ; sculptors, painters, archi- 
 tects, and engravers ; students most of them, and ])ursuing 
 their studies with various degrees of assiduity and success, 
 but all equally eager to talk about art. The different 
 views, the variety of opinions, which these discussions 
 
/ 
 
 134 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 called forth, were, to a mind like his, a constant incentive 
 to wider observation and profounder thought. Xor was it 
 a small advantage to hear his own art judged by the sister 
 arts, and be compelled, as it were, to look from a new 
 point of view, at principles which daily application was 
 making familiar. Under these healthy influences, he felt 
 his mind expand and strengthen with the spirit of candid 
 appreciation which was growing up within him. 
 
 About this time there came to Rome an American 
 painter, fresh from the drav\^ing schools of Paris, Frederic 
 Philips of Brooklyn. Of nearly the same age with Craw- 
 ford, and with many similarities of mind and character, a 
 warm friendship soon sprang up between them. Amid the 
 crowd of French, English, German, and Russian students, 
 they were the only representatives of the ISTew World; 
 almost the only ones whom the national government or 
 some national institution had not taken under its fostering 
 care. Both, also, had reached that critical period in their 
 development in which the imagination is constantly sug- 
 gesting inventions which the hand cannot execute. In 
 both, too, the imagination, at all times the predominant 
 faculty, was excited to unwonted activity by the associations 
 that surrounded them. Philips's thoughts seemed to flow 
 in groups and figures; and he never talked to you half an 
 liour togetlier without calling in his pencil to his aid. His 
 note books and portfolios were filled witli spirited sketches ; 
 
« l;A^\ Ft.>Ki). i;<5 
 
 l)Ut Itofore lie could work one out upon canvass, :iiK)tli<T 
 would coiiK' and sci/c uj)()H liis mind so stronii;ly as to make 
 it inii)0ssiblc for liini to go on witli tlic iirst. And thus the 
 vivacity of his imagination seemed to keej) liini in a con- 
 stant struggle between creation and expressiun, lor w]ii<li 
 time and study were tlie only remedies. 
 
 For Crawford the struggle was still haith-r. 'i'hc 
 very facility which he had acquired in copying made him 
 feel more ]>ainfully the w^ant of power to express his own 
 thoughts. His ideas, which seemed to him clear and 
 distinct while he looked at them in conception, became 
 indefinite and feehle, as they passed from his mind to the 
 clay that should have embodied them. Many a figure 
 did he set up with impetuous haste, to be thrown down 
 with equal impetuosity. Often, too, would he work upon 
 a head assiduously, day after day, and full of confidence 
 and hope; and then, as the first glow of enthusiasm 
 subsided, and he began to compare it with the life-like 
 image in his mind, he would grow moody and sad, though 
 never disheartened. At such times the two friends were 
 of great help to each other, for each knew and respected 
 the other's genius, and as they groped their way together 
 throuojh the decreasino^ darkness, each felt himself stronc^er 
 for the companionship of an appreciating mind. It was 
 a sad day for Crawford, when he bade Philips "Good i/ 
 bye !" upon the wharf at Civita Yccchia : and oh, how sad. 
 
136 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 when scarcely two years later, the ticlings came that he 
 was dead! The first, alas! of the graves that have 
 opened almost year by year, to receive the friends with 
 whom we lived in those days of promise and hope. 
 
 His second winter had brought hun a new experience 
 of the artist's hfe. American travellers had discovered 
 that there Avas an American sculptor in Rome. It 
 afforded them an opportunity of encouraging native 
 genius, and of getting themselves put into marble cheap. 
 In ten weeks he modelled sixteen busts ; showing what a 
 facility he had acquired in handling his tools for the 
 ordinary purposes of his profession. " As regards price,'' 
 he wrote to his friends, " that, I regret, is not what I 
 could wish." And indeed, when he sat down to count 
 his gains, he found that this first specimen of patronage 
 had barely brought him in enough to cover Jiis^^xpenses. 
 Still he to<)k3_studio and held himself ready for orders. 
 But the cholera^ wasted the city during the summer, and 
 the financial embarrassments of the year cut down the 
 number of winter, travellers. With most of his time at 
 his command, he began to change his method of study : 
 no longer copying from the antique, drawmgjess^ regularly 
 from life ; but passing whole days among the monuments 
 and galleries, and enriching his mind with materials. This 
 had been a favorite method with Thorwaldsen and many 
 of the greatest artists; and the story of Michel Angelo 
 
rRAWFOiin. 137 
 
 studyiiiu^ in tlio Foi-um at llio ni:;c of ciglity is familiar 
 to every memory. Nearly llii-ce yeai's ])asscMl in this way, 
 adding very little to his |»rogrcss, as others could ju<lge 
 of it, but solving doubts, confirming principles, maturing 
 judgments, purifying taste, and enabling him to enter 
 more deejily into the true spiiit of art. Xuw and then 
 lie would set up a new figure, though most of his attemi»ts 
 at composition were sketches in clay. The first of these, 
 with Avhich he was enough satisfied to let it stand, Avas a 
 sketch for a statue of Franklin, parts of which were ap- 
 proved even by his maturer judgment. One day when 
 I went to join him for our evening walk, I found him 
 with a new sketch upon his stand; a figure about a foot 
 high, leaning forward as if in rapid motion, the right hand 
 raised to shade the eyes, a lyre in the left, and at its 
 feet a three-headed dog. It was the first study of the 
 Orpheus. The struggle was over and he was full master 
 of his powers. As soon as the irons couhl be prepared 
 the chiy was set up and the work begun. Month passed 
 atter month, spring bloomed into summer, and the fruits 
 of autumn were ripe for their garner before his hand 
 rested from its labors. Never before had he known, to 
 its full, the raptures of creation. His mind was in a per- 
 petual glow. His imagination, no longer agitated by fiuc- 
 tualing ini)u'ses, seemed to bear him onward with a linn 
 and powerful current. Every touch of the skilful hand 
 
138 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 brought out some new grace. He saw the firm resolve, 
 softened by a beauty ahnost femmine, diffuse itself over 
 the features as he had conceived it in the recesses of his 
 imagination. He saw the yielding clay assume a flesh-like 
 surface and the delicate limbs stiffen into the rigor of 
 muscular exertion. He felt that, at last, his hand was 
 true to his thoughts ; and come now what might, neglect, 
 or poverty, or early death, he had proved his birth- 
 right, and established his claim to be numbered among 
 the poets of art. 
 
 "I am writing," says he, in a letter to his sister, "in the 
 midst of a terrible thunderstorm, and can scarcely proceed 
 for the incessant flashes of lightning, which dart every mo- 
 ment into the window of my studio. My statue of Or- 
 pheus is before me, and when I look upon it in the midst 
 of the thick darkness which is brightened occasionally by 
 a glow of rapid red light, it is diflicult to persuade my- 
 self that this inanimate creation of mine is not starting 
 from its pedestal and actually rushing into the realms of 
 Pluto. Tlie thunder is getting really awful, and I must 
 stop to compose myself." It was indeed an awful thunder- 
 storm, and one of tliose fearful flashes rent Tasso's oak in 
 the garden of St. Onofrio, and shattered the plinth of the 
 column of Antonine, untouched till then by the lightnings 
 of nearly two thousand years. "I have been thinking," 
 lie contmues, on resuming his pen, " of the story about 
 
l*}li<li•l^ :in I liis wniidci lul slntiu^ of .lose. \i>\\ kimw, 
 lliat upon lini^irm-j,- it, lu' ri'mk-sU'd souk," si'jii tVoin iIk- 
 i!,(Ml, to Kiiow if he wi'iT i>1(':is(m1 with the rcprcsciitalioii. 
 It si'L'iiis llu' nod was ^-ivcn, for :il tlial iiiomeiit tlic 
 statue was circk'il by liL^hlninsj:, A\hicli came and passed 
 oil' witli sueli a noise as c<juld only l»e })rodu('ed 1»y 
 lieaNen's artiUery. AVere we lixini;- in llial age, or were 
 ours the religion of the aneient (Greeks, I, too, might 
 interpret the sign in my favor." 
 
 Hardly was the Orpheus completed, wlien a l»rain i'ever, 
 a consequence of the intense excitement tln-ough which 
 lie had passed, seized him and held him for many days at 
 death's door. The long convalescence that followe<l, 
 brought us back to spring. But no sooner was he able 
 to walk about his room, than he sent for some clay and a 
 modelling stand, and began the bust of a friend. The 
 sprhig was passed at Albano. In the sunnner he made 
 his first visit to Florence; and on his letuni, modelled 
 his "Genius of Autunm," an exquisite little figure, full 
 of grace and childlike l)eauty; but which, being his iir^t 
 attempt at finished composition after his illness, seemed, 
 for a while, to bring back all his early dilHculties. Many 
 were the changes, many the corrections that he made. 
 Seldom did his teeming mind cling so tenaciously to a 
 single thought. And, indeed, I sometimes almost fancied 
 that in this sunny-faced little boy, with his keen sickle 
 
140 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 and swelling slieaf, he meant to express his own unwaver- 
 ing trust that w4iere the seedtime has been used rightly, 
 the harvest wall surely follow. It w^as the first of his 
 /works that passed directly from the clay to thejnarble; 
 the first of his inventions that found a ready purchaser ; 
 and it may not be uninteresting to my present audience 
 to know that the purchaser is a member of our society.* 
 
 The intellectual struggle was now over; the essential 
 harmony between invention and execution firmly esta- 
 blished. Xot that he was not often dissatisfied with 
 himself, and still left thmgs unfinished which he had 
 begun with high anticipations. But he w^as no longer 
 groping in the dark. His principles had become inter- 
 woven with his practice; or rather had assumed the 
 character of intuitions ; guiding him, for the most part, 
 with a spontaneous and unerring accuracy. Unharmoni- 
 ous lines and false proportions had begun, as Thorwaldsen 
 used to say of himself, to jar upon him like discord in 
 music. Creation had ceased to be a laborious and painful 
 process, but was an enjoyment so deep, so pure, and so 
 intense, that he ah'eady found it difficult to bend his 
 mind to those more remunerative objects to which his 
 situation compelled him to give some part of his attention. 
 For the struggle with circumstances still continued. 
 The Orpheus, through the exertions of Charles Sumner, 
 
 * John Paine, Esq., of New Tork. 
 
fK.V\M'<JlM>. 141 
 
 one of his oniTicst, jli-mcst, ainl most. jiKlicious IVicmls, 
 was l)C)UL;Iit, l»y subscription, tor the iVtlicncuni oi" lioslon. 
 Otlicr coininissioMS came in t'roin time to lime, sliowini^ 
 Avliat (lircclion the current was l)eLj;imrmg to take, but not 
 flowing in tliat steady stream whicli his ardent nature 
 required. lie lelt liimself prepared for Ijolder flights, 
 and began to look anxiously for an o})portunity of ti-ying 
 his hand at some public monument. But naturally averse 
 to ignorant praise, he would not stoop to the arts by 
 which common men are often forced into a transient 
 notoriety. He wished to bring his claims before his 
 countrymen ; but, as an artist should, through his works. 
 The (Jr[)heus had already been engraved twice; the flrst 
 tiniy for the "Roman Bee," a publication devoted exclu- 
 sively to engraving and describing the important woi'ks 
 of art of the day ; the second, by Grilner, an eminent 
 German ; and in both forms had contributed materially to 
 his reputation. lie now conceived the idea of publishing 
 a series of compositions, engraved in outline and accom- 
 panied by descriptive letter-press. Some of his friends, 
 unable to understand how his invention could keep pace 
 with the engraver, were startled by the boldness of the 
 plan. They little knew the exhaustless fertility of his 
 mind; and if the undertaking never went beyond the flrst 
 number, it is not at his door that the blame should lie. 
 It was about this time that he made his first study for a 
 
142 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 Statue of Washington ; a figure conceived with much vigor, 
 
 simj)le in its details, graceful in its outline, and dignified in 
 its action. The sketch was set up with unusual care, and 
 when completed, published in lithograph, and dedicated to 
 Mr. Sparks. This was hardly finished before he began 
 another of grander proportions, an equestrian statue of 
 Washington, with allegorical figures at the corners of the 
 pedestal, and bas-reliefs on the sides. The 22d of February 
 was celebrated that year at the house of the American 
 Consul, Thorwaldsen being one of the guests, and Craw- 
 ford's design the chief ornament of the occasion. But of 
 the hundred Americans Avho saw it that evening, and who 
 saw Thorwaldsen fix upon it an approving eye, hardly one 
 remembered to tell his countrymen at home that he had 
 seen an American sculptor in Italy, who asked nothing but 
 the opportunity to raise the gloiy of monumental art in 
 America to a level with that of the most favored nations. 
 Of the thousands spent that single year in second-rate 
 cameos and mosaics, in bad copies and false Titians and 
 Correggios, if but a part had been reserved for worthy 
 purposes, his* native city might liave caught this new laurel 
 before it fell upon the brow of Virginia, and secured for 
 herself a monument like that Avhich, through all time, will 
 make Richmond the Mecca of American art. 
 
 But years were yet to pass before the cherished wish of 
 his heart was to be gratified, and when, at last, the order 
 
CUAWl-UKl). li'i 
 
 came; but why sIioiiM T anticipiito ? or rallur w li\- >liuul«l 
 I scrk lo j»i-otracl a iiai'i':ili\ c alicaily liaslt'iiiiiij,- to its 
 iiK'laiK'hol}' close y Gladly, did the time pci-init, would 
 I dwell oil the si)Ots of sunsliiue that I'ollow, altlunigli the 
 dark tloud of lifly-six now seems to cast its shadow over 
 all. Still sunshine they were, i)ure, radiant; lilling his 
 lieart with the fulness of gi'atitied affection, his mind with 
 the keen delights of ever active invention ; and diffusing 
 over his daily life that sweet serenity which always attends 
 the consciousness of genius rightly cultivated and time 
 Avorthily employed. Brightest of them was his marriage in y 
 1844, during his first visit home after an absence of nine 
 years. Then, artistic triumphs in rapid succession ; the 
 inauguration of his Beethoven in the concert hall of 
 Munich ; the triumphant exhibition of his Washington at 
 Rome ; the testimonials of honor that came to him from 
 the Academies of St. Petersburgh, Munich, and Florence ; 
 and, most prized of all, the recognition by his native 
 country of his right to the first place among those who 
 were to decorate, for future ages, the legislative temple of 
 the nation. 
 
 In this bright round of welcome labor and grateful 
 repose, well might he exclaim, '^ ]\Iy cup is full I" Well 
 might lie look forward, in the consciousness of vigorous 
 health, to greater triumphs, and higher development, 
 tlirou<j,-h vears that should still flow on as sweetlv as these! 
 
144 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 Little was there to make him fear that the end was nigh ! 
 He had never turned his stejis homeAvards with a lighter 
 \ / heart than at the close of the summer of 1856. He 
 had promised that, in Paris, he Avould consult an oculist 
 about a swelling in his left eye : and having done this, 
 without laying much stress u23on it, he hurried on to 
 Rome, impatient to he at his work. Once more in his 
 studio, with new commissions to begin and old ones to 
 complete, he seemed to forget what had been told him 
 about his eye, and what he had already suffered. But 
 the pain continued, increased, and began to extend to the 
 brain. He applied to a surgeon : " Cure me quick, Doc- 
 tor, for what is an artist without his eyes ?" That, alas ! 
 no one could do, though, as yet, he knew it not. Soon, 
 he could only walk down to his studio, give directions 
 to the workmen, and go back again, to lie down and suffer 
 in silence. The j^ain became intense; such pain as only 
 strong men feel. The eye was probed and grew worse. 
 He consented to go to Paris, and try what could be 
 done for him there. Before he started, he returned once 
 more to his studio ; walked through it all ; passed thought- 
 fully before those thronging creations of his genius ; the 
 companions of chequered years, of happy hours ; records, 
 some of them, of the dead ; some, tokens of the friendship 
 of the living ; but none of Avhich was he ever to see 
 a^^ain. Then set out upon his journey, with Terry for 
 
(KAWFOUFJ. 145 
 
 iiui'sc Mi'.d ('i)in|)aiii<)ii. 'V\\c Paris .siir^'coiis saw fit "iice 
 tlial tlie tumor was a cancer ; Ijut no one dared tell il 
 to him. His wife, who had consented to pass the winter 
 in the l^niteil States, f()r tlie education of tlieir childi-eii, 
 and his sister wlio liad accoin])anie(l liini to IJome, soon 
 joined him at tlie side of liis sick bed. At intervals of 
 remitting pain lie would try to reheve his mind l>y model- 
 ling. A surgeon, of well-earned renown in the treatment 
 of cancers, was summoned from London. He could do 
 little for this; hold out scarcely any hope beyond that 
 of giving relief to the brain, by removing the eye, and 
 alleviating suffering, while the inexorable tumor did its 
 work. He was carried to London. The operation soon / 
 destroyed the sight of the remaming eye : but never 
 had the light shone more serenely withm. Firm, gentle, 
 uncomplahiing, for weeks he shut up in his own bosom 
 the knowledge of his real condition, for fear of giving 
 premature pain to his wife and sister. They, too, were 
 wrestling, amid their other trials, with the agonizing 
 consciousness that it would soon become necessary to tell 
 him that he must die. To all it was a relief when the 
 mutual explanations had been made, and, with their faith 
 in God to support them, they could help each other in 
 bending their hearts to His will. 
 
 But I cannot — I dare not dwell on this scene. " Xever 
 hero died more bravely than did Crawford," wrote one 
 
146 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 who saw it all ; and the heroism of such deaths is meek 
 resignation, cheerful acquiescence, unwavering faith ; love 
 for the dear ones of earth hallowed and refined by the 
 first beams of the radiance of heaven. 
 
 When the fatal hour was passed, his body was brought 
 home to be buried in the land of his birth. The faithful 
 ones who had watched by his death-bed, had come back 
 to follow him to his grave. His children, whom, but a 
 year before, he had parted from with no thoughts of 
 death, were there, too ; and there, also, were friends of 
 his earlier and his riper years ; the pastor who had guided 
 his first steps in the paths of eternal life, and the two 
 who believed in him before it had become an honor to 
 be called his friend. And from all the land came voices 
 of sorrow for the dead, of sympathy with the living; 
 of grief that such a life should have ceased so early; 
 such genius be cut down in the abundance of its strength ; 
 such labors and such sacrifices denied the privilege of 
 reaping, in full, their earthly reward. 
 
 Of all those whose names adorn the brilliant annals of 
 art, there is not one who brought to it a juster conception 
 of its office, a deeper sense of its responsibilities, a keener 
 appreciation of its joys, or a more earnest devotion to its 
 service than Thomas Crawford. Possessing a character in 
 which impetuosity was happily blended with firmness, and 
 the promptings of the imagination attempered by the 
 
« i:a\vi'»)1;i). 147 
 
 iliH-isioiis of a sound tlioiiuh rapiil JikI^iih lit, lie ciitci-ctl, 
 willi the lli(nii;-litl'tilii('ss and dclihcration of a man of 
 busiiK'ss, u|ion a prorossion that lie loxcd with the ai'dor 
 and cntliusiasin of a i)ool, Lookini,^ at ail as il apjicarcd 
 ill the liistoi-y of its votarios, lie saw that it (h-nianded 
 firniiK'ss of ]>urposc, streiigtli of will, })OWL'r of endurance, 
 j^ersistency of faitli. Looking within himself lie saw tliat 
 the thouglit of sacrifice awakened no fear, the assurance of 
 trials no hesitation ; that obstacles aroused his courage and 
 opposition called forth his strength. Consciously, thus, and 
 calmly, he entered the arena with a firm stcj) and a beaming 
 eye, saying that friends and occasions might fail him, but 
 will and perseverance, never. The trials came, and he bore 
 them ; opposition, and he subdued it. Prosperity followed, 
 and it dazzled him not ; triumph, and it diminished not 
 his exertions. Ever striving, ever aspiring ; rising hour by 
 hour to higher conceptions of grandeur and beauty ; what 
 was firmness, in the beginning, became, in the end, an 
 irresistible energy ; and the sublimest of all his creations 
 was that upon which he was still laboring Avlien the chisel 
 fell from his hand. 
 
 The predominant faculty of his mind was imagination. 
 He was, in the true sense of the word, a creator. He 
 possessed, not only the power of giving to familiar objects 
 a new significance, but impressed his thoughts upon them 
 so naturally that they seemed to become the reflexion of 
 
148 BIOGRAPIIiaVL STUDIES. 
 
 his own mind. Combination, feeling, sentiment, he drew 
 from within, and they passed with the glow of conscious 
 life from his heart to the clay or marble. Everything that 
 entered his mind seemed to take the tone of it, and lose its 
 original characteristics in those which he gave it. For 
 sunshine and dew, the riches of the earth and of the air, 
 do not enter more freely into the infinite combinations of 
 vegetable life, than do the materials of inspiration which 
 lie everywhere around him, hito the poet's thought. 
 Whatever he looks upon catches life from his eye. AVhat- 
 ever he touches glows with responsive warmth. His step 
 calls forth fragrance from the earth : and his voice fills the 
 air with celestial harmonies. jMilHons of larks have poured 
 forth their exultant strains for millions of inen ; but it was 
 for the poet only to hear them singing "at heaven gate." 
 Millions have felt their hearts strangely moved by the sight 
 of flowers growing in a graveyard : but it was not till the 
 poet looked upon them that they became a "liglit of 
 laughing flowers," beaming in their unconscious beauty 
 like " an infant's smile over the dead." 
 
 It was as partaking largely of this consecrating power 
 that Crawford reverenced his own art, and blessed the gift 
 of imagination. His figures are poems, each telling some 
 beautiful story. What rich harvest thoughts cluster around 
 his " Genius of Autumn !" What recollections of boy- 
 hood, what sweet memories of "its unchecked unbidden 
 
CRAWFORD. 149 
 
 joys," inspired liis "(Jciiiiis of Mirlli." And liow (nitli- 
 iully, too, is Ih.'il other phase of childhood, the sinhh-ii 
 ]):iuse, as it' some iiu'oniprelieiisiljh- lIioiiL;Iit had eoiiic over 
 i(, e\pi-e>sed in (he l)e\vihh're(I carneslness of tlic cliild aii<l 
 l)nt(ei-lly ! 'I'he Oi-pheus is a ))eautitul niytlioh)ii;ical 
 l)oeni, an almost unconscious response to tlie iniluences 
 under w hicli lie liad passed his first years in Rome. Ilis 
 love of music has wrouglit itself in his portrait statue 
 of Beethoven into a form as grand as the grandest sym- 
 plionies of the mighty German. And his Washington: 
 what a conception of moral sublimity and intellectual 
 l)Ower! .Vnd what a glowing, exultant, almost defiant 
 patriotism in his " Genius of Americaj" resting her right 
 hand upon her sword, her left u[)on her emblazoned shield, 
 with her broad-winged eagle cowering upon her crest, 
 and looking forth, in the pride of her l)eauty and her 
 strength, from the sununit of the capitol ! 
 
 Tlis early studies had made him familiar with the me- 
 chanical parts of his art from the beginning of his career. 
 Few could cut a wreath more deUcately, or copy, with 
 greater accuracy, the details of the human form. But 
 the moment he l)egan to compose, he regarded his power 
 of imitation as a subordinate faculty ; a means which must 
 never be allowed to usurp the dignity of an end. For 
 the effects of art are produced by a comprehensive glance, 
 takhig in the whole grou}) with the intensity of a shigle 
 
150 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 emotion. And hence the details must be held in sub- 
 jection to the leading idea, and never allowed to weaken 
 the impression by calling the attention prematurely to 
 the elaborate finish of a hand or a foot. Every subject 
 has a style of treatment peculiar to itself, and the sculptor 
 who attempts to extend the same minute and delicate 
 manipulation to all his works, will hardly escape the 
 charge of a tame and contracted mannerism. 
 
 Crawford had a fine eye for color, and w\as allowed 
 by painters to be an excellent judge of painting. His 
 love of form and solidity made him a sculptor ; but he 
 never fell into the common error of exalting his own art at 
 the expense of her sister. He was free to confess that 
 color and perspective added greatly to the painter's difli- 
 culties ; but he held that they added in an equal degree 
 to his means. Without claiming the superiority for sculp- 
 ture, he claimed for her, at least, an equal place in the 
 temple of art. Each had advantages, each difticulties, 
 peculiar to itself. And why should they not be allowed 
 to sit, like the epic and the tragic muse, side by side, and 
 each entwine her brow with laurels from the same im- 
 mortal vine ? 
 
 He was a lover of nature, both as an artist and as a 
 poet. He loved beautiful landscapes and beautiful sun- 
 sets; beautiful effects in the lieavens and on the earth. 
 His letters to his sister are filled with rn}>turous descrip- 
 
< i:a\\F(>i[i>. 151 
 
 tions of Tlaliaii sconery nnd tlic Flaliaii sky ; .'m.l (licrc 
 was not a bi'aulit'iil ]»()int of view within the walls or in 
 the lU'igliborliood of lloine, with which he was not 
 famihar. 
 
 His taste in hterature was siiii;ailarly delicate and just. 
 Tn liis own profession lie was extensively and profoundly 
 read. In other departments his reading was necessarily 
 confined to the greater names. Homer he read early, first 
 in Pope's, and then in Cowper's version ; but having once 
 got as near a view, as with our present means the mere 
 English scholar can, of the antique simplicity of the old 
 bard, he could never be induced to go back again to 
 Pope. Even before he went to Italy he made himself 
 fiimiliar with Greek tragedy in its English dress : and fcAV, 
 even of professed scholars, were more at home in the 
 language of mythology. Of Milton his appreciation Avas 
 less perfect : for like most artists, he would still be draw- 
 ing in his mind, as he read, and he naturally gave the 
 preference to scenes that could be Avrought out, most 
 readily, into bas-reliefs and statues. Byron, and more 
 particularly Shelley, were his lavoiites among the moderns. 
 And one of his cherished hopes had been that of erecting, 
 at his own expense, a monument to that unfortunate 
 genius, instead of the simple slab that covers his ashes. 
 "I have been too busy thus far," he said to his sister, 
 on his last visit to that beautiful spot, where under the 
 
152 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 shadow^ of Rome's crumbling wall two of the greatest 
 of England's j^oets sleep in nnconsecrated gronod, *' I 
 have been too busy thus far; but as soon as this pressure 
 is over, I will put up a monument to Shelley and a slab 
 upon the house of Thorwaldsen." 
 
 He loved music as a kindred art, and possessed a pure 
 and accurate taste in it. But though he played a little 
 on the flute in his boyhood, he never made any serious 
 attempts to learn an instrument, just as, with all his love 
 for poetry, he never attempted to write verses. His active 
 enjoyments were all derived from his profession. When 
 overworked in one form of invention, he would turn, for 
 rehef, to another. And many a time his cheerful laugh 
 has been heard from his httle private modelling room in 
 a tower of Villa Xegroni, where, tired with the labors of 
 his larger studio, he would sit down to his slate, throw 
 his thoughts into a bas-relief, and laugh and make merry 
 with the sportive creations of his own exuberant fancy. 
 
 But these rare gifts would have failed to raise him to 
 the eminence to which he attained, if he had not united 
 with them a pious reverence for the gi-eat men who had 
 gone before him. He loved to look upwards. He loved 
 to acknowledge the existence of a perfection, which 
 though he could never hope to reach it, was ever before 
 him as an incentive and a guide. It was good to see him 
 in the presence of Thorwaldsen, and mark the i-everence 
 
CIIAWFOKD. 153 
 
 of liis I<)(tk iind \n\vi\ It was pleasant to stand with liini 
 beibrc the ^Tc-at works of anticjnity, and liear liim conCcss 
 that no exertions of his own could liave given lilm sudi 
 revelations of beauty and power. 
 
 AVith a mind so thoroughly artistic in its mould and its 
 training, he was governed throughout his whole career, 
 by motives worthy of the genius Avhich heaven had Ije- 
 stowed upon him, lie looked upon art as an instrument 
 of national and hidividual culture ; a source of pure and 
 reiined enjoyment; the natural expression of beautiful 
 thoughts, tender feelings, and noble aspirations ; a gift, 
 granted us by a beneficent creator, that it might work, 
 hand in hand with the love of nature, in refinmg our 
 minds, exalting our sentiments, and purifying our hearts. 
 He would have wished that all should learn to love her, 
 with a love as pure and as worthy as his own ; and unite 
 with him in securhig for her the place that was her due 
 among the elements of the highest civilization. 
 
 And for his reward, he asked for that immortal glory, 
 the love of which inspired the great minds of early days : 
 which cheered the poet m his solitude, the statesman in 
 his exile ; which sweetened the labors of the philosopher 
 and the historian; which emboldened the tongue of the 
 orator to utter unwelcome truths, and lit the smile of 
 triumph on the parched lips of the expiring hero. Im- 
 mortal Glory! contenmed, indeed, and despised amid the 
 
 7 
 
154 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 coarse contests of material prosperity ; but the only human 
 motive which can awe the soul with a sense of pervad- 
 ing responsibihty; which can check the incautious hand 
 and nerve the fainting heart by reverence for the judg- 
 ment of future ages; and which, raising us above the 
 alhirements of sense, opens for the yearning spirit a myste- 
 rious communion with generations yet to be. 
 
IRYING'S WORKS. 
 
 Immor niedlich, immor lieiter, 
 Iramer lieblicli I unci so weiter, 
 Stets natiirlich, aber klug ; 
 Nun das, daeclit' ich, war genug. 
 
 GoEinE. 
 
 We do not propose to attempt a full review of Mr. 
 Irving's works. The collection is not yet complete. One 
 of the most characteristic parts is still wanting ; and it 
 will be both easier and pleasanter to do it when this beau- 
 tiful mind has been spread before us in all its abundance. 
 Most of the volumes Avhich have appeared thus flir are old 
 friends, our daily companions of many years, whom we 
 cordially greet in their new garb. We thank Mr. Putnam 
 heartily for his taste and his enterprise ; he could not have 
 done a more honorable thiug for hhnself, or rendered a 
 more important service to American literature. There is 
 no American writer who awakens sucli associations as Mr. 
 Irving. Salmagundi carries us back to the very dawn of 
 our Uterature ; Knickerbocker was like the opening of an 
 
15G BIOGEAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 exhaustless mine ; the Sketch Book was the first American 
 book which Enghshmen read. We shall never forget the 
 first appearance of " Columbus." Our enthusiasm had 
 been warmed by a recent visit to the great navigator's 
 birth-place. A friend, fresh from Spain, had seen a 
 chapter in manuscript, and told us things about it which 
 haunted us even during the excitement of a first winter in 
 Home. Soon after, the newspapers were filled with the 
 tidings of its approach. Murray had published — Galignani 
 was printing it. There were no railroads in those days, 
 and we Avere constrained to curb our impatience as best 
 we might. At last, one sunny morning, — we shall never 
 forget it — such mornings as Florence gives you in summer, 
 Avhen the cool shadows fall gratefully from her massive 
 palaces, and the murmur of fountains steals like music on 
 the perfumed air, — we had eaten our breakfast of fresh 
 figs and grapes still dripping with dew, and strolled out 
 towards a friend's, with that indefinite anticipation with 
 which you are sometimes made to feel that the day will not 
 pass without bringing you a new pleasure. Our friend's 
 house was a kind of gathering-place for loungers like our- 
 selves. That mornhig they were all there before us, a 
 silent group around the table ; and the first sound that 
 struck the car was that beautiful sentence in the in- 
 troduction to Columl)Us, which seems to bring back 
 by one bold stroke of the pencil, all the darkness of that 
 
HIVING. 157 
 
 veil Mliicli liatl slu-oiKUd so Ioiil:; tlic iiiystciii'S of llio 
 ocean. 
 
 Coluiiibus carried lis once inoi'c to the Sketcli liook. \Vc 
 liad nivcn away our only co|>y, and w Iicn we uot l)ack to our 
 quiet home in Siena, wei-e not a liltle at a loss wlicre to go 
 lor another. At Icngtli chance bronglit lionie, after many 
 wanderings, a little old man l>y the name of Montucci. 
 He was a dapper little man, scarcely five feet liigh, with a 
 bright Italian eye and a fluent tongue, over which Italian, 
 English, French, and German, rolled with equal A'oluljility ; 
 lie had lived everywhere, had known Alfieri, had written 
 a Chinese dictionary, and was now returned to purge Italy 
 of Gallicisms, and lay his bones in his native soil. But 
 the great labor of his life had been the publication of a 
 Berlin edition of the Sketch Book, under the very eyes 
 of the author, who had written liini a letter beginning 
 with " Dear Doctor," and subscribed, " Truly yours.'' He 
 showed us the letter and sold us the book. Blessings on 
 his memory ! how many exquisite hours we owe him. 
 
 We liave said that Mr. Putnam has rendered a very 
 important service to American literature. T\"e can use 
 this term now, and use it boldly, tor we have a literature 
 whose claims none but a snarling critic, in his most snarl- 
 ing mood, can deny. The past is sure. It was of the 
 future that we were thinking Avlion we made our assertion. 
 Men in this book-making age of ours read everything, and 
 
158 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 the new crowds upon us so thickly, that we are in constant 
 danger of forgetting the okl. Then every new invention 
 brings in new words ; with every new incident, whether 
 great or small, comes some new phrase ; our daily wants, 
 enlarged by a thousand sources, give rise to new forms of 
 speech every day ; and wliile the great current sweeps us 
 onward, all those old landmarks which guided our fathers 
 so surely are sinking one after the other in the receding 
 horizon. We would not wish to be misunderstood. We 
 know that progress requires movement, and that language, 
 like everything else, must change, to meet the wants of 
 those that use it. Ki7ig can never mean again what it 
 meant a hundred years ago, any more than the virtue of 
 the heroic age could express the virtue of Socrates. And 
 we rejoice tliat it is so, and we thank Heaven for this law 
 of progress, which we accept freely with all its requisitions 
 and all its consequences. But progress is development, 
 not destruction. It respects the labors of others. It 
 rejects nothing because it is old. It casts off dry 
 branches, but never tears up a living root. There is 
 nothing Avith ])romise in it to which it does not hold 
 fast, and not a seed that it does not treasure up with 
 grateful acknowledgment. We are no conservatists of 
 dried bones. Away with what has no life in it, be it new 
 or old. But Ave would dig an honorable grave for it, 
 and bury it respectfully, and set a tablet over it to tell 
 
IRVING. 159 
 
 i'uture n<jjos that tliis too was iiscriil in its day and gene- 
 ration. 
 
 Now the tendency of the })resent (hiy is to forget tliis 
 useful past, and to make the fertility of our eurrent litera- 
 ture an exeuse for neglecting those classic periods in which 
 our language received its definitive form. L(^ok upon the 
 centre-table. That antique binding, with its silver clasps 
 and rich embossing, must surely betoken some fatlier of 
 our literature. No, it is only a book of Beauty. Go to 
 the library. What a superb copy of Macaulay's Miscella- 
 nies and Emerson ! But is there no Swift, no Dryden 
 there? No little nook for the Spectator, that used once to 
 lie well-thumbed upon every table ? Yes ; take the ladder 
 and climb up to the top of the book-case, and you will find 
 them on the upper shelf, but with such a shroud of dust 
 about them, that it will well nigh cost you both eyes and 
 lungs to get them into a readable shape. We once met a 
 graduate of one of our oldest Universities, a man of much 
 general culture, and remarkable for his refined and elegant 
 tastes, who had never read " Alexander's Feast ; " and it 
 was not more than a month ago that we put the "Talc of 
 a Tub " into the hands of a man whose whole nature was 
 formed to enjoy it, and yet who had passed twenty years 
 in the midst of books without ever seeing this boldest and 
 most vigorous of all satires. And our school-books, our 
 Readers, our Elegant Extracts, those collections which go 
 
160 BIOGEAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 first into the scholar's hand and stay there longest, which 
 give him his first notions of language and taste, and, so to 
 speak, the key-note to his mind, which are so full of " taste 
 and morals " in the preface, and so classic on the title- 
 page, — what are they but conservatories of magazine 
 poetry, newspaper wit, and Congressional eloquence? 
 One would think that English literature was just born, 
 or at the best but just escaped its swaddling clothes. And 
 is it not a crying shame to do so heedlessly what might be 
 done so well, and waste the embalmer's art on what has 
 hardly form enough to make a shrivelled mummy ? But 
 we have Webster and Bryant and Longfellow, and other 
 great names there too. True, and strange enough they 
 look in such sorry company. But Webster- would send 
 you to Pitt and Burke, and to a daily and nightly thumb- 
 ing of Demosthenes ; and Bryant would tell you that if 
 you would feel all the delicacy of his language and his 
 exquisite modulation, you must go back to his masters and 
 study them, as he did and does. When a sculptor wants 
 a cast of some master-piece of his art, he has a mould 
 made upon the original, and draws from his mould an 
 exact fac-simile in form, feature, and ex^n-ession. But 
 every time you use the mould you take something from its 
 perfection. There will be some slight, almost indefinite 
 change in the expression, — something wanting to the 
 finish of the surflice and the exactness of the outline ; 
 
IRVns'G. "*1 
 
 and if you ask for a iVosli mid laitlif'ul c-o].y you must cro 
 back n«j,-aiu to tlio ori-jiiml :iii<l r<>nu your umuM anew. 
 
 WoliavctouolK'd uuawaivs uim.u a ditllciilt question, and 
 now wo uiust say a few words niori' before we turn back. 
 Every luan uiust live in tlie ]>resent. Tt is bis true 
 fiebl,— tlie only one in wbicb lie ean be truly or bappily 
 useful. lie uuist submit, too, to tbe influence of bis eon- 
 temporaries, enter into tbe great qviestions of tbe day, 
 and uiove witb tbe world tbat is moving around biiu. 
 ITow silly W(Mdd it be to know Demostbones or Cicero by 
 lieart, :md not be able to give a sentence from Clay or 
 Webster ! Wotild you understand Tbucydi<les ? Would 
 you fatboni tbe deptbs of tbe vast mind of Tacitus ? Read 
 tlie newspapers, watcb tbe polls, squeeze into tbe Uving 
 history of a mass meeting. For history is life, and can 
 only be understood by those who have read the living 
 page. But on that page even, how dead the letter, how 
 imperfect the lesson, without the comment of the past. 
 You may watch the shadow as it slowly moves across the 
 dial, and read the numbers on which it successively falls, 
 but tbe numl)ers will be an enigma, and . the shadow 
 itself a mystery. 
 
 Xow wbat is the time for laying tliis foundation of 
 serious study,— in tlie age of preparation, or when the 
 mind is engrossed by the active duties of life ? Will the 
 man who did not learn from his daily exercises to admire 
 
162 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 the natural grace and ingenuous simjDlicity of classic lite- 
 rature, find time or taste for the study when his eye has 
 been dazzled and his ear vitiated by the extravagance of 
 transient fashion ? There can be but one answer. We 
 read in old legends of rings of such virtue that they 
 change their color at the touch of i:)oison. Arm your- 
 self with this ring. It is within the reach of all. Homer 
 has lent it to thousands. Shakspeare and Spenser and 
 Milton have wrought it anew, and Dryden and Pope have 
 learned the secret from them. Go to them meekly and 
 humbly, as they went each to his master; let them be 
 your waking hope, your nightly vigil ; believe, trust, and 
 above all grow not weary in the probation, and the 
 reward is snre. 
 
 There is one great merit which we must allow Vol- 
 taire, even while we deplore most the fatal use which he 
 too often made of his shining talents. He wrote, as it is 
 well known, in a great variety of forms, — poems, histories, 
 plays ; recorded many incidents of his life in beantiful 
 odes; interpreted ISTewton and commented Corneille ; 
 and it was a growing wonder with his contemporaries, 
 that while he was obliged to read so much he could 
 always write so well. Sismondi has - pleaded the bad 
 style and different languages of the books he was draw- 
 ing from as an excuse for the occasional incorrectness 
 of his own. Voltaire mananed this better. He had 
 
10 ;{ 
 
 1)('l;iiii 1)V writiiiiz; i-arcrnlly and stii<lyiiiL,' correctness in 
 liis prose as well as in liis poclry. liiil willwMit trnslini:: to 
 tlie niiMiiory of his early studies, lie kepi constantly 1»y 
 him a volume of Kacine and .Alassillon's retlte Careme. 
 If he was i^oing to wi'ite verse, lie rijad a page in Ka- 
 cine, — if prose, one of Massillon ; and Avith this key-note 
 for his ear, preserved the liarniony of his own style 
 without ever sinking into negligence or weakening his 
 individuality by imitation. 
 
 Now one of the reasons for which we rejoice in this 
 republication of Mr. Irving^s works is, that they bring you 
 back to all the best traditions of the language. His style 
 possesses that exquisite charm which nothing but the 
 study of books, combhied \yith that of nature, can give. 
 You feel that he has drunk deep at the pure Avells of 
 literature, and looked on men and nature with a loving 
 heart. If style be a reflection of the mind, Mr. Irving's 
 must be a beautiful one. And yet, clearly marked as the 
 characteristics of his style are, we are at a loss to seize 
 u})on the secret of its power. It is natural, for you feel 
 all the wliile you are reading him as if you ought to have 
 written just so yourself It is simple, for there is not 
 an overstrained expression or a cumbrous epithet in it. 
 It is elegant, for it has all the richness which imagery 
 and languAge can give. It is picturesque, for it paints to 
 the eye like poetry. It is harmonious, for it falls on the 
 
164 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 ear like music. It is transparent — the meadow-brook is 
 not more so. And yet of these and of all the qualities 
 Avliich it possesses in so eminent a degree, which are 
 those that mark him out as a writer by himself, and 
 make it impossible for you to confound him with any 
 other ? 
 
 One of them doubtless is his peculiar felicity in the 
 choice of epithets.- This is, as every writer knows, one of 
 the greatest difficulties in the art of writing. It is one 
 thing to describe a scene accurately, another to throw 
 into your description some happy expression which shall 
 imprint it on the memory and become permanently asso- 
 ciated with it. It is the poet's gift, requiring quick 
 sensibilities and a lively fancy. Mr. Irving has it in an 
 eminent degree. He never plucks a flower without seeing 
 something in it that you never saw there before, — some 
 connection between the visible and the invisible world, 
 some new alliance betwixt thought and feeling, which 
 embalms it in odors richer than its own. His landscapes 
 show with what a thoughtful and confiding sj^irit he has 
 looked upon nature, drawing in cheering inspirations and 
 a soothhig trust for the hour of gloom. Did }'ou ever 
 look, kind reader, upon an Italian landscape in October ? 
 "We will suppose it to be a mountain scene, — Florence, 
 ^f you choose, for there the mountains are drawn in a 
 semicircle around you, and tlie sweet valley of the Arno 
 
iKViNr,. 105 
 
 lies like :i sunlicani l)cl ween. Look U)»nii lliat vullcy :iii<l 
 tlioso iiioimtaiiis. Tlii'V :irc the sainc tliat you saw a few 
 months aL;(), — tlie same sliar}) outline on the clear hhic 
 sky, the sanu- min<j,-ling of olive and vineyard helow. 15ut 
 there is sunu'thiii!^ there unseen before, something: which 
 softens down every rougher feature, and gives a dee})er 
 yet a calmer glow to the sunlight that rests upon it like a 
 smile of love. It is nothing but a thin veil of unsubstantial 
 mist, which the lirst rough breeze will scatter, or which 
 may rise up to float away Avith the clouds, and fall back 
 to earth or ocean again in rain ; and yet with that veil 
 over it with what a new and magic power does the spell 
 of the landscape steal into your soul. 
 
 Now this is just the eftect of Mr. Irving's epithets. 
 You knew the object before, its form and history, and 
 could tell, as you thought, all about it ; and yet how 
 different it appears when you look at it through the 
 magic of his words. 
 
 It is easy to fix upon the distinctive characteristic of 
 Dr. Arnold's style — it is earnestness. You cannot but be 
 struck with the freshness of his language, and the easy 
 construction of his sentences. You feel that he has 
 studied at the best sources, and comes to his task with 
 a mind fully imbued with the pure spirit of classic litera- 
 ture. But what you feel above all in reading him is, the 
 earnest conviction with, which he writes. You may not 
 
166 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 agree with him in all that he says, but you feel that he 
 believed it, and would never have said it if he had not 
 believed it firmly. His imagination is vigorous, but it 
 is used only to increase the vividness of his pictures. 
 There is not a shade there, nor even a single touch, for 
 which he cannot bring you his authority ; and the distinct- 
 ness of his conceptions gives a lifelike force to the 
 description, which mere imagination Avould never have 
 given. Life was al l real fo r him. He looked upon it 
 earnestly, and watched its checkered scenes with a thought- 
 ful eye. The past was his kev to the present, and in the 
 present he was guide d ^^aiid^-eh^er ed by his profound study 
 of the past. His, in short, was one of those cai^acious 
 and truth-loving minds which cannot look on any human 
 thing with indifference, and to Avhich even a sparrow's 
 flighti^^nveys some lesson of deep import. 
 
 Macaulay's characteristic is point. He too is a scholar 
 of a rich and vigorous mind, stored with choice learning, 
 and sharpened in later years by the experience of public 
 life. His language too is simple, and his style warm and 
 full of movement. There is a life in his description, and 
 an animation in his narrative, which hurry you on with 
 panting interest. But still there is something in his anti- 
 thetical periods, and in those paragraphs which rise one 
 after the otlier into such a succession of climax^hat 
 detracts somewhat from your confidence, and carries 
 
Ii:VIN(i. 
 
 your attention orteniT tluiii you wouM wish i'nnn tliu 
 page to tlu' writtT. You tliiuk of hiui in his study Avith 
 close-knit brow, thougliliully workinij; out those ])rilliant 
 sentences; soniclinies Ixjrne away by tlic rajtidity of his 
 thoughts, and tlien i)ausing to h)ok l)aek and see liow^ well 
 he has oxi)ressed them. You can see him dee])ening a 
 shadow by repeated touches, and heightening relief by 
 strong contrasts. You feel, in short, that he is determined 
 to make you read him, and cares full as much for your admi- 
 ration as for your confidence. And it is a proof of his 
 singular power, that, in spite of this perpetual coruscation, 
 you do read and read him to the end. 
 
 Mr. Irving's style has neither the point of Macaulay 
 nor the earnestness of Arnold, but there is a gentle per- 
 suasiveness about it which carries you forward with an j 
 imperceptible, but at the same time an irresistible, force. 
 It is like floating down some broad stream, with towers 
 and old castles, and groves, and vineyards, and green 
 meadows scattered all along its banks. You can look 
 at them all as you glide gently by, and catch the sweet 
 odors of the blossoms and the flowers ; and it is only 
 when you pause to look backwards that you feel that the 
 greatest wonder of all is the stream on whose bosom you 
 have floated so sweetly. 
 
 Another charm of Mr. Irving's writhigs is the skill with ) 
 which he winds into his subject. His introductions always 
 
168 BIOGEAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 seem to rise from it naturally, and prepare the way for what 
 follows, just as a well arranged prelude prepares the ear 
 for the music. There is generally a certain amount of 
 common-place in an introduction, whether it be grave 
 or gay ; and the utmost that can be asked of a writer is 
 that he should give it a new turn. There is great danger, 
 too, of promising too much, of starting npon a high key 
 which you cannot get down from without a discord. It 
 is seldom that there is any such jar in Mr. Irving. He has 
 none of the listlessnes^ either, with which you sometimes 
 take up your pen, and which hangs over you till you are 
 fairly started. He always seems to come well pre- 
 pared, and to know where he means to begin. If he 
 does gnaw his pen, the reader never finds it out. 
 
 Lord Brougham, in those capricious sketches of his, has 
 drawn an unfavorable comparison between Irving and 
 Robertson. Now, while we cheerfully concur with him in 
 giving all praise to the great historian, we cannot but think 
 that his Lordship has been guilty of a singular oversight 
 for so skilful a critic. Robertson is writing the history of 
 America, in which the discovery forms a chapter, — Irving, 
 the history of the discoverer, whose whole career depends 
 upon it. Therefore one could sketch it in outlhie, while 
 the other was required to make a finished picture. The 
 story is certainly a most exciting one, in that fine, vigorous 
 style of Robertson, and he has selected all his incidents 
 
IRVING. 169 
 
 witli singular skill, — the long delay, the anxious prepara- 
 tion, the doubtful bc'giiniing, tlic swift alternations of liope 
 and fear, while doubt became terroi-, and terror rose almost 
 to mutiny, till at last the rising dawn reveals to the eyes of 
 the midoubting C(»lumbus the sliores of a new world, and 
 liis companions fall trembling and conscience-stricken at his 
 feet. Irving's task is perhaps a harder one, for he is to 
 carry you with him over this unexplored space, and point 
 out every change and wonder of the way. You must see 
 the suns rise, and watch the slowly ebbing day to its close. 
 You must pace with Columbus his little deck, study Avith hun 
 the changing aspect of the stars, and feel as he does when 
 the mysterious needle slowly turns from the pole. You 
 must fix with him your steady gaze upon the illimitable 
 space, and strive to read in every floating weed the secret 
 of those untrodden paths. You must see what mind 
 can do, and what kind of conviction that is which can 
 hold firm in the midst of superstition and discourage- 
 ment, and compel submission by the force of superior will. 
 And then, as you catch with him the first glance of that 
 flitting light, and feel that in a few hours all your doubts 
 will be solved, you will feel the full force of that beautiful 
 paragraph in which the crowding thoughts of his mind 
 are sketched with so true and skilful a hand. 
 
 Each of these narratives is beautiful, and each written 
 in perfect accordance with the author's aim. To ask 
 
170 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 from Robeilson the full detail of Irving, or from Irving 
 the vigorous condensation of Robertson, would be absurd. 
 We should as soon think of blaming Tacitus for not 
 having drawn with the minute and elaborate finish of 
 LivY, or Livy with the bold and pregnant energy of 
 Tacitus. 
 
 It would be easy to go' on and speak of Irying's humor 
 and 2^{^thos, of the pure tone of his writings, and his true 
 American spirit. We must say one word about the last, 
 for some exacting critics have seen fit to charge him with 
 a lack of it, and lay it to his door as a fault that he has 
 written so much about Europe. We have never counted 
 the purely Amei'ican pages in his works, but there is 
 not one of them in which the subject admitted of it, which 
 does not contain some illustration of American scenery 
 or tradition. King Philip, and the chapter on the Indians, 
 in the Sketch Bookpare certainly not European, any more 
 than Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollo^v. Dolph Hey- 
 liger is one of the best things in Brac^bridge Hall. A 
 volume has been made out of what he has written about 
 the Hudson,* and Columbus is all American. BiiWhose 
 who accuse Irving of writing too mucli about Europe 
 forget that he was wi-itjngJfoil^Ainericans who wanted to 
 be told something aboutJJial^Old World which so few of 
 them, when he first began to write, had ever seen. Cir- 
 
 * 3ook of the Hudson, dx. 
 
IRVING. 171 
 
 ciinistaiiot's had ]»iit. it in liis jioucr to iiicct one of the 
 great wants of our piihHt', aii<l ]\v <li<l it. Some crusty 
 European may perliaps l)lame him, hut the ten thousand 
 copies wliicli have already been sold of tliis last edition of 
 the Sketch liook, tell clearly enough what his own eoun- 
 tryniGu think of it. 
 
 We must add, too, a few words about the " Life of 
 Goldsmith." Mahomet belongs to the Spanish series, of 
 which we hope to speak at length on some future occasion. 
 But the Goldsmith is complete. 
 
 If there is anybody of whom it could be said that it 
 was his duty to write a life of Goldsmith, it is Washington 
 Irving ; and often as we have had occasion to thank him 
 for happy hours, we do not know that we ever felt so grate- 
 ful to him for anything as for this. We have always loved 
 Goldsmith, his poetry and his prose, and everything about 
 him. There is not a poem in the language that we can 
 go back to with the same zest with which we open the 
 Traveller or the Deserted Village for the five hundredth 
 time ; and we can never get through a ten minutes' 
 speech without quoting the Vicar of Wakefield. And 
 yet we must say frankly that we never understood Gold- 
 smith's character until now. We have been vexed at his 
 weakness and have blushed at his blunders. We had 
 always wished he could have thrown ott' his brogue and 
 had never put on his bloom-colored coat. That he should 
 
1V2 BIOGRxVrmCAL STUDIES. 
 
 not liare known how to keep his money was not very 
 Avonderfal, — it is a professional weakness; but he might 
 at any rate have thrown it away in better company. We 
 have been more than once sorely troubled too by sundry 
 little slips that savored somewhat of moral obliquity; 
 and never been able to reconcile the elevation of his 
 intellect with acts that far less rigorous judges than we 
 have characterized as mean and degrading. In short, 
 with all our contempt for BosweU, we had been fairly 
 Boswellised, and much as we loved Goldsmith, loved him 
 somewhat in despite of what we thought our better 
 judgment. 
 
 Thanks to Mr. Irving, our doubts have all been solved, 
 and we can love the kmd, simple-hearted, genial man 
 with as much confidence as we admire his writhigs. This 
 overflowing of the heart, this true philosophy so inter- 
 woven with his whole nature that whether he acts or 
 speaks you find it as strongly marked in his actions as 
 in his language ; that quick sensibifity which makes him 
 so keenly alive to all the petty annoyances of his depend- 
 ent position, and that buoyancy of spirit which raises him 
 above them, and bears him up on the wave while many 
 a stouter heart is sinking around him ; those ready sym- 
 pathies, that self-forgetfulness, that innate, unprompted, 
 spontaneous philanthropy which, in the days of his pros- 
 perity as well as in his days of trial, was never belied by 
 
lUYTNG. 173 
 
 ^^-o]•^\ or l»y (1('0<1, — all tlicsc wc uudcrstaiKl as we never 
 Tiiidcrslood tliom before, and I'eel how rare and Iteantiful 
 tlioy are. lie was not wise in liis own concei-ns, and 
 yet wliat treasures of wisdom lias lie bequeathed to the 
 W(»i-ld. Artless as an inl'ant, yet how deeply read in 
 human nature; with all his feelings upon the suriace, 
 ruffled by every breeze and glowing in every sunbeam, and 
 yet how skilled in all tlie seeret Avindings of the heart. 
 None but a man of genial nature should ever attempt to 
 write the life of Goldsmith: one who knows how much 
 wisdom can be extracted from folly; how much better 
 for the heart it is to trust than to doubt; how much 
 nobler is a generous impulse than a cautious reserve ; 
 hoAV much truer a wisdom there is in benevolence than 
 in all the shrewd devices of worldly craft. 
 
 Now Mr. Irving is just the man to feel all this and 
 to make you feel it too. He sees how weak Goldsmith 
 is in many things, how wise in others, and he sees how 
 closely his wisdom and his weakness are allied. There 
 is no condescension in his pity, none of that parade which 
 often makes pity tenfold more bitter than the sufferings 
 which call it forth. He tells you the story of his hero's 
 errors as freely as he does that of his virtues, and hi a 
 way to make you feel that a man may have many a human 
 weakness lie heavy at his door, and yet be worthy of 
 our love and admiration still. He has no desire to 
 
1'74 BIOGEAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 conceal, makes no attempt to palliate. He understands 
 his hero's character thoroughly, and feels that if he can 
 only make you understand it, you will love him as much 
 as he does. Therefore he draws him just as he is, hghts 
 and shadows, virtues and foibles, — vices you cannot call 
 them, be you never so unkind. At his blunders he 
 laughs just as Goldsmith himself used to laugh in re- 
 counting them, and he feels the secret of his virtues too 
 justly to attempt to gild them over with useless embellish- 
 ments. 
 
 We have always fancied that there w^as a strong 
 resemblance between Goldsmith and Irvmg. They both 
 look at human nature from the same generous point of 
 view, with the same kindly sympathies and the same 
 tolerant philosophy. They have the ^ame quick percep- 
 tion of the ludicrous, and the same tender simplicity in 
 the pathetic. There is the same quiet veui of humor in 
 both, and the same cheerful spirit of hopefulness. You 
 are at a loss to conceive how either of them can ever 
 have had an enemy; and as for jealousy and maUce, and 
 all that brood of evil passions which beset the path of 
 fame so thickly, you feel that there can be no resting- 
 place for them in bosoms like theirs. Yet each pre- 
 serves his individuality as distinctly as if there were no 
 points of resemblance between them. Irving's style is as 
 much his own as thouf?h Goldsmith had never written, 
 
IRVING. 1*75 
 
 and his ]iicturc's have that fVcshiu'SS ahout tliciii wliicli 
 notliiiig hut Hto-f«tU(lit'S can ghe. He has written no 
 poem, no '' Traveher," no " Deserted Village," no exqui- 
 site balhid like ""The Jlerinit," no touchino; little; stanzas 
 of unap})roachal)!e pathos, like " Woman." Jjut how 
 much real poetry and how much real pathos has he not 
 written. We do not believe that there was ever such a 
 description of the song of a bird as his description of 
 the soaring of a lark in " Buckthorn ; " and the poor old 
 widow in the Sketch Book who, tlie first Sunday after 
 her son's burial, comes to churcli with a few bits of black 
 silk and ribbon about her, the only external eniljlem of 
 mourning which her poverty allowed her to make, is a 
 picture that we can never look at through his simple 
 and graphic periods without sobbing like a child. Poet 
 he is, and that too of the best and noblest kind, for 
 he stores our memories with lovely images and our 
 hearts with humane affections. If you would learn to 
 be kinder and truer, if you would learn to bear life's 
 burden manfully, and make for yourself sunshine where 
 half your fellow-men see nothing but shadows and gloom, 
 — read and meditate Goldsmith and Irving. And if 
 you too are an author, at the first gentle acclivity or 
 far upwards on the heights of feime, learn to turn back- 
 wards to your teacher with the same generous and 
 fervent gi*atitude with which Irving at the close of his 
 
176 BIOGEAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 l^reface addresses himself to Goldsmith in the noble 
 language of Dante : — 
 
 Tu se' lo mio maestro, e 1 mio autore; 
 Tu se' solo colui da eui io tolsi 
 Lo bello stile che m' ba fatto onore. 
 
 Thou art my master, and mj teacher thou; 
 It was from thee, and thee alone, I took 
 That noLle style for which men honor me- 
 
imrxcvs life of wasiiington". 
 
 E^^t ctiaui quictc, et pure, et eleg-aiitcr acUc lutalis placida ac k'nis 
 seuectus. — Cicero, de Senedute. 
 
 AVe have heard it said tliat, ulicn ^Iv. Irving was a clnhl 
 
 five or six years okl, lie was walking one day, with a 
 
 favorite Scotch servant-woman, in Broadway; not the 
 
 Broadway of our times, in which Presidents and Generals 
 
 are lost m the crowd, but that quiet little thoroughfare, 
 
 which, starting from the Battery as its court-end, ran on, 
 
 through rows of modest dwelling-houses and still more 
 
 modest shoi)s, to the fields and gardens around the l*ark. 
 
 In one of these shops there was a little more stir than 
 
 usual, with a little bustle, too, of curiosity about the door, 
 
 which attracted the good Avoman's attention ; and on 
 
 looking in for the cause, she saw that General Washington 
 
 was there. Seizing her young comi>anion by the hand, she 
 
 drew him forward, and led him right up to the General, 
 
 exclaimhig, "Look here, sir, here is a bairn that is named 
 
 for ye. Bless him, sir." AVashington laid his hand upon 
 
 8 
 
178 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 the child's head, and from that day to this, the blessing of 
 the "Father of his Country" has rested upon it. 
 
 It is impossible to recall this little incident without 
 reflecting, how mysteriously the web of life is woven. To 
 Washington it was a trifle, dwelt upon, perhaps, for a 
 moment, with pleasure ; told, it may be, to his wife on his 
 return home, and then forgotten amid the thousand anx- 
 ieties of his position. He had just entered upon his duties 
 as President under the new Constitution. Grave cares, 
 intricate questions of state, were weighing upon his mind, 
 and Avhat time had he to bestow anything more than a 
 smile and a caress on this child of a stranger, even though 
 bearing his own name ? What would have been his sen- 
 sations could he have foreseen the future career of that 
 child ! How would his cares have been lightened, what a 
 thrill would have shot to his heart, what a fervor would 
 have glowed in his benediction, could some friendly voice 
 have whispered in his ear, ' This boy will one day bear his 
 part in the great work of raising his country to the first 
 place among the nations; he will compel her reluctant 
 kindred beyond the sea to recognise her genius, as you 
 have compelled them to recognise her power ; he will fill 
 public stations with dignity, and adorn private life with all 
 the gentler virtues ; and when, at last, after many wander- 
 incrs and many labors, he shall come and make his home 
 upon the banks of that stream Tvhich was the scene of some 
 
iRVixr/s IJFK OF WAsin.v<;'i'ov. 170 
 
 of yonr li^roalcst trials aiul noisiest ucliievc'iiu'iits, Ik; will 
 devote the iiialure wisdom aixl 1 cinperate elo([iien('e ot a 
 green old age to the storv of your lile, and indissolubly 
 unite his name with yours in a work which shall Ije the 
 guide and the deli<;lit of the remotest posterity!' 
 
 Many concurring causes seem to have pointed out Mr. 
 Irving as the historian of Washington. He had been the 
 first to tell the story of Columbus fully, and to paint the 
 struggles of that sublime genius in truthful and enduring 
 colors. He was known to have a rare talent for the study 
 of character, seizing readily upon those delicate shades and 
 nice distinctions w^hich, though essential to the truth of a 
 portrait, and often the only clew to apparent contradictions, 
 escape the common eye. He was acknowledged to be one 
 of the best of narrators, full of life and movement, carrying 
 you from scene to scene Avith an interest that never flags, 
 possessing all the warmth of a poet, and yet free from that 
 melodramatic exaggeration which is the worst faisitier of 
 history. He was the master of a pure English style, address- 
 ing itself, with its graphic epithets and rich cadences, to 
 the understanding and the heart, and filling the ear with a 
 delicious melody that thrills you like music. And with all 
 this he had lived in the world, and that in an age full of 
 great events ; had mingled freely in the society of different 
 nations ; had met face to face the great men of his time ; 
 had seen kings upon their thrones, savage chiefs in their 
 
ISO BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 native wilds, generals fresh from the battle-field, statesmen 
 surromided with the pageantry of office, or mourning in 
 involuntary retirement the loss of a power that had become 
 essential to their happiness. He had lived, too, in de- 
 lightful intercourse Avith the monarchs of the mind, the 
 great poets who, from the seclusion of their closets, sent 
 forth words that were repeated with rapture in courts and 
 cottages, on the ocean and by the watch-hre ; and he had 
 seen them pass away one by one, renewing the lesson of 
 ages, that lie who Avould live in the hearts of men must 
 live for mankind. 
 
 Therefore, when it was known that the first volume was 
 in the hands of the printer, there was a general expression 
 of satisfaction among the friends of American literature. 
 They felt that this wondrous story would be told aright ; 
 that Washington Avould be drawn in all the majesty of his 
 greatness; that the charms of exquisite composition, 
 gracing the record of virtue, would form a work which 
 fathers would transmit to their children as a j^recious 
 legacy. This expectation has been abundantly fulfilled. 
 Each new volume has been received with a Avelcome that 
 must have carried a cheering glow to the author's heart. 
 You will meet them in steamboats, you will meet them in 
 the cars ; they have taken their place at the side of the 
 classics in the library, and lie, in rich bindings, among the 
 ornaments of the centre-table. We have seen them call a 
 
iRviN(i's i.ii'Mo OF WAsnivrnox. 181 
 
 briglitcr fliisli to the clicck of youtli, aii.l limrd llicir 
 lianiioiiious periods llouiiii;- willi impressive solcinnily iVoiii 
 tlic lips ofnL:;!'. Seldom li;is lilernt iii'e witnessed :i moi-e per- 
 fect triumph ; lU'Ncr one on which the reeoi'der ol' liei- check- 
 ered annals can dwell with so serene and unsullied a joy. 
 
 Tiie life of Washinnton ha<l already been wi'itlen by 
 eminent men, and riglitly lilled an inij)ortant ]>lace in 
 American literature. The first of his biographers who had 
 access to his papers was Chief Justice Marshall, — a man of 
 rare intellectual vigor, large experience, untiring industry, 
 a statesman, a diplomatist, a jurist, and a soldier. He had 
 served through the ^var with credit ; bad, on two import- 
 ant occasions, been invited by Washington to connect 
 himself with his administration; had lived with him on 
 terms of confidential intercourse ; and after his death had 
 been intrusted with his papers, as they had been arranged 
 under his own direction and left l)y him in tlie archives of 
 Mount Yernon. From these authentic sources, illustrated 
 by personal recollections, and by a careful comparison with 
 printed works and official documents, Judge Marshall drew 
 the materials for his life of Washington ; a work which, 
 whether we consider the dignity of the subject or the 
 character and position of the author, must always hold a 
 conspicuous place in our historical literature. The first 
 edition, in five octavo volumes, began to appear within 
 little over three years after Washington's death, and while 
 
182 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 most of the principal actors in the events which it records 
 were still living ; — a circumstance which may be considered 
 as having exercised both a favorable and an unfavorable 
 influence upon it. 
 
 All the principal events of Washington's life were stiU 
 fresh in many memories. The old men had witnessed 
 them ; men of middle age, and some who were still young, 
 had been actors in them ; and children had grown up in 
 the midst of those fireside recollections which make the 
 first generation after a great event feel as if they had been 
 its contemporaries. This familiarity with the details of his 
 subject, both in himself and m his immediate readers, 
 rendered it difiicult for Marshall to enter into the feelings 
 of those of a later generation. Everything was so clear to 
 his own mind, that he never paused to ask how it would 
 strike others. The names of men and places, of encamp- 
 ments and battle-fields, awakened such vivid recollections, 
 came before him with such a variety of characteristic 
 circumstances, that he never thought of painting them. 
 It was difficult for him to conceive, in his intimate familiar- 
 ity with them, Avhat kind of questions one less familiar 
 would ask. Why should he tell how Washington looked 
 in his tent, or sat his horse, when thousands of his readers 
 knew it as well as he ? 
 
 But with all this he would be true to the spirit of the 
 times. He would speak of things as they appeared to the 
 
iiiViNG\s LiiK OF ^VASHI^(.T0^^ 183 
 
 actors tlieiiisclvcs, lie could not falsiiy lli<' irciicr.'il rli:i- 
 racter oj" :m ml^c mIiIcIi w :is still li^ill^• t«» Irll liim if iiis 
 portrait mvvv iiiilailhrul. He would retain cuoul;-!! oi" liis 
 early tVclin^s to rcprtxlucc his oriicinal iui|»r('Ssions ; wliih^ 
 many iutori'stiuLi; circuuistanccs wouM derive tlieir authen- 
 ticity fVoni his testimony. It" .Marsiiall Iiad been a ]»oet, 
 what a ]»icture he might ha^■e drawn! How naturally the 
 liero would have hiended with the man! How like actual 
 tlihigs all the great points of Washington's character, and 
 all tlic important periods of his career, with their variety 
 of incident and position, would have come before us, 
 warming our hearts and kindling our imaginations as with 
 a real presence! It would have been like a triumphal 
 procession in an old bas-relief, in which, while the long 
 ranks of victors and captives pass before you with their 
 arms and trophies, and in all the magnificence of ancient 
 warfare, your eye still follows the general in his car of 
 triumph, as the moving and master spirit of all. 
 
 But Marshall was pre-eminently a man of pure intellect, 
 expounding with lucid order the conclusions of an exact 
 logic and profound analysis, but unskilled in the language 
 of the imagination and the art of awakening vivid con- 
 ceptions. His work is a clear exposition of causes, an 
 accurate narrative of events, a faithful record of actions, a 
 just appreciation of motives and characters, but formal, 
 cold, and inelegant ; commanding our confidence by its 
 
184 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 candor and our respect by its good sense, but failing to 
 reanimate the past, and to bring us into the presence of its 
 hero as a living being. 
 
 Ramsay attempted less than Marshall. He had already 
 written the History of South Carolina and the History of 
 the Revolution, and the Life of Washington seemed the 
 natural complement of his labors. Like Marshall, he had 
 been an actor in the scenes which he undertook to describe, 
 had lived familiarly with the eminent men of the day, had 
 had free access to official documents, and had studied 
 Washington in his own letters. He had, moreover, a more 
 cultivated historical sense than Marshall, and used language 
 more effectively. He possessed in an eminent degree the 
 power of compression. "His book is complete," we once 
 heard good old General Lafayette say of his History of the 
 Revolution ; " he has put everything into it : he abbreviates 
 like Florus." But his narrative, though clear, Avants color : 
 it has movement without vivacity; distinctness without 
 graphic power. He tells the story, but fiils to paint the 
 scenes or the men. And thus, Avitli a kind of knowledge 
 which none but a contemporary can possess, with ample 
 materials to draw from, and abundant means of verifying 
 every statement by direct conference Avith actors still in 
 the full possession of their faculties, he has left ns a meagre 
 volume, which must always be consulted, though it will 
 seldom be read. 
 
lUVlNii's I, IKK (>K WASIIFNtiToN. 185 
 
 An interval of tliirty years, wliicli added but little to 
 our knowledLCe of Washington's liistory, brini^^s us to Mv. 
 Sparks. And now, for the first time, w i- lind ourselves in 
 presence of a man ]>laced at sullieient distance from the 
 scene to ^ iew it in all its complex relations, and eminently 
 qualified by the bent of his genius, by liabits of patient 
 research, and by that sober earnestness which never relaxes 
 its exertions, to do full justice to tlie subject. The careful 
 study which he had already made of the foreign relations 
 of the most important i)art of this i)eriod, while editing 
 the "Diplomatic Corresi>ondence of the Revolution," had 
 prepared him for enterhig with a more perfect intelligence 
 npon the examination of Washington's own papers. For 
 ten years those precious documents, the originals them- 
 selves, w^hich Washington, with a full consciousness of their 
 historical value,* had carefully arranged and preserved 
 during his lifetime, and bequeathed, at his death, to his 
 favorite nephew, as a special testimonial of his confidence, 
 were intrusted to him, to select and annotate for the press ; 
 his daily companions, the absorbing object of his study and 
 meditation. He read them all, more than two hundred 
 folio volumes, carefully and critically, with pen in hand; 
 and when Jje had G^one through them once, and marked 
 
 * See Washing-ton to the President of Congress, from New Windsor, 
 
 April 4, nSl. Sparks'3 Washington, vol. vii. p. 467. 
 
 8* 
 
186 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 those which seemed best adapted to the plan of his publi- 
 cation, to guard himself, as far as conscientious industry 
 could do it, against the danger of mistake, he began his task 
 anew, and went over his selection again. Nor did he close 
 his labors here, or confine his researches to Washington's 
 own correspondence. He travelled extensively, both at 
 home and abroad ; examined numerous public and private 
 collections; conversed with the surviving friends and 
 companions of his hero ; visited every battle-field and 
 every encampment ; traced out the lines of march of the 
 contending armies; and more than once had the good 
 fortune to find some old soldier near the spot, to guide him 
 in his observations. And that none of those influences 
 which bring happy thoughts, and attune the faculties to 
 harmonious action, might be wanting, he went, when these 
 preliminary studies were completed, and took up his abode, 
 with all the precious fruits of his labor around him, in the 
 house in which \Yashington had pa'ssed the first trying and 
 eventful months of the war. There, in the same room in 
 which the " Father of his Country,'' as yet but imperfectly 
 known to himself and to the world, had met in council the 
 early companions of his cares, some of whom were to 
 stand by him to the last, and some to fall from him in the 
 proving hour, with the very paper before him on which 
 that hand, which never traced a selfish nor an ignoble 
 thought, had recorded the wants and wishes of those 
 
IKVINiTs l.IKH Ol' W AslllNc.roN', 187 
 
 i;l()()iiiv (l:ns, ln' took up Iiis pen to tell the woiulci-lul 
 story. How oth'ii must he Iiavr sturtcfl at tlu' oiicuin-j; 
 dooi-, till' <looi- tlirouL^Hi whicli \V;isliii)<_rt (Ui li:i'l jtasscd I 
 AVliat soUuuu tliounhts must liavc. coiul' over liim as In; 
 raised his I'vcs to the window au<l looked forth, under the 
 shadowino: elms and aeross the green mea<h)ws where the 
 Charles still winds its pleasant path to the hay ! "Those 
 elms," he may have said, " were sapUngs when Washington 
 was here, bending to every blast, easting no grateful sha- 
 dows ui)on the greensward, drawing no niusie from the 
 passing wind. ])id Washington, as his thoughtfid eye 
 . rested upon them and his spirit held anxious communion 
 with the future, ever liken them to the tree that he was 
 planting? Did he ever say to them, 'You will go on to 
 the fulness of your growth, drawing strength from sunshine 
 and shower, putting forth your leaves and casting them 
 again, with each return of the seasons, till your tops reach 
 high into the heavens, and your broad branches spread out 
 with a grateful shade ; but who can foretell the fate of that 
 delicate and fragile tree which I am planting in darkness 
 and gloom ? Who can say what manner of men they will 
 be w^ho will one day come and seat themselves at your feet, 
 — the hardy sons of freemen, or the abject offspring of 
 slaves,— reviling me as a rebel, or blessing my memory as 
 the deliverer of my country?'" How often must these 
 and kindred thoudits have crowded upon the historian's 
 
188 BIOGEAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 mind and checked his pen! What more could he have 
 asked to aid him in combining the results of his long and 
 laborious researches into a glowing and life-like picture of 
 AYashington. 
 
 But, unfortunately, the history of Washington's life was 
 less Mr. Sparks's object than editing and illustrating his 
 writings. Modestly overestimating Judge Marshall's work,* 
 he contracted the plan of his own. With materials for 
 five volumes, he has confined himself to one. With unri- 
 valled stores of illustration, he has given us only enough to 
 make us eager for more. As an introduction to W^ash- 
 ington's Writmgs, his work is a model, luminous, comj^re- 
 hensive, accurate, and just ; conceived in the true spirit of 
 historical appreciation, and written in a simple, manly, and 
 dignified style. It will always retain the high position 
 which it took from the beginning, and will be regarded as 
 an indispensable auxiliary to the study of Washington's 
 character. 
 
 Of foreign lives of Washington, we know of none that 
 deserves especial mention. The subject is still a difiicult, if 
 not an ungrateful one, for an Englishman. ISTapier or 
 Arnold might have treated it fiiirly ; but by fiir the greater 
 
 * " After the able, accurate, and comprehensive work of Chief Justice 
 Marshall, it would be presumptuous to attempt a historical biography of 
 Wasliington."— Sparks's Washington, Yol. i., Preface, p. xii. 
 
iKviN<;\s i.ii'i': <»F ^\■.\slll^<il<)^■. 1 ^^0 
 
 pai-t (»r tluii- (M.untrviiirii, liowcvcr l:ivi>li in tlicii- general 
 eul(Mj;"u's, or liowcMM' an\i(>ii<, willi I.<»r<l .Malioii, 'Mo rciult r 
 full justic'o lo tlic- opposite par(y,''='= can liaidly, any nioif 
 than the n(»hlr Lord liinisrH", (li\i'sl thcinsch cs of the 
 feolinu- thai the IJcvohilion was a rrheHioii, and Wash- 
 inj.'-ton, at the best, hut a succ-essful traitor. 
 
 In (ieruian literature, there is nothing worthy of the 
 subject, llow ean there be wliile Germany remains what 
 she is? In Italian, tliere is Botta's eloquent narrative of 
 the war, worthy, both in sentiment and in style, of the 
 best days of Italian literature, but necessarily imperfect as 
 a personal history. The French have Guizot's Essay, one 
 of those profound and just appreciations, by which the 
 philosophic historian has thrown such a flood of light 
 upon some of the most important parts of human annals. 
 With the last edition of this Essay, there is a Life of 
 Washington by De Witt, a work of some literary i)re- 
 tensions, but inaccurate in many of its statements and 
 judgments, and adding nothing to our knowledge of 
 Washuigton's character or actions. 
 
 These, with the exception of the last, which had not 
 
 * "But the American War is a fine subject, and treated, as you would 
 treat it, with the same perfect fairness as the Succession War, its history 
 would vindicate the honor of this country at the same time that it rendered 
 full^ justice to the opposite cause."— Southey to Lord Mahon, Appendix to 
 Vol. vi. of Lord Mahon's History of England, &c. p. 1. 
 
190 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 yet appeared, were the principal Lives of Washington, 
 when Mr. Irving took up his pen. It was no light task 
 for one who had ah'eady reached that term of life which 
 it was not given to Washington to pass. Would he be 
 able to transcend the statesmanlike appreciation of Mar- 
 shall? Could he hope to add to the facts that crowd 
 the industrious pages of Sparks ? Or to rival the profound 
 analysis and luminous generalizations of Guizot ? And, 
 harder than all, Avould it be possible for him to preserve 
 that calm and sober coloring which is the only coloring 
 suited to the man and the times? 
 
 Of all the difficulties which he has had to encounter, 
 none, perhaps, was so great, or so much to be feared, as 
 his own reputation. For beauty of language, grace of 
 style, delicacy of fancy, and genial sentiment, he had long 
 held the first place in modern EngHsh literature. The 
 subjects of his previous histories had been singularly in 
 harmony with the peculiar characteristics of his genius, 
 in which good sense and delicate appreciation of character 
 are blended with elements eminently poetical. Columbus 
 was a personage who might well excite the enthusiasm 
 of a poet, while the narrative of his adventurous career 
 demanded sagacious criticism, sound judgment, and the 
 most skilful touches of art. A mind not used to kindle 
 w^ith its own conceptions, to see strange forms in the 
 evening clouds, and to dream in the forest twilight or by 
 
1KVIN<.S !,I1M-: OF \VASIIIN«.r<»N. 
 
 191 
 
 the sule of fountains :m«l meadow hrooks, would never 
 l.ave understood that min^linu- of eiitliusia<in and ].raetieal 
 sense, of dariuii; enterprise an<l vi>ionarv speculation, 
 Avliieh entered into the eomj.osition of Ids singular eliarac- 
 ter; enabling him to clin,!:; with as lirm a faith to tlie 
 creations of his own intellect, as to the revelations of Ins 
 perceptive faculties. The unknown seas into Avhicli he 
 sailed so boldly; the Xew AVorld, with its luxuriant 
 scenery, its novel productions and strange inhabitants; 
 and, more than all, the deep tragedy of his protracted 
 sufferings and unworthy death, — are subjects so nearly 
 akin to i)oetry, that, if the llar^ati^'e of them had come 
 down to us as the production of some legendary age, we 
 should have hesitated to accept it as history. 
 
 Nor was the miraculous rise of the Mohammedan Em- 
 pire, and the sudden conversion of the idolatrous tribes 
 of the desert into irresistible armies of religious enthu- 
 siasts, a subject less suited to Mr. Irving's pen. But in 
 painting the sound discretion and sober enthusiasm of 
 Washington, in describing scenes with which every reader 
 had been more or less familiar from his childhood, in 
 speaking of armies of mechanics and farmers, of a con- 
 gress of lawyers and doctors, how would he be able to 
 repress the god within him, and tame down his pictur- 
 esque and flowing periods to the severe truth of a stern 
 and almost prosaic reality. 
 
192 BIOGEAPHICNX STUDIES. 
 
 The doubt was natural. A critical examination of the 
 literary character of the work will give the best solution 
 of it. 
 
 It is generally understood that Mr. Irving began to 
 collect his materials before his mission to Spain, and that 
 his work has consequently been growing in his mind some 
 fourteen or fifteen years. It was not, however, till several 
 years after his return that he entered upon it seriously. 
 Meanwhile the Life of Goldsmith, and the History of 
 Mahomet and his Followers, were written, and the revised 
 edition of his works carried througli the press. It was 
 an interval of active exertion, during which he did enough 
 to have made the reputation of any other man, and in 
 fields remote from that which he was preparing to tread. 
 But this was done without losing sight of his great 
 subject, to which he returned from time to time, gradually 
 extendmg his researches and enlarging his range of in- 
 quiry. He visited many, if not all of the places con- 
 nected with Washington's private and public career. 
 From his own garden he could look down upon some 
 of the most interesting localities of the w^ar. And the 
 few w^ho could still speak of it as eyewitnesses were glad 
 to repeat their stories to such a listener. Like Sparks, 
 he studied Washington's letters in the originals, to which 
 he could now add the writings of Hamilton, Adams, and 
 Jeflferson, and the vast array of facts so laboriously col- 
 
iuvi.v<;\s MKI-: of \VAsirF\<;r()X, 103 
 
 Icctcd :iii<l so jiiilicioiisly ari':mii;('(l by .Mr. l-'orcc, in lii^ 
 Anioricaii .\r('lii\c<, one of llic iiiosl, rciiiaikaljlc iiioim- 
 mciits of liistoi-ical iiidiisl i-y of any ai^-c or coiinli-y. And 
 when the results of tliis deliljeratc' and comprclicnsiN <• 
 jtrc'paration liail ari-ani;-!'*! tlicnisolvcs in liis mind, in dis- 
 tinct and dclinite lornis, tlie L^i-cal di-ania of the Itevolu- 
 tion would seem to liave uni-olled itself before liis eyes, 
 in the full grandeur of its proportions, with AVashinglon 
 for its central and directhig spirit. Then it was tliat lie 
 took up liis ])en, like a spectator fresh from some exciting 
 scene, to pour out liis recollections in a continuous flow 
 of ])icturesque narrative. The first volume was published 
 early in 1855; the second, before the close of the same 
 year; the third, in 1856; the fourth, in 1857; and after 
 an interval of nearly two years, the fifth and last. At 
 first he had expected to bring his story within the com- 
 pass of three volumes ; but as he proceeded, the figures 
 came crowding upon the canvas till he found himself 
 compelled to choose between expansion and mutilation. 
 Fortunately for literature and for his own fame, he chose 
 the former. Each part now tills its a]>propriate place, 
 without jostling or jarring with the others. The first 
 volume contains a full history of Washington's youth, 
 presents an elaborate picture of the severe ordeal through 
 which he |)assed in the old French Avar, gives graphic 
 sketches of his domestic life at ]\rount ViM-non, and, 
 
194: BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 tracing carefully the i)rogTess of public sentiment during 
 the opening scenes of the Revolution, closes with his 
 arrival at the camp before Boston. The second opens 
 with the siege of Boston, and brings the story down to 
 the battle of Princeton, and the first encampment at 
 Morristown. The third is devoted to the campaigns of 
 1777-79. The fourth contains the closing scenes of the 
 war, and the melancholy history of the Confederation, 
 and ends with the first inauguration ; the fifth, the momen- 
 tous period of his administration, and the calm, though 
 not unclouded evening of his life. 
 
 The first thing that strikes the reader, on closing these 
 volumes, is the skill wdth which the Avork is divided, and 
 the judgment with wdiich the proportions of the different 
 parts of its complex narrative are marked out. This 
 alone would entitle its author to a high rank among 
 historians ; for it implies the poAver of vigorous concep- 
 tion, a quality which holds the same place in historical 
 that invention docs in poetical composition. To conceive 
 a complicated subject as one, to detect the principle of 
 unity Avhich binds its scattered and often discordant parts 
 into an harmonious Avliole, and to feel your pen guided 
 by this instinctive appreciation to put everything into its 
 true place, as the particles of matter are arranged by the 
 force of gravitation at their pro})er distances from the 
 common centre, is a rare and precious gift. A broken 
 
IRVINci'S I.IVK OF \VASIIIN(;T()\. 195 
 
 an<l ill-proportioned n.-in-.-itivc is as rcjmlsivc to tlic mind 
 as discord to a nuisical car; and tlii< not nn-rcly from an 
 inherent love of ordei-, I>ut liccansc we can Jiever fully 
 understand the sj)irit and relations of tliat -whicli we 
 cannot grasp as a whole. It is for this, in a gr(.*at 
 measure, that history is less rea<l than it ought to be. 
 The events of history are full of variety and novelty, 
 often carrying us so far beyond our conjectures as to 
 have made it a common saying, that truth is stranger 
 than fiction. Yet men of fine talents, of profound 
 thought, of eminent literary powers, are frequently unable 
 to excite our interest in the most eventful periods. They 
 fail to discover the latent principle of unity. They treat 
 history as they study it, not as a living whole, with one 
 great heart sending out the vivifying blood to every part 
 of the system and receiving it back again to purify it 
 and transmit it anew to the remotest extremities, but as 
 an aggregate of parts, coherent indeed, but not essentially 
 dependent on one another. Hume wrote the history of 
 England backwards, and thus has given us a series of 
 groups, instead of an harmonious picture. The ancients, 
 whose artistic intuitions hardly ever deserted them, seldom 
 err in this. Sallust and Xenophon were greatly assisted 
 by the nature of their subjects ; Thucydides, it is true, has 
 not always overcome the inherent difiiculty of his : but in 
 Tacitus the principle is ever present, even in his Annals, in 
 
196 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 which the division by years necessarily gives a somewhat 
 fragmentary cast to the narrative ; and Livy is not more 
 remarkable for his j^ower of painting to the mind's eye, 
 than for the skill with which he infuses into every part 
 of his work the pervading spirit of Roman genius * 
 
 Mr. Irving, too, was aided by the nature of his subject ; 
 for as regards unity of narrative, the biographer has a 
 great advantage over the general historian. But the 
 manner in which he has availed himself of this advantage 
 deserves the highest praise. Washington is eminently 
 an historical character. From his youth upwards the 
 larger part of his life was closely interwoven with the 
 history of his country. He never stands alone. He is 
 constantly surrounded by public men. Great events 
 group themselves about him, as if by a natural law. His 
 Avill seems to communicate life and energy to thousands. 
 As with the prophet of old, the tide of battle, not the 
 mere field day, but the lifelong struggle of national exist- 
 
 * " Ad ilia mihi pro se quisqiie acriter intendat animum, quse vita, qui 
 mores fuerint; per quos viros, quibusque artilDUS domi militifeque, et 
 partum et auctura imperium sit. Labente deinde paullatim disciplina, 
 velut desidentes primo mores sequatur animo : deinde ut magis raagisque 
 lapsi sint; turn ire caeperint precipites; donee ad liaec tempora, quibus 
 nee vitia nostra, nee remedia pati possum us, perventum est." This noble 
 passage of his preface, one of the most perfect pieces of any age, has 
 always seemed to us to contain the true secret of his success. 
 
1K\1N<;'S I. IKK OF \VASMlN(;inN. 197 
 
 once, t'l»l)s and Hows with ovcry motion of his jn-olcctiiig 
 arms. An. I iIkmi^Ii tlic two oi- lliicc inlci\als of liis 
 ivlircnuMil from iMil)lic. lilr aj^pcar, at lirst, like tlic icii^ns 
 of o-ood kin^s, to alfoid ])ut. mi-a^rt' materials io tlic 
 liistorian, on looking- closer, you iKjrccive lliat a givat 
 work was still j4"oiiig on, and that he is its best cxixuicnt. 
 Therefore, in tracini;- his career, the liistoi-ian must 
 frecpiently leave the immediate subject of his narrative, 
 in order to follow the progress of events in which he 
 does not ai)pear personally. He must describe the move- 
 ments of distant armies, and battles Avon by other leaders. 
 And yet, Avhile he metes out to every one his due measure 
 of praise, he must preserve for his own hero his appro- 
 priate place as guide and director of all. This Mr. Irving 
 has done with singular skill. Washington is emphatically 
 the hero of his narrative, standing out in bold relief from 
 the group of eminent men that cluster around him, every- 
 where recognised as an all-pervading spirit, breathing 
 life and energy into every part, and felt in the remotest 
 extremities of the land by his controlling will and sublime 
 example. You turn to him instinctively from every 
 battle-field, to see how he will receive the tidings. You 
 feel a double joy at every victory, in the thought that it 
 Avill lighten his burden. You judge men by their tidelity 
 to him, and measure their services by the estimate in 
 Avhich he held them. And this efiect is obtained without 
 
198 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 any exaggeration of Washington's actions, without forcing 
 him from his natural position, or bringing liim officiously 
 forward out of time and place, but by so guiding the 
 flexible thread of the narrative as to make him the point 
 at Avhich you instinctively place yourself to watch the 
 gradual development of the eventful drama. 
 
 It is indeed a striking and instructive lesson, to see 
 how much a great man gains by a generous estimate 
 of those around him. Washington is iar greater, with 
 Greene, Hamilton, and Knox for counsellors, than if, for- 
 getting the complex responsibilities of his position, he 
 had relied upon his own unaided judgment. The per- 
 sonal devotion of such men was the highest tribute that 
 could be paid to his intelligence and virtue. He calls 
 upon them at all times and in all emergencies without 
 reserve, and with equal unreserve they lay open their 
 thoughts and their hearts before him. The decision rests 
 with him ; the responsibility is his, and his too the chief 
 glory. But in no history of this period do his friends 
 and associates appear to so much advantage, or come in 
 for so large a share of praise. Schuyler's claims to our 
 respect were never so clearly set forth before. The com- 
 prehensive views and rare sagacity of Greene are fully 
 recognised. The sound sense and unwavering zeal of 
 Knox are painted Avith truthful simplicity. The shining 
 talents of Hamilton receive a new lustre from the bril- 
 
inviNci's Lii'i: OF \vasiiin<;ton. 199 
 
 liant toiiclu's of Mr. Ir\iiiL,^'s ]»ciicil. Even Lee, WMyw.'in! 
 and uiin-cnial, aii.l Ciatt-s, vain, arrn-anl, aii.l sdlislily 
 :imbiti<jus, arc not condcnMUMl unheard. Tln'ii- I'cal ser- 
 vices arc t'aitlit'iilly recorded ; an<l ii" they <lo not stand 
 in a briuditer liglit, it was llieir own act that <lie\v the 
 cloud over tlieni. Mr. Irvinsj^ evidently set out with 
 the intention ol" doini,^ justice to every one; and we 
 know of no writer within the circle of our reading, wlio 
 has so successfully established his claim to the rai-e and 
 difficult virtue of historical impartiality. 
 
 Of purely literary qualitications, the first in historical 
 composition is narrative power. Something more is 
 implied in this than the art of telling a story well ; for 
 historical narrative is a succession of stories requiring a 
 capacity of continuous exertion through a long series of 
 events. In power there is the same difterence between 
 this and mere story-telling that there is between carry- 
 ing a burden a few paces and carrying it through the 
 whole of a long journey. The very men that would trip 
 off the most briskly in one case, might be the first to 
 sink from exhaustion in the other. In this respect, also, 
 the ancients are far in advance of us. Tlieir histories 
 are eminently narrative. The story begins with the 
 first line, and is carried on to the end of the book 
 with a life and movement that seldom Hag. With what 
 admirable simplicity and directness does Livy enter upon 
 
200 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 liis- llalTati^'e, and how quickly you find yourself in the 
 midst of groups of living men, and in all the tumult of 
 action! Some of the chroniclers of the Middle Age 
 caught the same sj)irit, and, living in the midst of the 
 scenes which they describe, gave to their stories the 
 vivacity and freshness of their own emotions. The 
 Italian historians followed in the track of the ancients. 
 Thev narrate throuo-hout, interweaving- their reflections 
 in the narrative sentences without clogging their move- 
 ment. In our own days a systematic effort has heen 
 made to revive this method as the only true method of 
 Avriting history. Barante * was the first to set the 
 example, in his History of the Dukes of Burgundy, a 
 work conceived and executed in the true spirit of anti- 
 quity, and which presents the singular spectacle of a man 
 of rare philosophical endowments sternly repressing his 
 natural unpulses in order to become a picturesque nar- 
 rator. Thierry belongs, with some modifications, to the 
 same school. The History of the Xorman Conquest is 
 one of the most biilliant narratives in modern literature, 
 full of pictures, and glowing with the Avild and vigorous 
 colors of the age Avhich it delmeates. And most of the 
 recent French historians, accepting in a great measure 
 
 * Baranle's system is finely expressed by the passage from Quiutilian 
 which he takes for his motto : " Scribitur ad narrandum, iion ad pro- 
 bandum." 
 
mVIXr.'S LIKK OF AVASIIIN'GTO.V. 201 
 
 the views of IJai-.iiito mikI 'riiifn-v, have ciulcavorc*! lo 
 (listiiii^niish iIk'IMsc'Ivl'S by skill ;iii«l clcxjucncc of nar- 
 ration. 
 
 Of En^lislimcii ^racaulay is aliiKtst llic only one lliat 
 can be honorably compai-ed witli the <^n-eat narrative.' liis- 
 torians of France ; for Arnohrs Ijrilliant eareer was cut 
 short too early to allow him to take firm possession of 
 the high place in historical literature which was his 
 due, and Napier is more especially a military historian. 
 Macaulay is a narrator of rare power, endowed with a 
 singular skill in seizing upon characteristic circumstances, 
 and a wonderful exuberance of picturesque expression. 
 He is not afraid of calling attention to apparent trifles, 
 always preferring the dignity of nature to the dignity 
 of history. He feels that accurate knowledge depends 
 upon detail, and that we can never form a lively con- 
 ception of a scene, unless we come near enough to it to 
 detect its peculiar features. He gives life to whatever 
 he touches. The past seems to rise up under his pen, 
 with its passions, its virtues, and its vices, as if to renew 
 before us the spectacle of its good and evil. It would 
 have been difticult for Mr. Irvhig to choose a moment 
 in wliich his narrative skill would have been brought to 
 a loftier standard of comj^arison, or subjected to a more 
 
 But he, too, is richly endowed with the higher qualities 
 
 9 
 
202 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 of the narrative historian. He possesses a hvely ima- 
 gination, enabUng him to enter readily into the feelings 
 and character of another age ; an affluent fancy, sug- 
 gesting picturesque epithets, and happy turns of thought 
 and expression ; an extensive range of observation, 
 giving distinctness and life to his conceptions; genial 
 sympathies, which quicken and glow with the images 
 that rise under his pen ; and a power of continuous 
 exertion that sustains him unwearied to the end. Sim- 
 plicity and grace are among the most obvious charac- 
 teristics of his narrative, — the simplicity of an earnest 
 nature, and the grace of generous cultivation. There is 
 a fine movement in it, lively, animated, and richly varied. 
 It is as clear as a meadow-brook, but rolls on like his 
 OAvn Hudson, now expanding into silvery lakes, now 
 gently sweeping round some green and wooded promontory, 
 and now gathering its waters into a deep and impetuous 
 current, and pouring the resistless volume through a pre- 
 cipitous and rock-bound gorge. And yet, perhaps, if we 
 were called upon to say in what its peculiar merit consists, 
 we should name its full and equable flow. There is nothing 
 abrupt in it. The sentences follow one another with such 
 a natural sequence, so smooth, so harmonious, and withal 
 so full of life, that you are carried forward without ever 
 paushig to measure your progress. 
 
 We have given the first place to narrative power, be- 
 
inVIN'CVs I.IVK OF AVASIIINCrOX. 203 
 
 cause wc cannot coiiccivi' of" a jj^ood liislory uitlioul it. 
 It is the art t>f IcHiiii;" a stoi'v in siicli a way as to make 
 the incidents their own inter]>i-et('i-s. Description hohls 
 the next place, and, by l»rinL;inLi; particular <d>jects chjser 
 to the eve and investinix them with their natuial attri- 
 bates, gives greater dcKiutencss and vivacity to the con- 
 ception. It demands a different kind of talent, consisting 
 chiefly in the })ow'cr of conceiving form distinctly, and 
 combining it readily into groups and pictures. In narra- 
 tive the historian is brought into relation with the poet ; 
 in descrii)tion, with both the poet and the painter. De- 
 scription, indeed, is painting to the mind's eye, and re- 
 quires that i)erfect command of the elements of form and 
 color, that ready perception of apjDropriate shadows and 
 distances, that rare combination, in short, of intuitions 
 and acquired knowledge, which enables the great artist 
 to bring a group or a landscape before the eye with an 
 effect hardly inferior to that of the real scene. 
 
 It has been said that Mr. Irving, in his younger days, 
 gave Allston such an impression of his skill with the pencil, 
 as to lead that great artist, whose noble nature Avas never 
 disturbed by the fear of raising up a rival of his fame, to 
 use all his influence with his friend in order to induce him 
 to take up painting as a profession. However this may 
 have been, it is very evident from Mr. Irving's descriptions 
 that he might have become a great painter. Ilis flgures 
 
204 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 are full of individuality, and drawn to the life. There is 
 no hardness in the outline, no faltering in the touch; 
 everything is rendered with a free and firm hand. His 
 groups are disposed with an instinctive appreciation of 
 the mutual relations and dependencies of the characters. 
 '* The School of Athens" does not present a more admi- 
 rable example than these volumes, of the art of placing 
 a variety of prominent figures uj^on the same canvass. 
 There are some exquisite pieces, too, of landscape paint- 
 ing, bits of scenery that fill up the backgrounds with the 
 happiest efiect, and give a fine relief to the stern groups 
 of warriors and statesmen. Sometimes he paints in detail, 
 and with a wondrous truth* and vivacity of coloring. 
 Sometimes he paints in outline, creating as it were an 
 entire scene by a single touch of the pencil. All of his 
 pictures reveal a careful study of nature, an accurate 
 knowledge of details, fine power of combination, and a 
 happy tact in adapting his style and coloring to the par- 
 ticular subject. 
 
 'No part of this work has apparently received more atten- 
 tion than the characters or joortraits, — a department which 
 the great historians of ancient and modern times have 
 regarded as peculiarly fitted for the display of their best 
 
 * For he seems to have felt, with the great Roman critic, "Historia , . 
 tanto robustior quanto verior." — Quint. Lib. ii. cap. 4. 
 
TKVIXC'S LIKE OI' WASI1I.\« ;t< >x. 205 
 
 j)()\\i'i-s. It is ill tliis tliut ('larciidoii lakes s<» lii^Ii a |i1:i(l* 
 aiiioiii;- Kii<^Iisli liistoiiaiis, ami Salliisl aiiioii^- the ancients ; 
 in Kobortson and Iliiiiie the })()rt raits arc anionj^ the most 
 ohihorale })()rti()ns of tliuir works; and in no other (U'part- 
 iiieiit of our own liistorical hterature wouhl it be so easy to 
 make a large collection of brilliant ])assages. The i)rofound 
 knowledge of human nature, and the power of detecting 
 the secret springs of action and laying bare the hidden 
 recesses of the heart, which this talent presupposes, have 
 naturally caused it to be held in high estimation. If 
 to know man so as to bend hhn to his own purposes be 
 the boast of the statesman, to know him so as to be able 
 to paint his passions and motives, may well be the boast of 
 the historian. 
 
 The history of the Revolution aifords a fine field for 
 the display of this talent, and Mr. Irving has availed him- 
 self of it with distinguished success. As the leading men 
 come upon the stage, their previous history is sketched 
 with a few rapid touches, and their characters are unfolded 
 with a nice appreciation of circumstances and motives. 
 Some are drawn with great attention, — full-lengths, in 
 which all the characteristic features are carefully wrought 
 up into a finished picture. Others are happily hit oflT by a 
 few bold strokes. That fine discrimination which distin- 
 guishes the poet's knowledge of the heart is everywhere 
 apparent. There is a felicitous conciseness, a happy 
 
206 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 reserve, which adds greatly to the impression. He seems 
 always to know when the portrait is complete, when the 
 conception has been given, and instantly drops his pencil. 
 
 He never indulges in disquisitions, though he often closes 
 a chapter with some apposite reflection that rises naturally 
 from the subject. There are many just, many beautiful, 
 and many noble thoughts interwoven with the narrative. 
 But he would seem to have no ambition of being a maker 
 of aphorisms. He for the most part lets the moral and 
 wisdom of the story flow from the story itself; and appears 
 to feel that the reader may be safely intrusted with the 
 care of drawing his own deductions. In this, he has shown, 
 we think, excellent judgment ; for if history be philosophy 
 teaching by example, it is to the vividness with which the 
 example is brought before us, rather than to any ethical 
 elaboration of it, that we should look for the efficacy of the 
 lesson. 
 
 The general tone of the work is sober and calm. There 
 is no exaggeration of style or sentiment in it. Mr. Irving 
 has formed too just an idea of his subject to employ any 
 but the simplest and most natural forms of expression. If 
 his own good taste had not been sufficient to guard him 
 against fanciful epithets and melodramatic effects, his excel- 
 lent sense would have shown him how much they are out 
 of place in speaking of Washington. There is a sobriety 
 in Washington's character which repels all the common 
 
iKvi.N<;\s I, HI-: OF M'AsinN<;'i<).v. '201 
 
 artiticc's of rlictoric. His history is full of o^rcat result- and 
 siiiqtlc nu'aiis. If you would speak <.f liiin wditliily, you 
 must i-ely wholly U]>on the <_:"i"an<leur ol" the ihou'jht. 
 When Homer makes ()lym|ius treud)le at the iiod of .Iu]»i- 
 ter, he uses the simplest woi-ds that ihc languagi' could 
 supply : — 
 
 'H xa/ xua\/S7)(fiv stt' o(ppu(fi vBvcfs Kpovi'wv 
 'Afx/3poVia» 8' apa p^an-aj S'rrsppwfl'avTo avaxrog' 
 KpoLTos ct*' d&avoLTQio' ixiyav 6' sX£'X]|£v"OXu/X'7rov.* 
 
 In this Mr. Irving has caught the true spirit of antiquity, 
 lie is natural, simple, and earnest, and some of his finest 
 effects are produced without the least apparent effort. 
 'Now and then there is a kindling of the imagination, like 
 the occasional flashings up of the more passionate elements 
 of Washington's own nature ; but the pervading tone is 
 that of earnest sobriety. He is evidently full of his sub- 
 ject ; believes all that he says ; is impressed even to solem- 
 nity with the moral grandeur of his hero ; and, feeling how 
 closely the events of that period are interwoven with the 
 future destinies of our race, tells his story like one too well 
 
 * The stumbliug-block of translators. Even Cowper transforms the 
 simple VCV7C into "the nod vouchsafed of confirmation," and makes the 
 mountain "reel." Pope's version — or perversion rather — is a striking 
 illustration of the danger of embellishing Homer. 
 
208 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 convinced of the importance of it to think of adduig to its 
 impressiveness by pomp of language or brilliancy of meta- 
 phor. This, which in some would be but a negative merit, 
 in Mr. Irving is a positive one. For a man of his imagina- 
 tion, Avith all the wealth of one of the richest of languages 
 at his command, the temptations to let his pen run freely 
 must have been incessant, and sometimes difficult to resist. 
 Many a brilliant thought must have started to his page, 
 which his calmer judgment deliberately repressed. Many 
 a period must have been cut down, which in its original 
 conception, glowed with gorgeous colors and flowed with 
 majestic harmony. 
 
 We should do Mr. Irving great injustice if we were to 
 pass lightly over this remarkable characteristic of his work. 
 It is a tribute to historic truth, as difficult as it is rare, and 
 w^iich deserves especial commemoration. It has been truly 
 said, that a great poet never receives half the praise he is 
 entitled to, because the world never knows hoAv much he 
 erases. It is only the rich man that can afford to cast his 
 wealth away so freely. Gray struck out two of the finest 
 stanzas of his " Elegy,"* because they marred the general 
 
 * " Hark I how the sacred calm, that breathes around, 
 Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease ; 
 In still small accents whisp'ring from the ground, 
 A grateful earnest of eternal peace." 
 
lUVIVG'S TJKK OK WASIII N< nO.V. 209 
 
 harmony of its structure. It'tliis siu'riticc to tlic l:i\vs of :irt 
 be entitled to our ni)pi-ol)atioii, wlial ou!j,lit w c to say of that 
 self-denying spirit wliieli tliroui;l» five large volumes, ran 
 kee}> a rigorous walch over its own impulses, lest it should 
 be betrayed into something iueonsistent n\ illi the severity 
 of its subject? 
 
 It is in a great measure in consequence of this general 
 reserve, that you feel such faith in the accuracy and liih'lity 
 of this history. A tone of sincerity that cannot be mis- 
 taken runs through it. An atmos})here of truth surrounds 
 it on every side. There is an air of reality about it which 
 you trust impUcitly and without hesitation. It carries with 
 it a weight of internal evidence which goes farther towards 
 securing your confidence than the most imposhig array of 
 citations and references. The general truth of history has 
 seldom been called in question by any but those wlio have 
 reason to fear its decisions ; but discredit has often l)een 
 thrown uj^on details by the historian's assuming a greater 
 familiarity with them than any but the actors could have 
 
 This, ill the original draft, was the last stanza but one. After the cpi- 
 tapli was added, the first draft of it contained tlie following exquisite lines: 
 
 " There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year, 
 
 By hands unseen are showers of violets found ; 
 
 The redbreast loves to build and warble near. 
 
 And little footsteps lightly print the ground." 
 9* 
 
210 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 had. St, Real has left us a history of the Spanish conspi- 
 racy against Venice hardly inferior to the thrilHng scenes 
 which it suggested to the tender heart and picturesque 
 imagination of Otway. But unfortunately the ambition of 
 equalling Sallust led him to introduce circumstances which 
 he had no means of knowing, and the false coloring which 
 he thus gave to the narrative was probably one of the rea- 
 sons Avliich led a modern historian to call the whole story in 
 question.* 
 
 ]Mr. Irving has taken advantage of every opportunity to 
 introduce appropriate details ; seasoning his narrative with 
 characteristic anecdotes, which give a pleasant relief to the 
 general gravity of the subject, and serve to bring out those 
 familiar traits, without which our knowledge of a man is 
 always indefinite and unsatisfactory. But he has displayed 
 superior discretion in the choice of them, accepting nothing 
 which was not trustworthy, and rejecting those idle stories 
 which float loosely in the wake of every great man, without 
 any competent witness to vouch for their authenticity. 
 
 It may seem superfluous to speak of Mr. Irving's style ; 
 
 * La Harpe apologizes for him with considerable ingenuity: " Les de- 
 tails d'une conspiration aussi singuliere que celle qu'il ecrivait ont natu- 
 rellement une teinte un peu romanesque," (Cours de Litt., Vol. ix., p. 
 346.) Daru has devoted the thirty-first book of his Histoirc de Venise to 
 an anti-Venetian exposition of the question, which has been fully met by 
 Tiepolo in his Osservazioni, and by Botta in his Storia d'ltalia. 
 
iRvi.N(;\s \Avi-: OF \VAsiiiN<;r«)N. 211 
 
 but it is so rcrrcshiiiL:; to meet with :i work written in such 
 good taste, and witli so graceful an adherence to the jnirc 
 traditions of our hmguage, tliat we canm^l resist the teni})- 
 tation of dwelling for a moment u})on the grateful theme. 
 Every age has a conventional style of its own, arising fi-(jm 
 circumstances peculiar to itself, and reflecting, with more 
 or less iidelity, its own characteristics. 80 long as the 
 influences under which it grew up retain their })Ower, it 
 continues to hold its place as the popular standard. But 
 110 sooner do they cease to act, than it begins to lose 
 its distinctive features and gradually to assume those of 
 another period. Still there is an element in it which 
 resists this constant tendency to change, and preserves 
 itself with more or less purity through the entire series of 
 transformations. This element is the genius of the lan- 
 guage, a lithe and delicate spirit, assuming Avith miracu- 
 lous flexibility a strange variety of forms, bending to the 
 strong will, humoring the playful caprice, diflfusing itself 
 with subtile expansion throughout the whole body of litera- 
 ture, and giving to the infinite creations of mind the form 
 and lineaments of national unity. Thus, while there is 
 much in which the writers of different ages differ, there is 
 something in which they agree ; and this point of agree- 
 ment furnishes one of the tests by which individual style 
 should be judged. 
 Some hold the great Avriters of their language in such 
 
212 BIOGKAPHICAX STUDIES. 
 
 veneration, that they hardly venture to use a phrase which 
 has not received their sanction, and never seem to feel 
 sure of themselves unless when treading in their footsteps. 
 Others, tempering their reverence for the past by a cheer- 
 ful recognition of the changes which the progress of 
 society and the rise of new arts and inventions introduce 
 into the forms of speech, readily admit Avhatever may be 
 necessary for the adequate expression of thought. A third 
 class seem to throw themselves recklessly into the current, 
 with an utter disregard of aU the old landmarks and 
 cherished associations of their fathers, confounding innova- 
 tion with j^i'ogress, and novelty with reform, too proud of 
 the age they live in to remember how much it owes to the 
 ages that went before, and filling their pages so lavishly 
 with new hifusions of form and diction, as to make it diffi- 
 cult to recognise in the unnatural mixture the genuine 
 characteristics of their mother tongue. 
 
 Xo period of English literature has offered stronger 
 temptations to writers of this latter class than our own, in 
 wiiich the seeds of novelty have not only been scattered 
 broadcast over the whole surface of society, but have, by 
 the magnitude of our discoveries and the rapidity of our 
 progress, become intermingled with our common trains of 
 thought and all the habits of life. To resist this besetting 
 sin, to acknowledge the claims of the age without blindly 
 giving one's self up to it, to detect those analogies which, 
 
ii:\iN(;s j.iFi: oi' \\Asm\(;rux. 213 
 
 riiiiniiii,^ tliroiiuli {\\v entire lexture uf ;i language, eiiuljlo 
 the judie'unis seliohir to })reserve its true s})iiit, even wlien 
 he ealls u|K)n il to diseoiirse of things wliich seem to lie 
 beyon<l tlie limits assigned to it by its greatest masters, is 
 a proof of a just and }>hih)S(>}>liic mind, and must be 
 regarded as a merit of no eommon order. 
 
 Of the three great Ameriean historians Mr. Prcscott, 
 perhaps, has the fewest of those characteristic traits which 
 may be regarded as distinctive of our own times. The 
 general structure of his style resembles that of the best 
 parts of the last century, though every sentence lias that 
 line flavor of general culture which can be acquired only 
 by a long and careful study of the most polished writers of 
 every age. His sentences have an easy and natural How, 
 adapting themselves with graceful flexibility to the difler- 
 ent forms of expression which the subject requires, from a 
 full picture to a simple outline. The rhythm of his periods 
 is not always apparent, or, at least, not always prominent, 
 for they are addressed to the eye rather than to the ear ; 
 but there is a sweet imdertone of natural melody running 
 through them, which mingles pleasantly with their general 
 flow, and fills the mind with an agreeable sense of har- 
 mony. There is no ai)parent eflbrt about them. Every- 
 thing is natural and easy, like the free giving of what has 
 been freely received. You may sometimes feel the want 
 of energy ; of lucidness, never. The words are for the 
 
214 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES, 
 
 most part liaj)pily chosen, indicating a judicious use of the 
 different elements of our vocabulary without any exclusive 
 preference. He does not indulge largely in epithets, 
 though those which lie employs are beautiful and appro- 
 priate. He lias none of those fiery sentences which blaze 
 up with spontaneous combustion, as if they were about to 
 consume the paper on which they are written ; nor yet any 
 of that other cast, so common among our modish writers, 
 which seem to have been shot out like arrows, paining 
 the sensitive ear by the incessant twang of the bow- 
 string. But he expresses his thoughts with a genuine sim- 
 plicity, a natural warmth, an unaffected dignity, that bring 
 them before the mind of the reader as distinctly as they 
 arose in his own, and leave them there like the recollection 
 of a sunny landscape or a sweet song, w^hich dwells in the 
 soul as an unfailing source of secret refreshment. 
 
 In striking contrast with these natural graces is the bril- 
 liant and elaborate tessellation of Mr. Bancroft's style, into 
 which rich and Aaiied learning and wide experience of life 
 have been wrought with lavish profusion. It is evident 
 that Mr. Bancroft has studied the art of writing with 
 uncommon care. His sentences are shaped and modulated 
 with unwearied pains. The words are inserted in their 
 places with a curious felicity. The epithets are drawn 
 freely from a wide range of reading, and set off the thought 
 with dazzling brilliancy. Like Mtiller, the eloquent histo- 
 
iuviN<;'s LIKE OK \v asiiin«;tox. 215 
 
 ri:in of Swil/crl.-iiid, lie loves to iiitci-wcuvc with liis nwii 
 tlie I;iML^ii:iL!^c' of the texts lie diaws from, loiiniiiL; :i lieh 
 niosaie of skilfully assorted colors. He aifeets, too, a sen- 
 tentious eneriry, and the forms of ahstrael ihoui^ht. Dut 
 the energy of manner is not always sustained hy energy of 
 matter, and a portrait or an exposition sometimes runs out 
 into several pages of concise sentences. His periods are 
 addressed to the ear as much, if not more, than to tlie 
 eye; and you would say that he could never entirely divest 
 himself of the feeling that he was speaking to the multi- 
 tude. He draws largely from the science and vocabulary 
 of the times, and seems to feel a peculiar pleasure in pre- 
 serving the coloring of his own age in his most elaborate 
 pictures of the past. He never grows weary of touching 
 and retouching till every detail has been carefully finished. 
 But his vivid imagination has somewhat fragmentary in it, 
 givhig to parts a prominence which mars at times the har- 
 mony of the whole. And thus the general effect is like 
 that of a hari)ist, who, while he commands your admira- 
 tion by brilliant execution, dwells too long upon single 
 chords to produce a gratifying sense of harmony. His 
 individual sentences are never obscure, but the chapters do 
 not always leave distinct impressions. He has many beau- 
 ties, some of them of a very high order, which yet lose 
 much of their charm by the lack of simplicity and repose. 
 We are too constantly reminded of the effort by which 
 
216 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 they were produced, and are seldom allowed to forget 
 the artist m his work. 
 
 Ill Mr. Irving's style there is less of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury than m Mr. Bancroft's, and more than in Mr. Pres- 
 cott's. The character of his early works brought him into 
 that kind of contact with his contemporaries which neces- 
 sarily affects the form of expression by its influence upon 
 the forms of thought. In painting objects that lay under 
 his eye, he naturally employed the language of daily life, 
 and when he came to speak of the manners and arts of 
 other ages, or to indulge in the genial exercise of creation, 
 he had already caught as large a share of the characteris- 
 tics of his own age as was suited to the nature and bent of , 
 his mind. His favorite studies, at the same time, served to 
 moderate the effect of these contemporary influences, and 
 to aid him in forming a style in which the genius of the 
 language is preserved without sacrificing the genius of the 
 age. He had conceived an early passion for the old poets 
 and moralists, and had taken a special delight in those 
 exquisite ballads into which men fresh from the people 
 poured all the poetry of common life. He had made him- 
 self familiar with popular traditions, had studied the an- 
 tique drama, and, living in daily intercourse with men of 
 polite conversation, had gathered around himself an atmo- 
 sphere of pure literature, in Avhich the best elements of the 
 old and the new were naturally and harmoniously blended. 
 
IRVIXG'S LIFE OF WASIIIN'GTOX. 21 7 
 
 ^fr. Irvlii«;'s l:ini^u:it;-o is i^ciiuino Kiiiclisli, witli few 
 words tliat .Vddison or Goldsmitli would not liavt* used, 
 and few lluit would not liave been readily understood a 
 hundred years ago in the same sense in which he enii)loys 
 them. Tiie arts and inventions of the age have left just 
 traces enough in his style to siiow tliat he l)elongs to a 
 period in whieh great clianges have been wrought in 
 society hy tlie j)rogress of natural and social science. lie 
 is fond of idioms, with wliich he is copiously supplied hy 
 extensive reixding, directed and enlivened by the habits of 
 good society. He is usually very ha})py in the choice both 
 of his words and of his idioms, and it is very seldom that 
 one could change either without jeopardhig the thought. 
 He evidently feels the poAver of a word in its place,* 
 and some of his pictures owe half their beauty to a felici- 
 tous selection of terms. There is a richness and splendor 
 of diction in his essays and tales, which, in his histories, is 
 sobered down to a calm affluence, always adequate to the 
 occasion, but never overflowing in those brilliant periods 
 which are the legitimate ornament of imaginative composi- 
 tion. 
 
 In the structure of his sentences there is a pleasing vari- 
 ety, although, like most moderns, he prefers short ones. 
 
 * That faculty which Buileau justly makes a merit in Malhcrbe : — 
 "D'un mot mis en sa place cnseigua le pouvoir." 
 
 Art Poetique, Ch. i. 133. 
 
218 BIOGKAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 Their rhythm is singularly rich and sweet, free from 
 every taint of monotony, and always gratifying the ear by 
 a spontaneous adaptation to the thought. Indeed, they 
 leave upon the mind the same kind of impression which 
 poetry does when it has once become associated with sweet 
 music ; one never recalls the verses without fancying that 
 he hears the accompaniment. 
 
 All is clear and distinct in his periods, which seem like 
 mirrors to his thoughts, reflecting every idea so truthfully 
 that you feel, while reading him, as if you were looking di- 
 rectly into his mind. And this arises in a great measure 
 from his never attempting a style of writing that is not in 
 harmony with his habits of thought ; so that his words be- 
 come the natural expression of his conceptions. Without 
 any ambitious endeavors to appear strong, he always leaves 
 strong impressions.* The image that has found its way to 
 the mind through the medium of his words is sure to remain 
 ^here in all its freshness. 
 
 We cannot call his style simple ; for it is too rich for ab- 
 solute simplicity. And yet it is so natural, the ornaments 
 are so chaste, the words seem to drop so readily into their 
 places, the epithets seem to rise so spontaneously from the 
 subject, the periods seem to flow so easily into one another 
 
 * Justifying the admirable precept of Seneca, — '' Debet enim semper 
 plus esse virium in actore, quam iu onere." — De Trauq. an. 5, 
 
IKV1\(;\S I.IFi: ol' WASIIINCToN. L'lO 
 
 tli.'it you iiv'Vi'i- think of jjaiisiiii^Mo rcllccl on t lie lalxn- w liidi 
 it must have (tost to hMrn how to usi- lauL^niai^c so skilftillv. 
 There is a hiuli t<»ii(' of cuhiirc ahout it wliich cannot he 
 mistaken, l)ut wliich whih- it shows liow conversant he 
 must have been with the hest writers, is iVee from all tinc- 
 ture of pedantry. One may icad liis si-ntences ettectively, 
 but cannot deehiim lliem, lie has more movement than 
 Mr. Prescott, more fluidity than Mr. Bancroft. If we were 
 called uj)on to name the leading characteristics of his stvle, 
 we should say that they were rhythm, artistic conception, 
 and a constant play of fancy. It is to his delicate percep- 
 tion of rhythmical beauty that his sentT'uces owe their just 
 and harmonious i)roportions. It is by his rare i)ower of 
 artistic conception that he enriches them with pictures full 
 of life and movement. And the vivid play of his fancy 
 gathers for him, from the wide realms of animate and ina- 
 nimate nature, that store of felicitous epithets which illumi- 
 nates them as with a perpetual glow of soft and rosy light. 
 You never willingly lay down a volume of his till you have 
 finished it ; and when you take it up anew, you still feel the 
 pleasure grow upon you as you read. "Fascinating" is 
 the M'ord that we should most readily apply to him as a 
 writer, so irresistible is the influence which he gains over 
 us, and. so serene a sense of secret satisfaction does he dif- 
 fuse through the mind by the graceful flow of his periods. 
 We think, therefore, that Mr. Irving has succeeded per- 
 
220 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 fectly in the task which he had set himself, — a history of 
 Washington which should bring him home to every heart 
 by bringing him distinctly before every mind. A psycho- 
 logical analysis of character, like Coleridge's Pitt, or a phi- 
 losophical generalization, like Guizot's Essay, however va- 
 luable for a certain class of readers, — and surely their value 
 cannot be rated too highly, — would have failed to meet the 
 wants of the thousands who wish to know what Washing- 
 ton did in order to win for himself the holy title of " Father 
 of his Country.'' The historian of Washington is the great 
 teacher of the nation, who tells us what sacrifices it cost our 
 fathers to prepare for us the blessings that we enjoy ; what 
 heroism was required to overcome the obstacles that beset 
 their path ; what self-denial it demanded to forget them- 
 selves in their love for posterity ; how strong their wills, 
 how firm their hearts, how sound their judgment, how se- 
 rene their wisdom. We should rise from the volume with 
 the whole of the wondrous history imprinted upon our 
 memories, and with our hearts glowing with fervent grati- 
 tude and generous patriotism. We should feel that a great 
 soul has been laid open before us, and that we have been 
 permitted to look into its innermost recesses ; that we have 
 been brought nearer to one in the touch of whose garments 
 are healing and strength ; and that, henceforth, when trials 
 come upon us, and doubts assail us, and our hearts sicken 
 and grow faint at the contemplation of evils for which we 
 
iiiviN<;'s LiFi: OF WAsiiiN(.r(>N. 221 
 
 can <lisc(»\('r no cure, llic iinai::!' oftlic i^ncat and i^mxl in.-m 
 will rise bclure iis liko .'i messenger iVoni licaNcn to tv.u-h 
 us the i>o\ver oriailli and the lieauty (»f virtue. 
 
 We reL!:ar(l the ]>riHiant success of these volumes as an 
 occasion of joyful con<j^ratuIali«>ii to the; citizens of our 
 repu1)lic. It is eminently :i national woi'k, upon which 
 they can all look Avitli unminL;le(l pride. It has not 
 merely enriched our literature with a ja-oduction of rare 
 beauty, but has given new force to those local associations 
 which bind us, as with hallowed ties, to the spots where 
 great men lived and great things were done. Few will 
 now^ cross the Delaware w'ithout remembering that Christ- 
 mas uight of tempest and victory. Who can look ui)on 
 the heights of Brooklyn without fancying that, as he 
 gazes, the spires and streets fade from his view, while in 
 their stead stern and anxious faces rise through the misty 
 air, and amid them the majestic form of Washington, 
 with a smile of triumph just lighting for a moment his 
 care-worn features, at the thought of the prize he has 
 snatched from the grasp of a proud and exulting enemy ? 
 And Princeton, and Valley Forge, and Monmouth, and 
 the crowning glory of Yorktown, — how do they live 
 anew for us ! With what perennial freshness will their 
 names descend to posterity ! And those two noble 
 streams that flow to the sea through alternations of pas- 
 toral beauty and rugged grandeur, — the lovely Potomac, 
 
222 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES. 
 
 the majestic Hudson, — how have they become blended 
 by these magic pages in indissoluble association. The one 
 the cherished home of AYashington, the seat of his domes- 
 tic joys, his rural delights; looked to with eager yearning 
 from the din of camps and battle-fields ; sighed for with 
 weary longing amid the pomp and pageantry of official 
 greatness ; to which he returned so gladly when his task 
 had been accomplished ; and which, dying with the 
 serenity of Christian resignation, he consecrated by the 
 holiest of all associations, the patriot's grave ; — the other 
 the scene of cares and triumphs ; on whose banks he had 
 passed slow days of hope deferred ; whose waters had 
 borne him to and fro through checkered years of dubious 
 fortune ; and had witnessed the touching sublimity of his 
 farewell to his companions in arms, and the simple gran- 
 deur of his reception as first President of the country he 
 had saved ! How meet was it that, while his ashes repose 
 beside the waters of the Potomac, his life should have 
 been written on the banks of the Hudson ! 
 
POEMS 
 
 10 
 
REMEMBRANCES. 
 
 L 
 
 Oft at tho hour when evening throws 
 
 Its first famt shades o'er vale and liill, 
 While half the scene in twilight glows, 
 
 And half in sunlight slumbers still, 
 The thought of all that we have been, 
 
 And hoped, and feared, on life's long way, 
 Remerobrances of joy and pain, 
 
 Come mingling with the close of day. 
 
 II. 
 The distant scene of youth's bright dream, 
 
 The smiling green, the shady tree, 
 The murmur of the grass-fringed stream, 
 
 The bounding of the torrent fi-ee : 
 The friend, whose well-known voice no more 
 
 Shall fondly thrill the listening ear, 
 The charms that love's first visions wore, 
 
 And disappointment's pangs, are hero. 
 
 in. 
 But soft o'er each reviving scene, 
 
 The chastening hues of memory spread, 
 
228 roEMS. 
 
 And smiling, each dark thought between, 
 Hope brightens every tear we shed. 
 
 Oh, thus when life's long eve comes on, 
 And death's dark shadows round me lie, 
 
 May parting beams from memory's sun 
 Blend softly in my evening sky. 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 "What is life but self-denial, 
 Daily care and daily trial : 
 Hopes that lead us blindly on, 
 And vanish ere the goal be won ? 
 
 "What is hfe but toil and sorrow, 
 Still renewed with each to-morrow ? 
 Toil that speeds the frame's decay, 
 "While sorrow wears the heart away ? 
 
 Toil I and is there then no cure ? 
 Live we only to endure ? 
 Hoping still, and still believing, 
 Belief and hope alike deceiving ? 
 
 Pause 1 the trial soon is o'er, 
 Others, too, have toiled before : 
 And the blessings that we see 
 Are the fruits they've won for thee. 
 
roicMS. 229 
 
 Won una sm.i:gling hopes and fears: 
 Wou by sacrilico aiul tears I 
 As they labored, lal)()r tliou, 
 And thou slialt rest, as tliej do now. 
 is-ta. 
 
 THE VOICES OF THE WIND. 
 
 I. 
 The midniglit bell is tolling, and the wind, with solemn chime, 
 Fills up the hollow pauses like harp to a poet's rhyme ,• 
 And as the deep vibrations fall slowly on my ear, 
 Why to my l^uruing eyelid thus starts the unbidden tear ? 
 
 IL 
 
 Ah 1 well I know that deep-toned bell, for many a weary day. 
 It has tolled for me, as now it tolls, the restless hours away ; 
 And well I know that solemn chime, which ever on land and sea, 
 Of nature's thousand voices, was the dearest voice to rae. 
 
 III. 
 In many a rugged mountain pass, 'neath many a ruined tower, 
 Have I listened with throbbing bosom to those strains of mystic 
 
 power, 
 TQl their music fell upon my heart like their breath on my feverish 
 
 brow, 
 And my tears gushed forth unbidden, but welcome, as they do now. 
 
230 POEMS. 
 
 IV, 
 
 'Twas not a wail of sorrow, but a wild, unearthly tone ; 
 
 That stole into my spirit with a magic all its own ; 
 
 Full of sweet, mysterious music, like the gush of hidden springs, 
 
 And of healing, like that fountain that was stirred by angel wings. 
 
 V. 
 
 But there came a time, a dreary time ; the summer sky was chill, 
 The spring seemed sear and yellow, and those voices, too, were still ; 
 For they left me in my hour of need, all desolate and lone. 
 And I never thought to hear agam their dear, familiar tone. 
 
 VI. 
 
 But now, why thrills my bosom as it never thrilled before ? 
 What mean those mystic voices I had thought to hear no more ? 
 Is it promise— is it warning? may I hope? must I despair? 
 speak 1 fulfil your mission, ye voices of the air ! 
 
 Speak! by these gushing tears I bid you haste and tell! 
 Speak! by these deep pulsations that in my bosom swell ! 
 Te have fanned a cheek of roses, ye have kissed a spotless brow, 
 There's a sweetness in your accents I never felt till now. 
 
 vni. 
 
 For whom that cheek of roses, for whom that spotless brow? 
 And that glance which thrills my bosom, as it ne'er was thriUed tiU 
 now? 
 
roEMS. 231 
 
 And those tones so soft and gentle, and those thoughts so p\jro and 
 
 high ; 
 And that heart that might lovo so fondly — speak, spirits of tlic sky 1 
 
 IX. 
 
 Ye are silent all, ye heartless ones, all silent to my prayer; 
 
 To have read my bosom's secret, and ye laugh at my despair; 
 
 Wliy wake me from my toqjor ; why stir my soul again. 
 
 With visions of love and hope, if my hope and love are vain ? 
 1851. 
 
 THE PROMISE RING. 
 
 I PLACE it on thy finger — I enshrine thee in my heart, 
 'Tis an emblem of the future, 'tis a pledge we ne'er shaU part ; 
 Hopes unnumbered, countless blessings, every sweet and holy thing 
 Dawns on me as on thy finger thus I place the promise ring. 
 
 Tranquil slumbers, happy wakings, hope for every sunny hour, 
 Firm resolve, and calm endeavor, caUing forth each latent power ; 
 Every heavenward aspiration, every joy that life can bring, 
 Dawns on me as on thy finger thus I place the promise ring. 
 
 Guard it, dearest I guard it closely 1 heaven hath registered our vow ; 
 Firm, enduring, pure, and holy, is the bond that binds us now : 
 Source of all our hopes and blessings ; source whence all our duties spring 
 Pledge and emblem, on thy finger thus I place the promise ring. 
 185S. 
 
232 POEMS. 
 
 THE SABBATH EVENING WALK 
 
 "We sat till evening sank upon the vale 
 "With dewy shadows soft ; the mountain tops 
 "With clear sharp outline gleaming still in light, 
 And at our feet, meadow, and waving grain, 
 And orchards clustering round the village roof! 
 Our seat was in the shadow of a grove 
 Of fir trees and tall pines, amid whose tops, 
 Heavy with dew, the delicate-fingered wind 
 Played mournful airs. Anon from out the vale 
 Came various sounds commingled, pleasing aU ; 
 Watch-dog and lowing herd, and children's laugh, 
 And vesper song of some belated bird. 
 Once, too, the village bell awoke ; a peal 
 Solemn, jet soothing, deep and silvery tones, 
 Floating in liquid cadence on the wind, 
 And minghng with the music of the pines. 
 And this was once thy home ; familiar all 
 To thy dear eyes these scenes so new to mine. 
 Yon dewy vaUey with its sabbath smile, 
 Yon fir-clad mountains girding it around. 
 And yonder village with its single street. 
 Beheld thy joyous girlhood, and the growth 
 Of that pure spirit whose sweet ministry 
 Hath taught my world-worn heart to trust again. 
 
POEMS. 233 
 
 Ah I liow iiiysU'riously tlio tliread.s of lifo 
 Aro Avovon. In tho sunsliino of those days, 
 No revelation camo to toll thy heart 
 For whom its stores of love woro ripening ; 
 Nor 'mid tho shadows that encompassed rao 
 Had even one faint sunbeam pierced I and now, 
 Hand within hand, and heart on heart reposing. 
 My sadder nature drawing light from thee, 
 And tempering tho buoyancy of thine, 
 "Wo stand, and bless together this sweet valo. 
 And treasure up for memory's dearest page 
 Our sabbath evening's walk beneath the pines. 
 1S54. 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 
 
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