One of the most remarkable examples is found in the subject of the following sketch. The materials from which it is composed are derived from much correspondence, for which we are under special obligations to Wayman Crow, Esq., of St. Louis, the early friend of the artist, and to Dr. Alfred Hosmer, her kinsman, now of Watertown, Mass.; from notices and descriptions of her works in various periodicals, and from narratives published several years ago by Mrs. L. Maria Child, in a Western magazine, and Mrs. Ellet, in her volume of the "Artist Women of all Ages and Countries." The latter gives a consistent portraiture of Miss Hosmer, but has been led into inaccuracies in regard to several of the alleged facts. The notice of Tuckerman, in his book of "American Artist Life," is quite too meagre to be just and valuable. Mrs. Child, who was a family friend, and at one time nearest neighbor of Dr. Hosmer, and who wrote in his house, furnished a very pleasing and reliable sketch. Great care has been taken to preserve in these pages everything which is valuable, and to exclude whatever is not authentic.
Harriet G. Hosmer was born in Watertown, Mass., October 9, 1830. Undoubtedly she was endowed with rare genius by nature; and the incidents of her early life evidently conduced much to its development in her chosen pursuit, and to the bold and unique traits of character for which she is distinguished.
Her father was an eminent physician, whose wife and elder daughter died of consumption while she was yet a child, leaving her the only domestic solace of his afflictions, and hope of his heart. She inherited a delicate constitution, and, as if he saw the same spectral hand which had desolated his home reaching out for her, he made the preservation of her health the first consideration in his system of juvenile training. It was a maxim with him, "There is a whole lifetime for the education of the mind; but the body develops in a few years,
