The absence of complexity in the language and intent of sculpture is always obvious in the expositions of its votaries. In no class of men have we found such distinct and scientific views of Art. One lovely evening in spring, we stood with Bartolini beside the corpse of a beautiful child. Bereavement in a foreign land has a desolation of its own, and the afflicted mother desired to carry home a statue of her loved and lost. We conducted the sculptor to the chamber of death, that he might superintend the casts from the body. No sooner did his eyes fall upon it, than they glowed with admiration and filled with tears. He waved the assistants aside, clasped his hands, and gazed spellbound upon the dead child. Its brow was ideal in contour, the hair of wavy gold, the cheeks of angelic outline. "How beautiful!" exclaimed Bartolini; and drawing us to the bedside, with a mingled awe and intelligence, he pointed out how the rigidity of death coincided, in this fair young creature, with the standard of Art;—the very hands, he declared, had stiffened into lines of beauty; and over the beautiful clay we thus learned from the lips of a venerable sculptor how intimate and minute is the cognizance this noble art takes of the language of the human form. Greenough would unfold by the hour the exquisite relation between function and beauty, organization and use,—tracing therein a profound law and an illimitable truth. No more genial spectacle greeted us in Rome than Thorwaldsen at his Sunday-noon receptions;—his white hair, kindly smile, urbane manners, and unpretending simplicity gave an added charm to the wise and liberal sentiments he expressed on Art,—reminding us, in his frank eclecticism, of the spirit in which Humboldt cultivates science, and Sismondi history. Nor less indicative of this clear apprehension was the thorough solution we have heard Powers give, over the mask taken from a dead face, of the problem, how its living aspect was to modify its sculptured reproduction; or the original views expressed by Palmer as to the treatment of the eyes and hair in marble. During Crawford's last visit to America, we accompanied him to examine a portrait of Washington by Wright. It boasts no elegance of arrangement or refinement of execution; at a glance it was evident that the artist had but a limited sense of beauty and lacked imagination; but, on the other hand, he possessed what, for a sculptor's object,—namely, facts of form and feature,—is more important,—conscience. Crawford declared this was the only portrait of Washington which literally represented his costume; having recently examined the uniform, sword, etc., he was enabled to identify the strands of the epaulette, the number of buttons, and even the peculiar seal and watch-key. A man so faithful to details, so devoted to authenticity, Crawford argued, was reliable in more essential things. He remarked, that one of his own greatest difficulties in the equestrian statue had been to reconcile the shortness of the neck in Stuart's portrait and Houdon's statue (the body of which was not taken from life) with the stature of Washington,—there being an anatomical incongruity therein. "I had determined," he continued, "to follow what the laws of Nature and all precedent indicate as the right proportion,—otherwise it would be impossible to make a graceful and impressive statue; but in this picture, bearing such remarkable evidence of authenticity, I find the correct distance between chin and breast."
American travellers in Italy will sometimes be repelled by a certain narrowness in the critical estimate of modern sculptors; though of all arts sculpture demands and justifies the most liberal eclecticism. Thus, a broad line of demarcation has been arbitrarily drawn between high finish and prolific invention, originality and superficial skill; as if these merits could not be united, or were incompatible with each other,—and that, invariably, works of "outward skill elaborate" are "of inward less exact." A Boston critic denominates Powers "a sublime mechanic," as if there were only physical imitation in his busts,
