In the fifteenth century, and earlier, the lives of artists were adventurous; political relations gave scope to incident; and Michel Angelo, Salvator Rosa, and Benvenuto Cellini furnish almost as many anecdotes as memorials of genius. In modern times, however, vicissitude has chiefly diversified the uniform and tranquil existence of the artist; his struggles with fortune, and not his relations to public events, have given external interest to his biography. It is the mental rather than the outward life which is fraught with significance to the painter and sculptor; consciousness more than experience affords salient points in his career. How the executive are trained to embody the creative powers, through what struggles dexterity is attained, and by what reflection and earnest musing and observant patience and blest intuitions original achievements glimmer upon the fancy, grow mature by thought, correct through the study of Nature, and are finally realized in action,—these and such as these inward revelations constitute the actual life of the artist. The mere events of Crawford's existence are neither marvellous nor varied; his early love of imitative pastime, his fixed purpose, his resort to stone-cutting as the nearest available expedient for the gratification of that instinct to copy and create form which so decidedly marks an aptitude for sculpture, his visit to Rome, the self-denial and the lonely toil of his novitiate, his rapid advancement in both knowledge and skill, and his gradual recognition as a man of original mind and wise enthusiasm are but the normal characteristics of his fraternity. Circumstances, however, give a singular prominence and pathos to these usual facts of artist-life. When Crawford began his professional career, sculpture, as an American pursuit, was almost as rare as painting at the time of West's advent in Rome; to excel therein was a national distinction, having a freshness and personal interest such as the votaries of older countries did not share; as the American representative of his art at Rome, even in the eyes of his comrades, and especially in the estimation of his countrymen, he long occupied an isolated position. The qualities of the man,—his patient industry,—the new and unexpected superiority in different branches of his art, so constantly exhibited,—the loyal, generous, and frank spirit of his domestic and social life,—the freedom, the faith, and the assiduity that endeared him to so large and distinguished a circle, were individual claims often noted by foreigners and natives in the Eternal City as honorable to his country. It was remembered there, when he died, that the hand now cold had warmly grasped in welcome his compatriots, shouldered a musket as one of the republican guard, and been extended with sympathy and aid to his less prosperous brothers. At the meeting of fellow-artists, convened to pay a tribute to his memory, every nation of Europe was represented, and the most illustrious of living English sculptors was the first to propose a substantial memorial to his name. What his nativity and his character thus so eminently contributed to signalize, the offspring of his genius, the manner of his death, solemnly confirmed. By no sudden fever, such as insidiously steals from the Roman marshes and poisons the blood of its victims,—by no violent epidemic, like those which have again and again devastated the cities of Europe,—by no illusive decline, whereby vital power is sapped unconsciously and with mild gradations, and which, in that soft clime, has peopled with the dust of strangers the cemetery which the pyramid of Cestius overshadows and the heart of Shelley consecrates,—by none of these familiar gates of death did Crawford pass on; but, in the meridian of his powers and his fame, in the climax of his artistic career, in the noontide of his most genial activity, a corrosive tumor on the inner side of the orbit of the eye encroached month by month, week by week, hour by hour, upon the sources of life. Medical skill freed the brain from its deadly pressure, but could not divert its organic affinity. The
