Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

stained with a single tear; there was no set-off against his laurels in the miseries and curses of mankind. Yet in the midst of all this, no man could preserve more entirely the perfect modesty of true genius. His bust in the Vatican is a magnificent epitome of the man. The upraised eyes, the open mouth, breathless with holy and noble thought, the radiant placidity, resting, like the light of another world, on all his solemn features, give some faint conceptions of the spirit which once could lend all this its animation, and which was as uncontaminated, as unclogged, by all those miserable debasements which generally cling about the sons of mere earth. Canova felt his philosophy. He smiled at the follies and contentions of the parvenu. He was raised to the title of Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur, by Napoleon; and to the rank of Marchese d'Ischia, by the late Pope; yet I never saw on his cards any other than that first of titles, "Antonio Canova.' He was disinterested in the extreme; he gave with still more facility than he gained; but his gifts were judicious: it was liberality, and not profusion. One of his first acts of the kind at Rome was that magnificent dedication to the Genius of his Country in the Pantheon; which, in my mind, considering the means and the donor, far eclipses the most splendid donations of all our modern princes or kings. He selected from the crowd of rising sculptors in Italy, such amongst them as gave the strongest evidences of exertion and talent. To each he permitted the choice of their subject. The expense was his own. Thus a series of colossal portraits in marble was formed, of everything great and good which Italy, through a long line of intellectual glory, has given to the admiration of the world. They have since been removed to the Capitol, and stand in proud rivalry beside the ancient dead. The Marquisate of Ischia produces a revenue of 1300 crowns. The day it was bestowed by the Pope, Canova conferred it upon the Academy of St. Luke, for the education and

encouragement of young artists. This was spoken of at Rome, but thought natural. No one thinks there of degrading their art, by making it the tool of adding pelf to pelf. This English propensity of fortune-making, (with which no true genius can possibly co-exist,) is unknown there. They cannot understand that happiness which consists in sacrificing for life, all the elegant aspirings and pursuits, all the means which are calculated to make life happy. He was frugal, temperate, simple; religious without cant-charitable without ostentation

dignified by philosophy-courteous from instinct-the worshiped of all circles, but the more than idol, the fondly-beloved brother and father of his own. I never heard a single word of censure drop from any human lip against Canova. Envy was silent at his name. The homage was as universal as it was voluntary. The day of his death (kings here die quietly) was a day of public calamity and lamentation at Rome. Another star had fallen from her heaven, and its magnitude and brightness were never more truly measured than by the darkness and gloom which it left behind.

The merits of Canova, as a sculptor, would be estimated by a very false standard, were they to be considered in reference only to the man himself. But a great portion of his glory is derivable from his position in the world of art.

He stands between two ages: two great epochs, two races, essentially and strongly distinct. It must be remembered that he preceded Thorwaltzen, and succeeded to Bernini. He altogether revolutionized the art. The men before him had gone on, century after century, laboriously exaggerating the defects and vices of their predecessors. Littleness had been systematized, and false theory reduced to falser practice. Arrogance and self-glory had replaced patient and deep inquiry: study was despised as derogatory to genius, and genius was only known by the more audacious flagrancy of its absurdities and abuse. Canova struck down all this, and set

up a reformation great and good in its stead. Bernini is recognizable now and then, it is true, in his more early productions, but it is by intervals only; and every step he took in his art removed him farther from him and his false school, and closer to antiquity and truth. His genius was truly of feminine and gentle cast. He reluctantly trod on "the burning marl" of high and haughty thought; the tempestuous and convulsing passions disdained his grasp; he had not probed pain, he could not dignify torture: his sorcery was not over the grand, the mighty, the magnificent ; the vasty beings of the obscure were creations on which he had never dared to look. But wherever the overburthened spirit of woman's love was dimly to be shadowed forth-wherever the slumber of perfect pleasure was to be breathed into delightful existence-wherever the rejoicing of immortal youth, or the glorious consciousness of transcendent

beauty, or the welcomings of celestial visitations, or the burning aspirations after an undying elysium of tranquillity and enjoyment, were to be poured abroad into lasting shape, then, indeed, had he at his beck all forms of surpassing loveliness, and grace, and light, with which the imaginations of painter, sculptor, or poet, have ever yet stood forth to the wondering adoration of their species. The same spirit worked in his very touch. He smoothed away into the softness of life all the asperities of the marble he almost seemed to paint into it; every harshness melted and fled before the wonderful "impasto" of Canova. To his successors he has left a great legacy-a glorious example. Many may yet equal him in different walks, none can ever equal him in the same. Thorwaltzen is not his imitator, but his rival; but it must never be forgotten, Thorwaltzen has succeeded Canova, and not dethroned Bernini.

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES.

A FRAGMENT FROM THE "NOCTES.

Shepherd.-FEw owtobecograffers and mortification for our manifold sins are verawcious historians.

Tickler. The man does not live who dares to outrage humanity by a full, true, and particular account, of everything he has said, done, and thought, during even the least guilty year of his youth, manhood, or old age.

Shepherd.-Especially auld age. Oh! never-never-never-but at the great day o' Judgment, will there be a revelation o' an auld sinner's heart! I appeal to you, Mr. North, for the awfu' truth o' that apothegm. Are na ye an auld sinner, sir?

and iniquities. Yet, my dear James, if, as I believe you do, you mean nothing personal in your question,—and you know I hate all personality either in my own case, or that of othersbut interrogate me as a representative of human nature,-then do I mostcheerfully, I was going to say-but I correct myself-most sorrowfully confess, that I am indeed—an old sinner. Tickler.-So am I.

Shepherd. And sae I howp to bemeaning thereby, merely that I may live till I'm as auld as you, Mr. Tickler, sir, or you, sir, Mr. North. For the only twa perfeck seenonims in the English language are, man and sinner.

North. I do not know, my dear James, that to you or any other man I am bound to confess that; sufficient surely, if I do not deny it. I am not North.-In utter prostration, and a Roman Catholic layman; nor are sacred privacy of soul, I almost think you, James, so far as I understand, a now, and have often felt heretofore, Roman Catholic Priest; nor is the man may make a confessional of the Octagon a Roman Catholic confession- breast of his brother man. Once I al; nor are the Noctes Ambrosianæ had such a friend-and to me he was Roman Catholic nights of penance a priest. He has been so long dead

that it seems to me now, that I have almost forgotten him-and that I remember only that he once lived, and that I once loved him with all my affections. One such friend alone can ever, from the very nature of things, belong to any one human being, how ever endowed by nature and beloved of heaven. He is felt to stand between us and our upbraiding conscience. In his life lies the strength -the power-the virtue of ours-in his death the better half of our whole being seems to expire. Such communion of spirit, perhaps, can only be in existencies rising towards their meridian. As the hills of life cast longer shadows in the westering hours, we grow-I should not say more suspicious, for that may be too strong a word-but more silent, more selfwrapt, more circumspect-less sympathetic even with kindred and congenial natures, who will sometimes, in our almost sullen moods or theirs, seem as if they were kindred and congenial no more-less devoted to Spirituals, that is, to Ideas, so tender, true, beautiful, and sublime, that they seem to be inhabitants of heaven though born of earth, and to float between the two regions angelical and divine-yet felt to be mortal, human still-the Ideas of passions and desires, and affections, and "impulses that come to us in solitude," to whom we breathe out our souls in silence or in almost silent speech, in utterly mute adoration, or in broken hymns of feeling, believing that the holy enthusiasm will go with us through life to the grave, or rather knowing not, or feeling not, that the grave is anything more for us than a mere word with a somewhat mournful sound, and that life is changeless, cloudless, unfading as the heaven of heavens, that lies to the uplifted fancy in blue immortal calm, round the throne of the eternal Jehovah.

Shepherd.-Wi' little trouble, sir, that micht be turned into blank verse, and then, without meanin' to flatter you, 'twould be a noble poem.

North.-Now, James, "to descend from these imaginative heights," what 23 ATHENEUM, VOL. 2, 3d series.

man, who has ever felt thus, would publish his inner spirit in a printed confession, on wire-wove, hot-pressed paper, in three volumes crown octavo, one guinea and a half in boards?

Shepherd. And wait anxiously for the beginning o' every month, to see himsell reviewed in a pack o' paltry periodicals!

North.-Much of himself is gonegone forever-not only from his present being-but even from his memory, even like a thousand long summer days, each so intensely beautiful that it seemed immortal, yet all the splendid series now closed forever and aye. Much remains-with strange transformation-like clear running waters chained by dim fixed frost, or like soft, pure, almost ærial snow-flakes, heaped up into hard, polluted, smoky, sooty wreaths by the road-side; much is reversed into its opposite in nature, joy into grief, mirth into melancholy, hope into despair; and oh! still more mournful, more miserable far, virtue into vice, honor into shame, innocence into guilt ;-while Sin is felt to have leavened the whole mass of our being, and Religion herself, once a radiant angel, now moody as Superstition, now fantastic as Philosophy-or haply but the hem of her garment seen like a disappearing cloud, as an angel still, she evanishes from our short-sighted eyes in heaven!

Shepherd. I hae often wushed, my dear sir, that you would publish a few volumes o' Sermons. I dinna fear to say't, 'cause I believe't true, that in that department Christopher North would be noways inferior to Jeremy Taylor.

North. My dear James, Friendship is like Love-So far from being blind, each-I will not say sees what is notbut magnifies what is—and that, too, to such a degree, that Truth becomes Falsehood.

Shepherd. I believe I was wrangin' you in the comparison. Taylor served in the sanctuary-the inner shrine. Others can only bow down and adore at the threshold, and aneath the vestibule of the temple.

WHO LOVES ME BEST?

BY MARY ANN BROWNE.*

WHO loves me best?-my mother sweet,
Whose every look with love is replete ;
Who held me, an infant, on her knee,-
Who hath ever watched me tenderly;
And yet I have heard my mother say,
That she some time must pass away:
Who then shall shield me from earthly ill:-

Some one must love me better still!

Who loves me best?-my father dear,
Who loveth to have me always near;
He whom I fly each eve to meet,
When past away is the noontide heat;
Who from the bank where the sunbeam lies
Brings me the wild-wood strawberries.
Oh! he is dear as my mother to me,-
But he will perish, even as she.
Who loves me best?-the gentle dove,
That I have tamed with my childish love,
That every one save myself doth fear,
Whose soft coo soundeth when I come near;
Yet perhaps it but loves me because I bring
To its cage the drops from the clearest spring,
And hang green branches around the door:
Something, surely, must love me more!
Who loves me best?-my sister fair,
With her laughing eyes and clustering hair;
Who flowers around my head doth twine,
Who presseth her rosy lips to mine,
Who singeth me songs in her artless glee,-
Can any love me better than she?

Yet when I asked, that sister confest
Of all she did not love me the best!
Who loves me best ?-my brother young,
With his healthy cheek and his lisping
tongue;

Who delighteth to lead me in merry play
Far down the green-wood's bushy way;
Who showeth me where the hazel-nuts

grow,

And where the fairest field-flowers blow; Yet perhaps he loves me no more than the rest,

How shall I find who loves me best?

My mother loves me,-but she may die;
My white dove loves me, but that may fly;
My father loves me, he may be changed;
I have heard of brothers and sisters es-
tranged;

If they should forsake me, what should I do?
Where should I bear my sad heart to?
Some one surely would be my stay—
Some one must love me better than they.
"Yes, fair child! there is One above,
Who loves thee with an unchangeable love;
He who formed those frail, dear things,
To which thy young heart fondly clings,-
Even though all should forsake thee, still
He would protect thee through every ill.
Oh, is not such love worth all the rest?-
Child! it is God who loves thee best!"

PAINS OF MUSIC.

MR. EDITOR,-Among the minor miseries of life, there is one which I do not remember to have seen touched on by any author, but from which I have been an acute sufferer. In this age of display and exhibition, what can be more painful to a person of a timid, retiring disposition, than to be brought forward in all companies, for the amusement, or annoyance, as it may chance, of all her acquaintance, (misnamed friends,) by the exertion of the talents she may happen to possess?—This is my unfortunate case.

Endowed by nature with a quick ear and lively sensibility to the beauties of harmony, I still remember the

delight with which, in childhood, I listened to the simple ballads of my nurse, and the sweet but untaught tones of a fond mother. No pains were spared for the improvement of my musical powers, and as my taste became cultivated, I derived the most exquisite gratification from the works of the eloquent masters of this enchanting art; yet, were the pains and pleasures which music has afforded. me fairly balanced, the former would preponderate. The very sensibility which opened to me its deepest sources of feeling and enjoyment, revolted from a public display. I pass over the years spent at school; where I

* Authoress of " Mont Blanc," "Ada," &c. and of a volume just published, entitled “Repentance; and other Poems," from which the above is taken. Miss Browne is not yet seven

teen.

had the advantage of the best masters the metropolis could supply. If, with trembling hands, and a palpitating heart, I obeyed a summons to perform before occasional visiters, yet I had some sympathy in the satisfaction which my proud master expressed in my success, and was rewarded by many advantages. I was often invited to hear good music, and many most delightful hours were thus mine, which would otherwise have passed without a note of record in my heart or memory. These days could not last forever. After some years I returned home to enliven the mansion of my widowed father. He is passionately fond of music, though he never made it his study, and was delighted with the proficiency I had acquired. It would have been ungrateful in his only child to show any reluctance in gratifying his parental vanity. Not an acquaintance came to the house but must pay the tax of the usual compliments on such occasions; and I was continually placed at the instrument, to excite the admiration of the few who really cared for me or my music, the envy of the young ladies and their mothers, and the applause of all. I soon perceived that, of the many who were compelled to listen to my performance, few took the least interest in it, and by far the greatest number would rather have been displaying their own quirements.

ac

None but those who have felt, can conceive, how disagreeable it is to be obliged to "waste sweet sounds" upon a set of people, who, all the while, wish you fairly at Jericho; and who, at the same time, give you credit for being as vain and conceited as their false-hearted compliments would tend to make any one, with whom such base coin would pass current. Then the neighborly remarks, of which I was the subject:-" Pray have you heard Miss Sophy Rondeau yet?" "No, but I suppose I must have a party for her next week."-" She's a prodigious fine player, I assure you: quite a masterly style!"-"Why, in

the name of wonder, she should have been so finely taught, I can't conceive, unless indeed her father intends to make a music-mistress of her, or a public performer."-"Oh, she's a genius you know."-" My girls declare they will never touch the instrument before her.". -"Nay," interposes my young friend, Mary Lee,"No one need mind playing before Sophia; she is so good-natured, that even I, who know so little of music, am not at all afraid to play to her; she has offered to teach me some duets, and I am sure if the Miss Smiths". "Vastly well, Miss Mary, if you like it, but my daughters, (with a toss of the head,) could afford lessons of a master, if I thought it desirable for them to play better than they do for my part I don't like to see girls go beyond their station." (My father was formerly in business, from which he retired long before I was born, on a moderate fortune, which he enjoys in a quiet rational manner.)—"I own I think the young lady would be better employed in making a gown, or a cap, or learning something of household affairs from her worthy aunt."-"I assure you," again interposed Mary, "that Sophia does not neglect or despise any employment suited”—“Oh, we all know she is a favorite of yours, Miss Lee, and 'tis vastly proper for you to undertake her defence; but Miss Sophy is not more perfect than other people, I suppose.". -"Let's see who'll get a good husband first, with all her accomplishments! that's what I say," retorted vulgar Mrs. Smith. "Very true, Ma'am, there's never much good comes of them geniuses, in my humble opinion; and then Miss Sophy's a reading lady too, I hear !"

Fine airs some people do give themselves truly! but her father's a respectable sort of a gentlemanlike person, and well to do in the world, so one would be civil to the girl for his sake, you know." And so I was invited to do penance at Mrs. Smith's, and Mrs. Hodgkinson's, and Miss Blenkinsop's, and Mrs. Sibthorpe's,

« AnteriorContinuar »