serene, and less wise than Goethe. There is in a great measure, the same species of difference between Goethe and Schiller, as between Milton and Shakspeare. But Schiller was not Miltonian, nor was Goethe Shaksperian. Schiller is rather of all our dramatists, like George Chapman, that old heroic spirit of Elizabeth's time. Schiller strove to realize the divine; Goethe strove to poetize the common. Schiller's endeavor was to evolve the particular from the universal; Goethe's to involve the universal in the particular; and, therefore, the former is allegoric and metaphysic, while the latter is definite and individual. Schiller is always drawing down the sky; Goethe is always sustaining the earth. Goethe sings of Life; Schiller of Truth. Goethe strove to explain and embody what he had and saw; Schiller to reach and express what he neither had nor saw, but only longed for. Goethe is an artist looking round; Schiller is a mystic looking up. The singleness of Schiller is more easily comprehended than the variety and complication of Goethe; he is higher, but not so broad and clear. Finally, Schiller sang of moral and philosophic Truth, and Goethe of Truth, as it was colored in the Prism of Common Life. (2) Washington Allston is buried in the church-yard, contiguous to the Episcopal Church, in Cambridge. No monument has yet been erected to his memory; and the final resting-place of the painter and poet, who adorned American art, and enriched its literature, whose fame is a public property, and a national glory, is not even designated by a stone. It is to be hoped, that this will not long remain so. Let us not forget that some things are better than money and barter. who so truly hath done honor to us. of the highest safeguards of morality, and one of the surest incentives to action, is the memory of pure and elevated genius. Let us do honor to him Let us remember, that one (3) Upon the tomb of Giuliano de Medici, at Florence, are the gigantic statues of Day and Night, by Michel Angelo, casts from which are in the Boston Athenæum; and concerning which last we would echo Vasari's remark, "Statua non rara ma unica." Michel Angelo is the great Christian sculptor, and the only great mind, which, since the palmy days of the Greeks has em bodied the spiritual idea of his age in stone. John of Bologna, Canova, Flaxman, Thorwaldsen, the greatest names in modern sculpture, are merely modern Greeks. Their aim is Grecian; their execution is Grecian; their subjects are Grecian; their thought is Grecian; and they are to be judged by Grecian standards. Sculpture is just the same in kind as it was in the time of Pericles; but far inferior in quality. In painting, have been embodied the different spiritual phases of different ages. Not only is the grand idea of Christianity expressed therein, but even its different modes of Catholicism and Protestanism. There is this great difference between Grecian and Italian painting; that the Greeks expressed outward life; and that the Italian masters expressed the soul. One was the result of observation; the other of feeling. While painting has thus advanced, sculpture has stood still. No attempt has been made to embody the spiritual idea of our age, except in some few instances; the style of which is imbued with Grecianism. Modern sculpture is so subservient to Grecian, that the human face is generally treated as if it were of no moment in the expression of passion and character: because the Grecians so treated it. We have thousands of Venuses, but no women. Until the subjects of sculpture issue from the heart of the age, and their treatment is imbued with the feeling of the time, sculpture will never be the great art that it once was. It is time that our artists abandoned the exoteric style of the Greeks, and strove to give their works the esoteric significance, which our age demands. Sculpture is now almost nothing but imitation. There are, however, some exceptions. One man there is to which I look forward with a large hope; as the creator of a new and original style, which has Nature for its basis, and which embodies the life and thought of the age. That man is Hiram Powers; who, in my humble estimation, has shown a better and finer genius for sculpture, than any man since Michel Angelo. |