genial human nature. This combination decided the question of his proper mission, and in virtue of it he has been enabled to model a series of most remarkable busts, the true excellence of which must be recognized in spite of friends and foes, and the epithets "miraculous" and "mechanical."

It is possible that the highest type of portrait-sculpture is beyond the limit of this specialty; indeed, it is almost impossible that with the elements constituting it there should be associated the still rarer power to achieve the most exalted ideal Art; and such Art we believe the highest portraiture to be.

A consummate representation of a man in his divinest development, the last refined ideal of him then, would be indeed somewhat miraculous!

The world asks less. It claims to know of a man what the face of him became under the influences of human, temporal relations. It wants preserved of the statesman the statesman's face, of the merchant the merchant's face; and this demand, when governed by a cultivated taste, is a legitimate one,—as legitimate as is the demand for any history. The public requires the image of the man whom the public knew, and they regard as valuable that which can be received as a definite and trustworthy statement of a great man, or of one whom it esteemed great. It requires this, has a right to such information; and the generation which fails to demand of its artists a true record of its prominent men fails utterly in its duty. The bust of a man goes down to posterity, not only the history which it is in itself, but as an interpreter of the history of its age. Were it not for Art, an age would recede into the unknown, to be recorded as dark, or into the shadowy world of myth. Portraiture, more than aught else, serves to elucidate the tradition or story of a people. How impossible to explain to the twentieth century the bad mystery of our present, without the aid of Powers's head of Calhoun, the less adequate bust of Stephen A. Douglas, and the one which should be modelled of Mr. Buchanan! A faithful delineation of the features of some men is needful. We should be thankful for that black frown of Nero, for the bald pate of Scipio, for those queer eyes of Marius, and for the long neck of Cicero, as seen in the newly discovered bust. These are the signs of the men, and explain them.

Mr. Powers has succeeded in reporting more accurately than any other recent artist the physical facts of the individual face. From one of his marbles we derive definite ideas of the human character of its subject, what its ambition is, and what its weakness; what have been its loves and its antipathies, its struggles and its victories, its joys and its sorrows, may be revealed to him who has learned what the human face becomes under the influence of these incessant forces. No mere talent can accomplish such results. Behind all that kind of strength lies the fact of peculiar sympathies, relating the artist to this phase of Art-representation; and within certain limits, which should have been undebatable, his rule was absolute.

The great mistake with Mr. Powers has been his oversight regarding these limits. There has been debate, hesitation, and a continual wandering away from the duties of his errand. Years have been devoted to those ghosts of sculpture, allegorical figures; other years wasted in the elaboration of machinery. Not that his ideal statues are worthless, or fall short of great beauty and exquisite delicacy; not that his skill as a mechanician is other than great. But the age cannot afford these things, nor can the sculptor afford them. A year is too great a sum to give for a statue of California. Better than that, the several portraits of valued men which might have been acquired,—one bust, even, like those which surprised and compelled the reverence of Thorwaldsen. Better the perfected ability which would have given his country the Webster he should and might have made than a hundred "Americas."

There are two considerations which may have misled Mr. Powers. One, a pecuniary one, which he should have disposed of as did Agassiz, when such was advanced to induce him to give lyceum lectures:—"Sir, I cannot afford to make money!" The other may have been the weight of the prevailing error that portrait-sculpture is a less honorable branch of Art.

Less than what? The historical? What finer history than Titian's Paul III., Raphael's Leo X., Albert Dürer's head of himself? What finer than the Pericles, the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, the Demosthenes of the Vatican, Chantrey's Scott, Houdon's Voltaire, Powers's Jackson?—Heroic? what more heroic than the Lateran Sophocles, the Venetian Colleoni, or Rauch's statue of Frederick the Great?—Poetical? What picture more sweetly poetical than Raphael's head of himself in the Uffizi, or Giotto's Dante in the Bargello? What ideal statue surpasses in poetical power Michel Angelo's De' Medici in the San Lorenzo Chapel? What ideal head is more beautiful than the Townley Clytie of the British Museum, or the Young Augustus of the Vatican? What grander than Da Vinci's portrait of himself?

No,—when the sculptor has wrought the adequate representation of the individual in its best estate, he may rest assured that he has achieved "high Art."

Let us not be unjust to Mr. Powers's ideal works. In the qualities of chasteness of conception, delicacy of treatment, temperate grace, and that rarer, finer quality of dignified repose, they have not been surpassed since the time of Greek Art. When the subject chosen has not been foreign to the artist's nature, as in the "Eve," nor foreign to the Art's province, as in the "California," his success has been very like a triumph.

But the success has not been that which he was entitled to grasp; the seeming triumph has precluded a real victory. We must believe that the highest lessons of ancient Art have, in a great measure, been unrecognized by Mr. Powers. The external has been studied. No man can talk more justly of that exquisite line of the Venus de' Medici's temple and cheek, or point out more discriminatingly the beauties of the Milo statue, or detect more quickly the truths of the antique busts. He has discovered, also, somewhat of the great secret of repose,—has perceived that it is essential, in some wise, to all greatness in Art, more particularly in his own department of sculpture. But beyond that simple recognition of the fact, what? That repose is dependent on power to act, and must be great in proportion to mightiness of power? No, he could not have seen this; else had his Webster come to us less questionable in intent, less remote in its merits from the massive self-possession of the man.

For what Mr. Powers became before he left America he cannot be praised too greatly. He carried with him to Europe just that knowledge of Nature and that executive power which prepared him to take advantage of the aid that all great Art was waiting to afford. Had he won "the large truth," he would have found the scope and purpose of his genius, as in America he had found that of his talent. He would have seen his specialty to be worthy of all reverence, for he would have attained to an appreciation of the high possibilities of portrait-Art. There would have been developed, under the influence of great principles, the power to make statues of great men,—colossal, instead of big,—reposeful, instead of paralyzed,—grand, instead of arrogant,—statues worthy of the hand that wrought the busts of Calhoun, Jackson, and Webster, worthy to rank with the few mighty embodiments of power, the Sophocles, the Aristides, and the Demosthenes. This he might have done; and this he may yet accomplish.

THE AMBER GODS.

STORY FIRST.

Flower o' the Peach.