Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

The works of the fifteenth century are very numerous; they crowd the churches of Rome, Florence, and the neighboring cities. Not only in Tuscany, but in Upper and Lower Italy these artists were employed, and many native artists, imitators of the school, have left sculptures on the tombs and in the churches of Venice, Naples, and Como. The subjects of artistic effort, it will be noticed, are nearly always religious. Lübke says of this period: “It was chiefly devoted to the ornamentation of tomb-monuments and altars, which, with few exceptions, were built up against the wall in the shape of a triumphal arch, and required much plastic decoration in the way of reliefs and detached figures. Pulpits, founts, holy-water basins, singing-galleries, and choir-screens were also adorned with rich carvings. This abundant supply of work necessarily called forth a corresponding amount of skill, and the nature of the subject helped the artistic and realistic taste of the time to express itself. There was a decided effort to attain a correct likeness in portrait-statues of the dead, and in the numerous reliefs there was a tendency to portray the varied scenes of life.”

But a new form of plastic art was to appear in the coming century. To quote from the same author: “Italian plastic art had during the fifteenth century gained a new form from the study of the antique, and had made considerable advances in the unceasing effort after truth and life.… But hitherto, the expression of an often severe and tasteless realism was predominant, and now, under the influence of a profound and repeated study of the antique, an inspiration toward the ideal, the beautiful, and the sublime, was to assert itself; and this gave rise to a higher and freer style.… Plastic art gained a freer and nobler comprehension, a broad, bold treatment of forms, and a style simplified so as to bring out what was fundamental and essential, which might, for a moment, compete with the antique.” Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first in the list of masters of the fifteenth century, but, unfortunately, we have lost his best work. Andrea Contucci, better known as Sansovino, executed many sculptures which are unparalleled in beauty of treatment and form. In the baptistery at Florence is one of the noblest of these—the baptism of Christ. The figures of John the Baptist and Christ are life-like, free, and perfectly developed. There is nothing more interesting among what Sansovino has left than the decorations of the Holy House of Loreto. “Taken as a whole, this work is probably the most important collective creation in the sculpture of this golden age.” There are a great number of reliefs employed in the ornamentation, and the niches are filled by single statues; of the former the Annunciation and the Nativity are the most important.

But by far the ablest of the sculptors was Michael Angelo Buonarroti, of Florence. It was as a sculptor that he chose to regard himself, although, as in the case of so many of the Italian artists, he was both a painter and architect beside. Numerous works attributed to him are in existence. Mythological subjects, as well as religious, are to be seen among them. Thus there are bas-reliefs at Florence representing Hercules in his contest with the centaurs, and a statue of Bacchus in the Uffizi. The colossal marble statue of David in the academy at Florence, is said to have been carved out of a rejected block. The most ambitious undertaking of Michael Angelo was the mausoleum of Pope Julius II. The designs were drawn on a grand scale, and the master had gone to Carrara to get out the marble, when a misunderstanding between him and the Pope stopped the work. It was afterward re-attempted, but never finished. Some of the detached figures intended for the tomb are still seen. Among them the famous Moses, in the church of San Pietro, at Vincolo. Two groups at Florence were executed for the sarcophagi of Giuliano and Lorenzo de Medici. The statues of the princes are seated in niches in the wall: at their feet, on the lids of the coffins, are the groups: on that of the former the design is Day and Night; on the latter Dawn and Evening. We can mention no more of his designs, but will add the fine criticism of a German critic: “If we compare Michael Angelo with those who went before, we see at once that art reached one of those turning-points at which it enters on a new period with an undreamed-of future opening before. His deeply emotional soul was content neither with the contemplative realism of the fifteenth century, which was based on its truth to nature, nor with the quiet, harmonious beauty of contemporaneous masters. Each of his works exists for its own sake only, and here we see a kinship with the antique. But again: each of them is also the product of the stormy inward struggles of a man who is ever aiming at the highest ideal, and untiringly striving after a new expression of his thoughts—a man to whom achievement gave but little satisfaction, so that often he left his works unfinished. Here we see the strongest contrast to antique art. Nearly all his sculptured works are in one sense or another incomplete, and many he had to drop, because under the mighty stress of his ideas, and in his eagerness to liberate from the marble the slumbering soul within, he had made a false stroke and spoiled the block.”

The influence of Michael Angelo was predominant. The productions of almost every sculptor of the times were marked by both his strong and weak points. The Michelangelesque manner, as it has been called, was evident in the sculptures of the following century.

Outside of this Tuscan school there were during the sixteenth century several prominent artists; at Modena, Antonio Begarelli, who worked mainly in terra-cotta, and who left many works in the churches of his native city.

At Padua lived Riccio, who executed a bronze candelabrum which has become famous for both its size and its excessive ornamentation. It was eleven feet in height and laden with innumerable fantastic reliefs and figures mostly taken from mythology. A pupil of Sansovino, Jacopo Tatti, was the leader in Upper Italy. He worked mainly at Venice. The bronze of the sacristy of St. Mark in that city, the choir-screen in the same church, and several figures of evangelists in bronze are among his religious works. In the Doge’s palace are two large statues of Mars and Neptune which are particularly fine. He also did portrait-sculptures of much merit. But during this century art was by no means confined to Italy, though Italy then, as always, took the lead. In the North there was a steady work in the plastic art. The influence of the antique was wanting, and the materials in which the works were executed were different. Wood carving was very popular; invariably much gilding and brilliant coloring was used. The work was mainly on the altars of the churches, on shrines, figures for niches in the church walls and choir stalls. Michael Pacher, of Austria, was eminent in this art; Veit Stoss, of Cracow, and Jörg Syrlin, of Ulm. In nearly all of the old churches of Germany are these highly colored carvings in wood.

But stone was used as extensively, and in a somewhat wider variety of works. Many monuments, the buttresses of churches, lecterns, doors, and choir-piers, were made in stone and decorated in the usual manner by reliefs and figures. Nearly all the German cities boast more or less of stone work in their churches.

The leading artist of the time was Adam Krafft, who worked mainly in Nuremberg. A very fine and powerful work by him is the Seven Stations, as it is called. It represents the repeated fainting of Christ beneath the burden of the cross. The work is done in relief. The face and expression of the Savior is noble and expressive in every case. This work was followed by Christ on the Cross. In 1492 he executed the history of the Passion for a monument on the exterior of St. Sebald’s church.

The monuments of the time are mainly very superior. Among them may be mentioned that of Emperor Henry II. and his consort by Riemenschneider, the marble monument of Bishop Rudolph von Schrenburg in the Würtzburg cathedral, and the marble memorial to the Emperor Frederic III. in Vienna. The celebrated school of metal works of Nuremberg flourished during this period. The best known representatives belonged to the family of Vischer, and in Peter Vischer the most complete artistic development was reached. The earliest work, by Hermann Vischer in 1457, was the bronze baptismal font in Wittenberg. Peter, his son, began his work on the tomb of Archbishop Ernst in Magdeburg cathedral, but his _chef d’œuvre_ was the tomb of St. Sebald in the church of that saint at Nuremberg. Vischer and his five sons were engaged on this for eleven years. The sarcophagus rests on a base elaborately wrought in relief, and the whole is enclosed; the cover is composed of three arched canopies supported on eight slender columns. The base, pillars and canopies are wrought exquisitely; although the ornaments are profuse, yet a perfect simplicity and purity of style is preserved. There are very many other productions attributed to Vischer—a fine relief in the cathedral at Regensborg, several tombs, and, as examples of his treatment of antique designs, an Apollo at Nuremberg, and a relievo of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Berlin Museum.

One of the most magnificent tombs of this period was that of the Emperor Maximilian at Innsbrück; several of its figures were from Peter Vischer’s hands. Twenty-eight colossal bronze statues of the ancestors of the imperial house and of heroes surrounded the monument. Besides these there were a large number of gracefully poised female figures, and twenty-three figures of the patron saint of the House of Austria. The whole was surmounted by a marble cenotaph on which a figure of the Emperor knelt. Several artists were engaged on this monument. The sculptures of this period in other countries are not very prominent. In France there was considerable attention given to plastic art. Many fine choir-screens have been preserved, and some exceedingly rich tombs. Among the latter are the monuments of Louis XII. and his wife (1530), of Francis I. (1552), and of Henry II. (1583), all in the church of St. Denis in Paris. A set of artists who were engaged on the decorations of the palace of Fontainebleau was known as “the Fontainebleau school.” The leader of this group was Jean Goujon. The sculpture of Spain during this period followed largely the Italian schools. The most lavish treatment is visible in the decorations of the churches, particularly in the altars. The high altar of the cathedral at Toledo is one of the most costly and ornate of its time (about 1500).

“The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were marked by a decadence of sculpture. Plastic art sought to become striking, rejected everything that could limit her art and gave herself up freely to her longing after what was striking. Henceforth it was decreed that every plastic work must be spirited. The most striking effects must be aimed at in the expression of inward emotion through mien, attitude and position.… Besides the drapery must be arranged in all sorts of ways conducive to effect.… Thus all dignity, simplicity and distinctness in sculpture, all plastic style was lost, and was succeeded by a senseless striving after outward effect and mere decoration.” The best Italian artists of these years were Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), who showed well the perversion of the principles of art, and Alessandro Algardi. The French claimed as their most celebrated masters in the seventeenth century, Pierre Puget, who worked chiefly at Genoa, and François Girardon, both of whom are noted for their exaggerations; in the eighteenth century were Houdon and Pigalle.

Franz Duquesnoy, the Fleming, worked at Rome in the seventeenth century and gained a fine reputation by his life-like figures of children. In Berlin, Andrew Schlüter executed superior works. Among these are the masks of dying warriors carved above the windows of the court of the Arsenal. An equestrian statue of the Great Elector is his best work.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century a revival of sculpture took place; this has been attributed to the efforts of Popes Clement XIV. and Pius VI., to the publications of Winckelmann, and to the unearthing of the treasures of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The first sculptor to initiate works of purer taste was Canova (1757-1822); he came of a race of stone cutters, and while at work at his trade executed the figures which attracted the attention of a Venetian, who educated him for an artist. Canova’s early works were mythological in subject. He had studied sculptures unearthed at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and under their influence executed his “Apollo crowning himself with laurel” and “Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur.” In 1802 Canova was invited by Napoleon to Paris where he executed a colossal statue of the emperor. His figures of women were his most pleasing works. Of the many monuments he executed, the best is that of Christina in the church of the Augustines at Vienna. But few artists escaped the influence of Canova. Among his best known followers were Dannecker, of Stuttgart; Chaudet, a French artist, and Flaxman, an English sculptor.

For a brief outline of the sculptor of the nineteenth century we can do nothing better than quote from Lübke:

The Danish artist, Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770-1844), penetrated farther than all these masters into the spirit and the beauty of classical art; and created, with inexhaustible fertility of imagination, and with the noblest feeling for form, an array of works which are conceived with a pure, chaste, and noble appreciation of the Greek spirit. In his celebrated frieze of the triumph of Alexander in the Villa Carlotta, on the lake of Como, the genuine Grecian relief style is revived in all its perfect purity and severity. He also treats with the versatility of genius and with charming simplicity the subjects of ancient mythology, in numerous statues, groups, and smaller reliefs; and even introduces into the domain of Christian representation a novel, beautiful, and dignified treatment, in the sculptures executed by him for the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen. Among his monumental works we may mention the statues of Gutenberg at Mayence, and of Schiller at Stuttgart, the Dying Lion at Lucerne, the equestrian statue of the Elector Maximilian at Munich, and the tombs of the Duke of Leuchtenberg in St. Michael’s Church at Munich, and of Pope Pius VII. in St. Peter’s Church at Rome.

While the wide domain of idealistic sculpture was thus again cultivated with such versatility of inspiration, the Berlin artist, Johann Gottfried Schadow (1764-1850), adopted a more realistic style, especially directed toward lifelike composition and distinct characterization of individual peculiarities. His monument of the Count von der Mark in the Church of Ste. Dorothy in Berlin, the statue of Frederic the Great at Stettin, and, in a less degree, the Blücher monument at Rostock, and that of Luther at Wittenberg, as well as many others, are vigorous protests against the mannerism of the hitherto prevailing tendency, and re-open to sculpture a field which had now been almost lost to her for two hundred years.

Thus a new path was opened to modern sculpture, in pursuing which it has of late years accomplished great results, and which assures to it still greater beauty, and diversity of attainment, if only it hold fast to the principles already secured, and go on with true dignity toward its goal. Even if the world of ideal forms should never again acquire that importance for us which it possessed for the Greeks, nevertheless the daily life of humanity still contains a wealth of exquisite motives, full of beauty and _naïveté_, which give to the sculptor’s fancy ample incitement to ideal creations. There is, moreover, in the chaste grace and pure dignity of the antique conceptions, an imperishable charm, which appeals to every human sentiment, and secures for all productions conceived in a similar spirit the warm interest of those who delight to refresh themselves with the simple beauty that belongs to every true manifestation of nature. Hence the idealistic style of this art of Greece, as it has been recognized by the present and endowed with new activity, becomes forever the most priceless and precious possession of modern sculpture.

The new-born historic feeling of the several nations demands to-day that their heroes, the defenders of their liberties, the representatives of their intellect, their warriors in the battles both of the sword and of thought, shall be preserved to fame in the true likeness of their actual forms. As a consequence, sculpture is compelled to probe the depths of the individual consciousness; to investigate the characteristics of each individual intellect as expressed in the figure, the physiognomy, and even in the externals of attitude and garb; and even to give utterance to the mysterious life of the soul, as far as it lies within her power. Without losing sight of the great importance which the study of the sculptures of the fifteenth century has upon this tendency, the influence of the antique should not be undervalued; since, without the sense of beauty so secured, a realistic degeneracy and exaggeration would be very sure to follow.

Among the German schools of sculpture of to-day, that of Berlin takes the lead. Frederick Tieck of this school adopted the antique style in a series of admirable productions, and especially in the decorative sculpture designed by him for the theater; while the path which Schadow had taken was followed up nobly and rationally during the long and influential labors of Christian Rauch (1777-1857). This artist’s important position is due less to his wealth of creative ideas than to his delicate feeling for nature, his fine appreciation of the genuine plastic style, and his incomparable care in execution. His importance, however, does not consist merely in his numerous works, but also in the influence he exercised on his large circle of talented scholars. While he shows a true classical beauty in his ideal works, like his victories and his many admirable reliefs, his statues of Prince Blücher, of Generals Bülow and Scharnhorst, his colossal equestrian statue of Frederic the Great at Berlin, his superb statues of Queen Louise, and of Frederic William III. in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, his bronze statues of Dürer at Nuremberg, of Kant at Königsberg, of King Max I. at Munich, and many others, prove him a sculptor of the first rank for delicate characterization, and life-like suggestiveness of composition. Many excellent scholars have gone from his studio into careers of independent importance and masterly ability; and these form, with their vigorous activity, which is never at a loss for employment in important undertakings, the nucleus of the present school of Berlin.

Among the most conspicuous of the Berlin artists should be reckoned Friedrich Drake, whose reliefs on the statue of Frederic William III. in the Thiergarten at Berlin are full of simple grace. Another of this school is Schievelbein (died in 1867), who showed a great deal of imagination, especially in the composition of reliefs; as in the great frieze representing the destruction of Pompeii, in the new museum, and also in the relief on the bridge at Dirschau.

Ernst Rietschel (1804-61) claims indisputably one of the first places among the sculptors of his century, as regards versatility of endowment, delicate feeling for form, and depth of sentiment. He derived from Rauch his faithful and characteristic representation of life, and his painstaking execution. His double monument of Schiller and Goethe at Weimar, his monument of Lessing in Brunswick (in a still purer and happier style), and the statue of Luther executed for a monument at Worms, are good examples of these traits. In the group of the Virgin with the body of Christ, which he executed for the Friedenskirche near Potsdam, he produced a work full of striking expression, and of the deepest religious feeling; while the subjects of his numerous representations in relief for the pediment of the opera house at Berlin, and the theater and museum at Dresden, represent him with equal dignity and merit in the department of the ideal antique subjects. Ernst Hähnel is a Dresden artist, whose powerful compositions for the Dresden theater and museum are antique in treatment, but who also produced monumental statues, works of the most delicate characterization, such as the Beethoven at Bonn, the Emperor Charles IV. at Prague, and the statues designed for the Dresden Museum, especially the noble Raphael. Recently, also, Schilling has distinguished himself by his ideal groups of the divisions of the day,—Morning, Noon, Evening, Night,—designed for the Brühl Terrace.

In Munich, the talented Ludwig Schwanthaler (1802-48) was the chief representative of a more romantic style, which opened a new field of fresh ideas to modern sculpture. This master, who was endowed with an almost inexhaustible imagination, carried out a great number of extensive works during his short life, in supplying the plastic decorations for most of the buildings erected by King Louis. While these are distinguished by fertility of invention, and an excellent decorative taste, the artist, spurred on to ceaseless labor, and hindered by bodily infirmities, did not succeed in giving his monumental creations that thorough development of form which is an essential of sculpture. It can not be denied, however, that a grand monumental conception is visible in these productions, as is especially proved in the colossal statue of Bavaria in Munich. A numerous school had its origin in this artist’s studio.

In France, sculpture early endeavored to free herself from the rigid rule of the antique, and carried the prevailing effort after dramatic effect, expression and passion, even to an extreme point of realism. Individual artists have kept to a noble and more moderate style; as Bosio, and the admirable sculptors Rude and Duret; but, on the other hand, P. J. David d’Angers (1793-1856) devoted himself, in utter violation of all the severer laws of sculpture, to a violent realism, which, although it is sustained by great talent and a charming facility in composition, deteriorates into a lawless exaggeration in his monumental works. His numerous portrait-busts, on the other hand, are extremely lifelike, and full of genius. The Genoese artist, James Pradier, takes the first rank among those sculptors who especially delight in the representation of sensuous beauty (1792-1852). The talented artist, Barye, who died in 1875, is chief among the sculptors of animals. The sculpture of Belgium follows the same general direction as the French.

Rome forms an important central point in the production of modern sculpture, with her numerous studios, her skill in marble-cutting,—an art handed down to her from ancient times,—and her vast collection of antique works. Here Canova and Thorwaldsen had their studios, which were for many decades the most famous nurseries of modern sculpture. That the antique conception and the idealistic style should acquire especial prominence here lay in the nature of things. Only where the modern social and political life exercises its full powers does sculpture find tasks that call upon her for the characteristic representation of important personages, and the lifelike delineation of historical events.

The English artist, John Gibson, is conspicuous among the sculptors of different nationalities who have made Rome their headquarters, as the representative of a noble classic style. The tendency of the numerous sculptors whom England has recently produced is toward the genre-style, and toward graceful forms in the manner of Canova. Macdonell, an artist of much taste, and Sir Richard Westmacott, also well known by his public works, deserve mention here, as well as R. J. Wyatt, by whom we have some charming representations of subjects chosen from the ancient myths. The United States of America should also be included in this enumeration: for they possess sculptors of decided talent in Randolph Rogers (who designed the bronze gates of the Washington Capitol), Miss Hosmer, and E. D. Palmer, who, though a gifted artist, inclines to an exaggeration of the picturesque. Among the German sculptors in Rome, Martin Wagner, who died in 1860, is worthy of note for his energy of style; and, among those still living, Carl Steinhäuser, now in Carlsruhe, is remarkable for an elevated feeling for form, and depth of sentiment; while J. Kopf shows much delicate grace; and the more recent artist, Ad. Hildebrand, has a rare feeling for nature. Finally, Holland has an excellent sculptor of the idealistic school in Matthias Kessels (1784-1830), who studied under Thorwaldsen.

SELECTIONS FROM AMERICAN LITERATURE.

DR. HORACE BUSHNELL.

Dr. Bushnell’s mind was one of the rarest. What it was in his
books, that it was in private, with certain very piquant and
unforgettable flavors added.—_Dr. Burton._

I think he had no capacity, with all his eminent powers, for
enmity. Goodness and wisdom were the powers that amounted to
genius in him by being so great.—_Rev. C. A. Bartol._

WRONG RESISTED.—As it is said that ferocious animals are disarmed by the eye of man, and will dare no violence if he but steadily look at them, so it is when right looks upon wrong. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you; offer him a bold front, and he runs away. He goes, it may be, uttering threats of rage; but yet he goes.

GREAT MEN.—The great and successful men of history, are, commonly, made such by the great occasions they fill. They are the men who had faith to meet such occasions; and therefore the occasions marked them, called them to come and be what the successes of their faith would make them. The boy is but a shepherd, but he hears from his panic-stricken countrymen of the giant champion of their enemies. A fire seizes him, and he goes down to the army, with nothing but his sling, and his heart of faith, to lay that champion in the dust. Next he is a great military leader, then the king of his country. As with David, so with Nehemiah; as with him, so with Paul, and Luther. A Socrates, a Tully, a Cromwell, a Washington—all the great master-spirits—the founders and law-givers of empires, and defenders of the rights of men, are made by the same law. These did not shrink despairingly within the compass of their poor abilities, but in their heart of faith embraced each one his cause, and went forth under the inspiring force of their call to apprehend that for which they were apprehended.

FAMILY RELIGION—WHY A FAILURE.—The father prays, in the morning, that his children may grow up in the Lord, and calls it the principal good of their life, that they are to be Christians, living to God and for the world to come. Then he goes out into the field, or shop, or house of trade, and, delving there all day in his gains, keeps praying from morning to night, without knowing it, that his family may be rich. His plans and works, faithfully seconded by an affectionate wife, pull exactly contrary to the pull of his prayers, and to all their common teaching in religion. Their tempers are worldly, and make a worldly atmosphere in the home. Pride, the ambition of show, and social standing, envy to what is above, and jealousy of what is below, follies of dress and fashion, and the more foolish elation, when a son is praised, or a daughter admired in the matter of personal appearance, or, what is no better, a manifest preparing and foretasting of this folly, when the son or daughter is so young as to be more certainly poisoned by the infection of it. Oh, these unspoken, damning prayers! how many they are, and how they fill up all the days! The mornings open with a reverent, fervent-sounding prayer of words; and then the days come after piling up petitions of ends, aims, tempers, passions and works, that ask for anything and everything but what accords with genuine religion. The prayer of the morning is that the son, the daughter—all the sons and daughters—may be Christians; and then the prayers that follow are for anything but that—in fact, for things most contrary to that. Is it any wonder, when we consider this common disagreement between the prayers of the family, and all other concerns, ends, and enjoyments of the common life beside, that so many fine shows of family piety are yet followed by so much of godless, and even reprobate, character in the children?

DR. NOAH PORTER.

How to Read History.

Whately pertinently observes, in his annotations upon Lord Bacon’s “Essay on Studies:” “In reference to the study of history I have elsewhere remarked upon the importance, among the intellectual qualifications for such a study, of a vivid imagination. The practical importance of such an exercise of imagination to a full and clear, and consequently, profitable view of the transactions related in history can hardly be over-estimated.”

To stimulate and aid the imagination in its efforts to reproduce the past, historical plays and poems, and, more recently, historical novels have been abundantly employed. Their usefulness has been the subject of frequent discussion, and of various opinions. It has been forcibly, and perhaps not untruly said, that the majority of the present generation of English readers have learned more of English history from Shakspere and Walter Scott than from the entire library of professed historians. Of course no man would contend that either Shakspere or Scott could be substituted for the usual historical authorities, but only that they may supplement them in certain important particulars. Many other historical plays and novels are invaluable as enabling the reader to enter more fully into the spirit of past times. They are of especial service in helping him to appreciate the feelings and motives of prominent personages, and vividly to reproduce the manners and institutions of another age. It is not often that an historical writer is endowed with the painstaking zeal of the antiquarian, and the creative power of the poet. If we can not have the two gifts in a single writer, we must seek for them apart in the historian and the novelist.

Thackeray’s “Henry Esmond” is an admirable example of a good historical novel, when carefully and conscientiously written by a man of rare gifts and of a rarer honesty. No reader of this tale of the times of Queen Anne could fail to derive from it such impressions of the state of manners and of morals in the higher circles, as well as of the political jealousies and the religious feuds which divided men of all classes, as no formal history could possibly convey—such as even the most abundant and painstaking research into the less accessible resources of historical knowledge would fail to impart to a man of feeble capacity to picture and recombine. The service is not a slight one which is rendered to the world when such a painstaking explorer of historical truth as Thackeray gathers his materials with faithful and laborious research, and weaves them together into so fascinating and instructive a story. But this tale, marvelous as it is for its elaborated truthfulness and picturesque effects, strikingly illustrates the possible dangers and disadvantages to which the historical novel may be abused. Thackeray was not without his prejudices. These, with his desire for producing striking effects, are manifest in the occasional _overdrawing_ of this generally well-balanced representation of one of the most interesting periods of English history. It is notorious that Walter Scott gave very serious offense to multitudes of his admiring readers by some of his portraitures of the representative characters of the great historical parties of Scotland and England. With all the good sense and candor which he had at command, his sympathies were too intense and his prejudices too tenacious to allow him to write otherwise than he did, though he know he should excite the indignation of thousands of his fervid countrymen. Mrs. H. B. Stowe says in the preface to her recent historical romance, “Oldtown Folks:” “I have tried to make my mind as still as a looking-glass or a mountain lake, and thus to give you merely the images reflected therein.” But a fervid and sympathetic nature like hers can no more free itself from a theological or personal bias in representing the New England of the past, over which she has laughed, and wept, and speculated, and struggled all her life, than the “mountain lake” can hold itself in glassy smoothness against the gusts and breezes that sweep upon it from the heights above.

The fact deserves notice that of late professed historians have indulged somewhat freely in romancing, and so in a sense turned their histories into quasi-historical novels, especially when they attempt to give elaborate and eloquent portraitures of the leading personages, in which the most lavish use is made of effective epithets and pointed antitheses. Macaulay, among recent historians, has set the fashion very decidedly in this direction. In his efforts to make history minute, vivid, and effective, he has often described like an impassioned advocate, and painted, like a retained attorney, with the most unsparing expenditure of contrasts and epithets. Carlyle gives sketches, alternately in chalk and charcoal, that exhibit his saints and demons, now in ghastliest white, and then in the most appalling blackness. But though he draws caricatures he draws them with the hand of an artist. Froude, by research, eloquence and audacity combined, attempts to reverse the settled historic judgments of all mankind in respect to characters that had been “damned to everlasting fame.” Bancroft and Motley abound in examples of this tendency to paint historical characters so much to the life that the impression is made that the result is only a painting to which there never was reality.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele—
Throw in all of Addison, _minus_ the chill,
With the whole of that partnership’s stock and good will,
Mix well, and while stirring him o’er as a spell,
The fine old English gentleman, simmer it well,
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain,
That only the finest and clearest remain;
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives,
From the warm, lazy sun loitering down through green leaves.
And you’ll find a choice nature, not wholly deserving
A name either English or Yankee—just Irving.—_Lowell._

… Washington Irving, one of the best and pleasantest
acquaintances I have made this many a day.—_Sir Walter Scott._

The Style of Mr. Irving is always pleasing.—_Macaulay._

Throughout his polished pages no thought shocks by
its extravagance, no word offends by vulgarity or
affectation.—_Edinburgh Review._

A Rainy Sunday in an Inn.

It was a rainy Sunday in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey by a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering; but I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn; whoever has had the luck to experience one, can alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements, the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye, but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bed-room looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travelers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit, his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back; near the cart was a half-dozing cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapor rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered something every now and then between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen wench tramped backward and forward through the yards in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bells ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite, who, being confined to the house for fear of wetting their Sunday finery, played off their charms at the front windows, to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further without to amuse me.

The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no variety even in the rain; it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter, patter, patter, excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was quite refreshing (if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day) when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled through the street with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas, and seethed together, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper benjamins. The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys and vagabond dogs, and the carroty-headed hostler, and that nondescript animal yclept Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient: the coach again whirled on its way; and boy and dog, and hostler and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain on.

The evening gradually wore away. The travelers read the papers two or three times over. Some drew round the fire and told long stories about their horses, about their adventures, their overturns and breakings-down. They discussed the credits of different merchants and different inns, and the two wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty chambermaids and kind landladies. All this passed as they were quietly taking what they called their nightcaps; that is to say, strong glasses of brandy and water or sugar, or some other mixture of the kind; after which they one after another rang for Boots and the chambermaid, and walked off to bed in old shoes cut down into marvelously uncomfortable slippers. There was only one man left,—a short-legged, long-bodied plethoric fellow, with a very large sandy head. He sat by himself with a glass of port wine negus and a spoon, sipping and stirring, and meditating and sipping, until nothing was left but the spoon. He gradually fell asleep bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long and black, and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber. The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box-coats of departed travelers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn breathings of the sleeping toper, and the drippings of the rain—drop, drop, drop—from the eaves of the house.

Irving’s Last Interview with Scott.

It was at Sunnyside, on a glorious afternoon in June, 1855, that surrounded by scenery which Irving has best described, he narrated to me (S. Austin Allibone) the following account of his last interview with Scott:

“I was in London when Scott arrived after his attack of paralysis, on his way to the continent in search of health. I received a note from Lockhart, begging me to come and take dinner with Scott and himself the next day. When I entered the room Scott grasped my hand, and looked me steadfastly in the face. ‘Time has dealt gently with you, my friend, since we parted,’ he exclaimed:—he referred to the difference in himself since we had met. At dinner, I could see that Scott’s mind was failing. He was painfully conscious of it himself. He would talk with much animation, and we would listen with the most respectful attention; but there was an effort and an embarrassment in his manner; he knew all was not right. It was very distressing, and we (Irving, Lockhart, and Anne Scott) tried to keep up the conversation between ourselves, that Sir Walter might talk as little as possible. After dinner he took my arm to walk up-stairs, which he did with difficulty. He turned and looked in my face, and said, ‘They need not tell a man his mind is not affected when his body is as much impaired as mine.’ This was my last interview with Scott. I heard afterward that he was better; but I never saw him again.”

Two years later (in 1857), in narrating the same event, Irving told me that as Scott passed up the stairs with him after dinner, he remarked, “Times are sadly changed since we walked up the Eildon hills together.”

JAMES KIRKE PAULDING.

There is no better literary _manner_ than the manner of Mr.
Paulding. Certainly no American, and possibly no living writer of
England has more of those numerous peculiarities which go to the
formation of a happy style.—_Edgar A. Poe._

His works are exclusively and eminently natural, and
his descriptions of natural scenery are often eminently
beautiful.—_London Athenæum._

TIME A DESTROYER.—I saw a temple, reared by the hands of man, standing with its high pinnacle in the distant plain. The streams beat about it; the God of nature hurled his thunderbolts against it; yet it stood firm as adamant. Revelry was in the halls; the gay, the young, the beautiful were there. I returned, and lo! the temple was no more. Its high walls lay scattered in ruin; moss and grass grew rankly there; and, at the midnight hour, the owl’s long cry added to the solitude. The young, the gay, who had reveled there, had passed away. I saw a child rejoicing in his youth, the idol of his mother, and the pride of his father. I returned and the child had become old. Trembling with the weight of years, he stood the last of his generation, a stranger amidst all the desolation around him. I saw an old oak standing in all its pride upon the mountain; the birds were caroling in its boughs. I returned and saw the oak was leafless and sapless; the winds were playing at their pastime through the branches. “Who is the destroyer?” said I to my guardian angel. “It is Time,” said he. When the morning stars sang together for joy over the new-made world, he commenced his course, and when he has destroyed all that is beautiful on the earth, plucked the sun from his sphere, veiled the moon in blood; yea, when he shall have rolled the heavens and the earth away as a scroll, then shall an angel from the throne of God come forth, and, with one foot upon the land, lift up his hand toward heaven, and swear by heaven’s eternal, “time was, but time shall be no more.”

[End of Required Reading for December.]

RETURNING.

By MARY HARRISON.

“The spirit shall return to the God who gave it.”

White clouds upon heaven’s bosom rest,
Begotten of the sunshine’s love,
Now nestled like a fondled dove
Upon a woman’s loving breast.

Heaven feeds her baby clouds, they grow,
Then leave her for their manhood’s life;
And wail and scramble in the strife
Through which all earth-born children go.

They sink and wander in the gloom
Of winding subterranean ways,
And learn the loss of heavenlier days,
By groping through their chosen tomb.

At length, lights gleam along the distant way,
With eager thoughts of childhood, blest,
And hopes of entering into rest,
They leap to airy, sunny day.

Now rivers slave them to the fields
To fill the cattle-troughs with drink,
And dress the rose-boughs on their brink,
And feed the grass the meadow yields.

For friends and good, they look behind,
Then curse the past, and pray to be
Unborn again within the sea,
For birth has been to them unkind.

All scenes have gone! no good has come!
From bank to bank the waters heave
With tides which only mock and grieve,
Despairs of long-lost, hopeless home.

And looking but for lulling sleep,
The last deep solace of the grave,
They leap to meet the leaping wave,
And find their lost home in the deep.

So through his day, blind man has striven,
As vapor-clouds, he came to be,
Drawn from, then wandering to the sea,
Invisible, with God in heaven.

EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO POPULATION.

By ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD, D.D.

FACTS ON THE SURFACE.

The records in the Department of Education, in Washington City, show that in the recent slave States of the Union the total school population was, in 1881, 5,814,261. Of these, 3,973,676 were white; 1,840,585 colored children. Counting both races the total school enrollment for 1881 was 3,034,896; of these 2,232,337 were white, 802,559 colored children. Nearly half the white, and more than half the colored school population was, in 1881, out of school. In some of these States the school term is from three to five months; in the cotton States not more than three. Perhaps five months each year is as long a school term as the conditions and needs of the laboring classes in these States will allow.

In 1881 these States expended upon their public schools $13,359,784; except perhaps in one state this money was expended without distinction of race. The races have schools of their own; doctrinaires would mix them by force of law; those who are actually doing the work of education in these States know that this can not be done, and that only harm would come of it, if the experiment were attempted. For neither race would do so well if taught together; the colored children do not desire mixed schools, and the white children will not attend them. In such conditions law is helpless, and force is folly; also ruin.

OTHER FACTS.

The official figures give the numbers; parole evidence is necessary to complete the statement of the case. In 1881 there were, as the Department of Education reports, in the Southern States 17,248 common schools for colored children. With exceptions so few that they are inappreciable in these statements, the teachers in these 17,248 common schools were colored—the large majority being women. The majority of these teachers are pitiably incompetent; some of them are well furnished for their work, and are doing it faithfully and successfully. Nearly all of these colored teachers who are of any use have received their preparation in the various schools for higher instruction established by societies and churches in the Northern States. Some of the best work is done in schools established and carried on by individual devotion—I will not say enterprise. Taking them all together there are nearly one hundred and fifty of these schools, called, as fancy or circumstances prompted or allowed, universities, colleges, institutes, seminaries, normal schools, etc., etc. There is hardly an “academy” among them.

OVER-NAMING.

Many will think me wrong in the opinion I now offer; some of the wisest of the teachers in the real work of teaching negroes will agree with me: it is a misfortune that the names given these schools are so out of proportion to their real work and character. None of them, even in catalogues, go beyond the ordinary college course; many of them do not come up to it; in none of them do more than a very small number complete this course. There is not a university, in any proper sense, among them all. It is not in the spirit of censure that I speak of these things, but of deep interest in the great and necessary work, that the good people engaged in these schools are trying, with rare consecration and in the teeth of a thousand discouragements, to accomplish.

The great names for these schools have done harm. They are misleading to begin with, and that is an evil. It is hard enough to get the indifferent or the antagonistic people to understand the subject of the education of the negroes at best; it is harder when new meanings have to be given to old names in order to state acts. I am of the opinion that the names given to most of these schools have done some harm in the North—whence the money has been drawn to support them. Northern men have sometimes spoken to me on these subjects in language that made it plain that they would have helped more but from a conviction that “schools and not universities are what these poor people need.” _Per contra_, it may well enough be answered, some have given largely to build “universities” that would not give to establish schools. As to the influence on northern sentiment of the _too-great names_, those who know that sentiment better than I do can express themselves more definitely. I know that the big names have done harm in the States where the schools are. At this point let me say, I am only stating what I believe to be facts. Comments, inferences, justifications, do not concern me just now.

First, then, the large names have excited prejudice among the white people who did not know what was back of the names. Most of them, for a long time, did not know what the universities and colleges were really trying to do; the majority do not know at this time.

Some of those who did know something thought the whole business a mere sham; for a long time only a few southern white people really knew that faithful, wise and successful teaching was done in these colleges and universities—most of it not being college or university work at all. The few who really knew what good work was being done could over-look the ambitious names—it being a weakness in the South and West, yielded to by not a few, to give great names to small schools for white youth. The wiser and kinder-hearted ones could condone the offense of over-large names in view of their own example.

The big names did as much as anything else to anger the poor whites against all negro education. People who know human nature will understand this statement without explanation: those who do not know human nature will not understand it anyway.

The worst evil, in the long run, of this big naming of schools for the negroes, fell upon the negroes themselves. It aggravated the tendency—very strong among them—to be satisfied with the name of a thing in the lack of the thing itself, and, what is more, not knowing that they can lack the thing when they have the name. Take, for example, “⸺ University,” an admirable school well known to me. Its annual enrollment will average three hundred; its catalogue course reaches from the primary studies through an ordinary college curriculum; one in ten attempts this college course; one in fifty may complete it. The whole three hundred tell their friends: “I was educated in ⸺ University.” It gives them importance. They pass as scholars beyond their merits among their own people. In many of them it breeds injurious conceits—of a sort that makes enemies of those who might be friends, and prejudices with the uninformed—who in all countries are the majority—the whole subject of negro education. It is to be feared that only a few colored students know the difference between “⸺ University” and a real university.

NO SHAM IN THE WORK DONE.

Let me say with emphasis at this point: there is no sham in the work done in these schools. It is genuine, honest, useful work. This is a general statement; there may be, doubtless are, some schools that do not deserve this praise. But the point I wish to make plain to the readers of THE CHAUTAUQUAN is this: if there be sham it is not in the work done, but in the name given the place where it is done. I asked one of the veterans: “Why did you call this school a university?” He answered: “We hoped it would grow to it some day.” How could I blame the hopefulness of those who did the naming? So many of our white schools had been named under the same sort of prophetic impulse.

TRAINING SCHOOLS.