ered of her history, the Laura of Petrarch must have been a being of extraordinary purity, capable of inspiring the most profound passion, and of exerting the most absolute influence over a poetic sensibility. As in the case of Beatrice, however, although undoubtedly affected by the passionate pleadings of the poet, the "cara sposa" of Petrarch was cold and reserved: indeed, from her situation as a married woman, she could not well be otherwise; yet, less coy than Dante's mistress, she seems by her purposed caprice, to have been willing to prolong the captivity of her lover, taking even an exquisite pleasure in listening to the music of his complaints. On the poet himself, the passion seems to have exerted a peculiar influence, not merely as moulding his character, but as actually forming his genius, and dictating to his imagination those exquisite canzones, which yet linger in the gondola-songs of Italy. The love of Petrarch is an instance of sublime passion, chastened into a holier sentiment, and associated with all ideas of purity and loveliness, becoming immortalized in the productions of poetic genius. The memory of it can never cease to influence the minds of men, while genius itself shall live, or love shall continue to exist as the master passion of the human heart.

We come next to the loves of

TASSO AND LEONORA. There is perhaps no more affecting narrative on record, than that which relates to the history of these individuals-connected, indeed, with that strange episode in the annals of genius—the love and madness of Tasso. Despite those who are inclined to doubt the existence of such a being as the poet represents by Leonora, we have it on good authority, that it was to no imaginary mistress that the poet dedicated his immor. tal strains. There were indeed many distinguished females in the court of Ferrara to whom Tasso may have paid his romantic and exalted homage, yet the Italian annals point, with peculiar significance, to one, who appears to have been the feminine inspirer of his song-Leonora D'Este, of the princely house of Este, a sister of the Duke of Ferrara, and a lady of peculiar beauty and accomplishments. In an age, when gallantry was common, and every knight had his lady-love, in a chivalrous court like that of Ferrara, a poet might have found many objects to

whom to have addressed his amatory effusions, without creating any suspicion of his truth. Yet that the poet regarded Leonora D'Este with sentiments higher than those of a mere boyish passion, seems evident from the epistles which he addresses to her, and which betray the humility as well as the depth of his love. He appears before her as a profound suppliant, conscious of his unworthiness, yet seeking to lay all his faculties at her feetthe pole-star, in whose superior brightness all other planets grow dim-expressed in that melting Italian language, whose accents are the very soul of love. Although Leonora might have favored his passion, yet the poet's suit seems not to have prospered much better than in the case of Dante and Petrarch, and from some indiscretion committed in the presence of the princess, the poetic lover fell under the displeasure of her brother,the Duke of Ferrara, and was consigned to a gloomy prison. In connection with this circumstance, literary troubles preyed upon his spirits; and, tormented with the passions of love, jealousy, aud a sense of the wrongs inflicted upon him, we find the frenzied bard in the recesses of a dungeon, spending his advanced life pining in almost hopeless misery, and dying at last, but only antecedent to a coronation which arrived too late for his acceptance. It is indeed a melancholy circumstance to see the author of the "Gerusalemme Liberata," in his declining years, endeavoring in the intervals of lunacy to repolish those immortal pages which had given him celebrity, composed under the inspiration of a more telicitous enchantment. The connection of the love with the madness of Tasso is indeed too apparent to admit of dispute;-both passages in the same mysterious drama, at once the brightest and the saddest episode in his eventful exist

ence.

We had intended in this connection to speak of the loves of Byron and the Countess Guiccioli, of Shakspeare and Ann Hathaway, of Burns and the innumerable divinities, who at one time or other were the objects of his passion; but time will not permit us to pursue the subject further. Love makes the poet, if the poet sometimes makes love. Indeed, the soul of the poet is the essence of love,-and woman herself, as the most poetic object in existence, is by hereditary right the inspiration of his genius!

OUR SCULPTORS.

We have sculptors. Let not this statement astonish those who, affected with an undue regard for foreign institutions, are accustomed often to decry the efforts of native talent and genius. As individual artists, we do not mean to place them in competition with the great masters of European sculpture-Thorwaldsen, Canova, or Michael Angelo, (yet has not Greenough caught the very spirit of Ancient Art, and Powers revived in his "Greek Slave," the lineaments of the Medicean Venus ?); still they have won for themselves a high place in the annals of American Art, commanding the admiration of their country and of mankind.

It is the peculiar glory of our sculptors, that they are emphatically self-made men-from their own indefatigable labors elaborating the material of their fame. Influenced by genius—or that inspiration which is but another name for genius by slow yet successive steps have they ascended to their present position, acding new glories to the wreath which adorns the brow of American Art. The fame of Greenough is European as well as American,-self-exiled from the country of his birth, devoted with undiminished zeal to the sublime objects of his profession, studying on foreign shores antique classic models, and chiselling the form of American heroes in Roman mould. The banks of the Kentucky have produced a native sculptor, who has sought to perpetuate the memory of one of our most illustrious statesmen in a statue although of marble, yet of CLAY. In the suburbs of Florence lingers an artist, wrapt in the contemplation of beauty, which he seeks to reproduce in his own inimitable creations. The moon rises on the Arno, and finds him still at his work, still occupied in the object of his earliest and his latest love. That sculptor is Powers!

It is always an interesting study, in tracing the history of individual life, to observe by what steps the mind has succeeded in accomplishing its development, by what process it has wrought

* Hart, the sculptor.

itself, but also, as furnishing a model and exemplar for the efforts of future minds, to follow in the same path. This is particularly the case in regard to artistic life, which more than any other, seems to be an independent vocation, requiring the exercise of original self-sustaining powers, in order to the attainment of suc cess. Other men may have genius-the Artist must possess it.) The artist in this respect is like his own production, a solitary statue, chiselled out of a single block of marble, yet warmed with the life, and glowing with the inspiration of genius. Now it is a Hercules, anon a Jupiter Tonans, anon an Apollo Belvidere. This, as it is the inspiring, so also, must be the self-sustaining power, which, conjoined with industry cannot but insure success. In regard to our own Sculptors, it is this peculiar attribute, which as it claims our attention, enforces also our regard. Alone, have they worked out the problem of their success. Early in life was the inspiration felt, determining them to their peculiar line of pursuit, and as the Muse of Burns found him in the field, and threw her inspiring mantle over him, so have they on the restless bias of their genius, recognized the presence of a power pointing out their future destiny and giving an earnest of success. Greenough, like the infant Canova, moulded his play-things into statuary. Powers had forever before his eye the Grecian splendor and the Grecian God. And others of our artists have on foreign shores richly fulfilled the expectations of which their early efforts gave promise.

But there is still a deeper question involved in this subject, than that which relates simply to the efforts of individual genius. Whence comes it that Sculpture at the present time, should have gained the ascendancy among other forms of artistic manifestation? In other words what is the relation of American Sculpture to our free institutions?

The connection of Art with the institutions of a country, is a subject which it is interesting to analyze, not only as it is important in itself, but as it tends to throw a light on the developement of national character as exhibited in its manifestation. As the province of Art is to draw out the lineaments of that character, so it is moulded by the influences that surround it. In the ancient Greek and Roman institutions, Art was fostered by the character of the government itself, and the highest honors were awarded

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to its votaries.

Greece was the home of Art-the clime of beauty, whose natural productions were not more olives and myrtles than temples and thrones, radiant with the impress of genius, and carved after the models of Praxiteles and Phidias. The physical character of the Greeks was peculiarly adapted to artistic manifestation; in form and beauty, the most heroic men and women the world has ever seen.

'Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit.'

In architecture, as in sculpture, the lineaments of this immortal beauty still remain, in those monuments which have come down to us-landmarks on the ocean of time-indestructible as its indestructibility. With us, however, the case is different. Art is not, strictly speaking, indigenous to our institutions. (It is an exotic, produced in other climes, yet transplanted on our soil. Through strife and toil, it has arrived at its present state of distinction. Nay, from the progress which it has already made amid the struggles through which it has already passed, like the country in which it has achieved its proudest triumphs, it has become the eternal child of our institutions,-none the less, because that " sorrow seems half its immortality":

Doubtless, the highest form of art is Sculpture. The power from inert matter of striking out thought and intelligence,-of moulding marble into being,-of chiseling the cold block into forms of beauty and of grace, is such as can belong only to the highest form of genius, as it is the most powerful manifestation of its exercise. Painting and Architecture each have their accessaries in the object of revealing artistic power, but Sculpture stands alone, in its capacity of embodying ideal truth. The sculptor repeats the conduct of Prometheus, who stole fire from heaven and communicated it to mortals. As such, sculpture is peculiarly adapted to the delineation of original thought-those grand powerful lineaments of individual and national character which find their highest development in free institutions. Properly to educe those lineaments, to catch those fleeting, ever varying forms of expression and combine them in one unique model, is the true province of the sculptor-the glory of his Art. The materials of Sculpture in our country are indeed abundant. They are found in the features of individual and national life, in the commemoration of great men and great deeds,