I never heard him make a deliberate criticism, though he gave his judgments very freely and decidedly. "That volcano of Michael Angelo," I remember as an expression I once heard him apply to that wonderful man, though I cannot remember what it was that called it forth. A few years before, Raphael's bones had been discovered, opened, and reinterred with great solemnity, the principal artists, with Thorwaldsen at their head, taking a prominent part in the ceremony. "I saw his bones," said Thorwaldsen, in telling me of it; and the feeling with which he uttered it seemed the very feeling which Irving expresses so beautifully in speaking of the old sexton who had seen Shakspeare's; it was something to have seen such bones.

But there was one subject on which he never failed to grow warm, and that was the monument of Pius VII. The canons of St. Peter's had behaved very badly towards him, thwarting and teasing him every way in their power; and the old gentleman, who was perfectly conscious that he had given them, in that noble work, the only great monument in the church, could never speak of them with patience. After the first two or three words, I have seen him spring from his chair, and pace the room rapidly. “Yes, taking me to task-wanting me to come to them like a schoolboy, and learn my lesson of a set of ignorant priests, not one of whom could draw a nose."

Another favorable hour for visiting Thorwaldsen was in the morning. In his youth, I believe, he was an early riser, but when I knew him you might very easily, by taking an early breakfast, find him still in bed. On these occasions I used to go directly to the little private studio adjoining his bedroom, and amuse myself, till he came, with looking at the new figures on the modelling slate, or the casts and engravings that covered the walls. Very soon, however, the bedroom door would open and the old gentleman come out in dressing-gown and slippers, with a little cap on his head, and every appearance of having just quit his pillow. A simple nod of recognition was all that you could expect, for his head was full of his last day's work, and till he had examined that carefully, not a word would he utter. But walking directly up to his slate, he would stand for several minutes without moving, then draw his thumb rapidly over it here and there, correcting a detail, or working in a new outline, and giving, by a few rapid touches, an entirely new aspect to the whole composition. Then he would turn round, shake hands, and be ready

for a pleasant chat. It always seemed to me as if, from the first moment of his waking, he must have been going through, on his pillow, something like that simmering process by which Scott used to prepare his daily chapter while dressing; for it was very evident that his corrections were, in part at least, the result of a comparison of his morning thoughts with the work of the preceding day.

This little studio of his, by the by, and indeed the whole house, would well deserve a description. It is a classic spot in art. Piranesi had once lived there, and Canina, a great name in archæology and architecture, still lived on the opposite side of the court. The rooms, of course, were all on a floor, that great blessing of Italian houses, with brick floors, thick walls, and high windows. The two first rooms, which looked on Via Sistina, were hung close with modern paintings, some of them gifts, and some of them purchases, and which seemed naturally enough to have come and clustered around him during his long life. Corresponding with these, but with their windows on the court-yard, were three smaller rooms, the two first, studios, and the third a bedroom. The first studio was for figures, the other for bas-reliefs, and in this Byron had sat to him for his bust. The furniture throughout was plain, neither carpets nor lounges, nor stuffed chairs, nor gilded tables, but here and there a fragment from the antique, an Etruscan vase, pictures, engravings, with a fair sprinkling of plaster arms, and hands and feet, and all the appropriate paraphernalia of an artist's study. Next to the modelling stand, the principal object in the smaller studio was an old bureau, with a folding leaf, half chest of drawers, and half writing desk, such as still may be found in many an old house even on this side of the Atlantic. Here he used to keep his rarities, his favorite drawings, his letters, and sometimes even his money. Add to this, an old straw-bottomed settee, have as correct a picture as my memory can afford me of the room in which kings and princes came to pay their tribute to a greatness more enduring than their own.

and you

This may seem a very simple style of living for a very rich man. But Thorwaldsen's habits were always very simple. In the beginning, from necessity, and at last, from that same feeling which has made many an old man stick to his kneebuckles and white-topped boots, long after they had given place, with all the rest of the world, to straps and patent leather. And an artist's life in Rome is simple, as a matter of course. A bed

room and a studio are all that he wants of a house; and the bedroom may be a very plain one, for it is in his studio that he reads, writes, works, and does every thing, in short, but eat and sleep. And even part of his eating may be done there too, for his breakfast is little more than coffee and bread. For dinner he goes to Lepri, or if he feel inclined to something a little better than usual, to the Falcone. And then when the day's work is over he saunters down to the Café Greco, and sips his coffee in clouds of smoke from pipes and segars innumerable, and amid the discordant clang of all the languages of Europe.

A monotonous life it might seem, and yet it is anything but monotonous. There is no monotony in his day's work, for if he is but a student, every day makes him stronger in the art he loves, and reveals some beauty which he had never seen before. With what delight he takes his stand before his Raphael, fits his canvas upon the easel, spreads his pallet, retouches the lines of yesterday, scans his copy carefully, and then turns again to the original, feeling that he has got somewhat nearer to its spirit, though it is still so far above him. There is a life's study in that figure, a new revelation of the expressive power of the human form, which he never felt fully till to-day, and to-morrow he will feel it still more. And yet he is not discouraged by the sense of his inability to reproduce it, for he feels that the perception of it which he has now reached is in itself a great gain, and that however far he may always fall short of his master's perfection, still there is abundant reward for all his labors, in having learnt to breathe freely on these summits of art, and touch as it were familiarly the hem of his garment.

And then his morning studies at the Academy from the living model. He never felt the difficulty of an outline before, nor how much power there is in a single stroke of the pencil. Every joint and limb becomes the object of a new study. There are untold wonders in the lights and shades of the surface and varying play of the muscles; the slightest change of posture, the slightest elevation or depression of a hand or an arm, the mere contraction or expansion of a feature or a limb, unfolds some new resource of his art, and contains lessons which if properly treasured up, may extend their influence through the whole of his career. Every week adds something to his portfolio, and when at last he comes to draw from his own resources, and try to give form and movement to the creations of his own imagination, he finds in these detached

studies abundant materials for rich, and varied, and truthful expression.

No

And if he has reached this end of all his efforts, and can follow freely the suggestions of his own feelings, what a world is his. How swiftly the days glide by him, when each brings with it some new vision of beauty, or records some new step in the development of a cherished conception. No sunbeam ever lighted up the landscape with a radiance so dazzling as that which gleams upon him in this dream-world, which is henceforth to be his home. strains from voice, or harpstring, or nature's own minstrelsy, were ever so sweet as those which float around his steps, attuning his mind and heart to the mysterious harmonies which he is about to unveil by the ministry of a sister art. All the treasures of the past are gathered anew for him ; the deeds of its great men, the thoughts of the wise, the struggle, the triumph, and the reward; for it is through him that they are to assume new forms of grandeur and power, and become, as it were, a living presence for all ages. And nature opens her treasures, and pours forth new beauties in lavish profusion, and reveals the secret of her all-pervading sympathies. Yes, struggles and cares and bitter trials though there be in this life of the mind-and what is creative art but one of its manifold forms-but there are hours too of proud consciousness and thrilling delight, when the vision of truth or beauty first beams upon the intellectual age, and the indistinct conception gradually expands into pure and definite proportions, which more than atone for them all.

But it is not the artist's life that I have undertaken to describe. If I had, I would have told of joyous days in the vineyards in delicious October, of walks in early spring, to catch the first sight of the almond blossom; of twilights on the Pincian and sunsets from the Janiculum, with all Rome at your feet and the last sunbeams sleeping with their golden glow on the craggy peaks of the Sabine Mounts, while the shadows steal gently over the soft slopes of Albano. I should say too, that in those discordant tongues at the Caffé Greco, you would learn the thoughts of the profound and earnest German, hear the quick and volatile Frenchman, the Italian with his keen perceptions and electric feelings, the grave Spaniard, who hopes some day to renew the glories of Murillo, and the Russian, toiling on his pension for an Imperial smile and permission to pass another five years in Italy. Dusseldorff and Munich, Paris and St. Luke, meet face to face; opinions are sifted, judgments weighed, impressions compared, new works discussed, the whole field

of art passed in review; and this was part of what Thorwaldsen meant, when he said that Rome was the artist's home.

He meant also, that there was an ideal in Rome which was not to be found any where else, and which, however high he might go, still rose far above his highest flight. He was never satisfied, with any work of his own but once. In the height of his career he had made his group of the Graces, which, like Venus, seem to have become a kind of touchstone with sculptors, ever since that beautiful old group in the cathedral of Siena was first brought back to the light.

Canova's group is well known. Thorwaldsen's was equally celebrated, but he felt, even when he had given the last touches to the marble, that it was by no means what he wanted it to be. Many years afterwards he received an order for a duplicate, which in the pressure of other engagements he put off from time to time, and might perhaps never have executed if he had not happened to find a favorable moment after his last return from Denmark. He went over it all carefully; the alterations were not great, amounting to little more than a few changes in the details of the grouping, and particularly, if I recollect aright, in the arms of the nymphs and the position of the Cupid. But, however slight, the effect was magical, and even the dullest eye would have been struck by it. I happened to call on him just as the change was completed. It was in the winter, and there was a party of strangers there to get a sight of the old gentleman, under pretext of seeing his pictures. "Wait a moment," said he when he saw me, "I've got something to show you. They are only here," and an expressive shrug closed the sentence. In a few moments we were alone, and he led the way to his modelling room, took me by the hand, put me in the position he wanted, and "now," said he, "look at that." It was the group of the Graces in the fresh beauty of his last correction. "This was wrong, and this was wrong," continued he, pointing out the alterations, one by one,

and then seating himself like a boy, on his modelling steps, and turning to it again, "How do you like it? I never was satisfied before, ma ora son contento-si son contento."

One more anecdote and I have done; and I place it here not only as a record of Thorwaldsen, but as a tribute to a man whose memory I love as a friend, and revere as an American. I mean Cole. Cole passed a winter in Rome not long after Thorwaldsen's last return from Denmark, and repainted his 'Voyage of Life.' He was naturally anxious to have Thorwaldsen see it, and I arranged the interview. At the appointed hour, ten in the morning, the old gentleman came. The four pictures were standing in a row, the first three completed, the last still wanting in some finishing touches, but all that was essential to the story was there. I never saw Cole so nervous as when he opened the door. Common criticisms he did not mind, but this was an ordeal to shake even his practised nerves. Thorwaldsen walked directly to the first piece, and taking the words from Cole's mouth as he began his explanation, went through the whole story, reading it from the canvas as readily as if the trees and flowers had been words. When he came to the last scene, he paused and stood silently before it, his eye resting with an expression of solemn musing on that cloud-veiled ocean which he too was to sail so soon. Twice he returned to examine the other three, and twice returned to gaze again at the closing scene with the same deep expression of earnest sympathy.. I hardly ever passed an hour with him after that day, but what he would bring in some mention of Cole: "When I had heard from him? what was he doing? A great artist! what beauty of conception, what an admirable arrangement of parts, what an accurate study of nature, what truth of detail." I have often heard him speak of artists, friends and foes, the living and the dead, but never with such a glow of heartfelt enthusiasm as when he recalled his visit to the study of Cole.

HERE

ERE is a miracle! or something, at least, that has not happened before, and consequently, for which the world was not prepared; for the belief of King Solomon still prevails, that nothing will be which has not already been, and every new thing is incredible until it has been duplicated. Uncle Tom, therefore, is a VOL. I.-7.

miracle, his advent had not been foreseen nor foretold, and nobody believes in him now that he has come, and made good his claim to be considered somebody. But, Uncle Tom's superiors were not believed in at first, and he can well afford to bidehis time.

Never since books were first printed

has the success of Uncle Tom been equalled; the history of literature contains nothing parallel to it, nor approaching it; it is, in fact, the first real success in bookmaking, for all other successes in literature were failures when compared with the success of Uncle Tom. And it is worth remembering that this first success in a field which all the mighty men of the earth have labored in, was accomplished by an American woman. Who reads an American book, did you inquire, Mr. Smith? Why, your comfortable presence should have been preserved in the world a year or two longer, that you might have asked, as you would have done, "who does not ?"

There have been a good many books which were considered popular on their first appearance, which were widely read and more widely talked about. But, what were they all, compared with Uncle Tom, whose honest countenance now overshadows the reading world, like the dark cloud with a silver lining. Don Quixote was a popular book on its first coming out, and so was Gil Blas, and Richardson's Pamela, and Fielding's Tom Jones, and Hannah More's Coelebs, and Gibbon's Decline and Fall; and so were the Vicar of Wakefield, and Rasselas, and the Tale of a Tub, and Evelina, the Lady of the Lake, Waverley, the Sorrows of Werter, Childe Harold, the Spy, Pelham, Vivian Grey, Pickwick, the Mysteries of Paris, and Macaulay's History. These are among the most famous books that rose suddenly in popular esteem on their first appearance, but the united sale of the whole of them, within the first nine months of their publication, would not equal the sale of Uncle Tom in the same time.

But this success does not, by any means, argue that Uncle Tom is superior to all other books; but it is an unmistakable indication that it is a live book, and that it will continue to live when many other books which have been pronounced immortal, shall be dead and buried in an oblivion, from which there is no resurrection.

Uncle Tom is not only a miracle of itself, but it announces the commencement of a miraculous Era in the literary world. A dozen years ago, Uncle Tom would have been a comparative failure-there might not have been more than a million copies sold in the first year of its publication. Such a phenomenon as its present popularity could have happened only in the present wondrous age. It required all the aid of our new machinery to produce the phenomenon; our steam-presses, steam-ships, steam-carriages, iron roads,

electric telegraphs, and universal peace among the reading nations of the earth. But beyond all, it required the readers to consume the books, and these have never before been so numerous; the next year, they will be more numerous still, and Uncle Tom may be eclipsed by the shadow of a new comer in the reading world. It is not Uncle Tom alone who has made the way for himself; the road to popularity has been preparing for him, ever since the birth of Cadmus ; he has only proclaimed the fact that the great avenues of literature are all open, wide, and well paved, and free to all who have the strength to travel in them. Hereafter, the book which does not circulate to the extent of a million of copies, will be regarded as a failure. What the first edition of a popular novel will be by-and-by, when the telegraphic wires will be printing it simultaneously, in New-York, St. Petersburgh, San Francisco, Pekin and the intermediate cities, it is not easy to estimate. Then, when an international copyright shail secure the whole world to the popular author, for his market, authorship, we imagine, will be a rather more lucrative employment than it happens to be at present. The possibility of such a time does not appear half so improbable now, as the actualities of Uncle Tom would have sounded in the earlier days of the Edinburgh Review.

It is but nine months since this Iliad of the blacks, as an English reviewer calls Uncle Tom, made its appearance among books, and already its sale has exceeded a million of copies; author and publisher have made fortunes out of it, and Mrs. Stowe, who was before unknown, is as familiar a name in all parts of the civilized world as that of Homer or Shakspeare. Nearly two hundred thousand copies of the first edition of the work have been sold in the United States, and the publishers say they are unable to meet the growing demand. The book was published on the 20th of last March, and on the 1st of December there had been sold one hundred and twenty thousand sets of the edition in two volumes, fifty thousand copies of the cheaper edition in one, and three thousand copies of the costly illustrated edition. The publishers have kept four steam-presses running, night and day, Sundays only excepted, and at double the ordinary speed, being equal to sixteen presses worked ten hours a day at the usual speed. They keep two hundred hands constantly employed in binding Uncle Tom, and he has consumed five thousand reams of white paper. weighing seventy-five tons. They have paid to the author twenty thousand three hundred dollars as her share of the pro

fits on the actual cash sales of the first nine months. But it is in England where Uncle Tom has made his deepest mark. Such has been the sensation produced by the book there, and so numerous have been the editions published, that it is extemely difficult to collect the statistics of its circulation with a tolerable degree of exactness. But we know of twenty rival editions in England and Scotland, and that millions of copies have been produced. Bentley has placed it among his standard novels. Routledge issues a handsome edition of it with a preface by the Earl of Carlisle; and this virtuous nobleman, with the blood of all the Howards in his veins, sees nothing out of the way in venting his indignation against American Slavery, in the preface of a book which is stolen from its author and published without her consent. Bentley also tacks on an "indignant preface" to his edition, but it is stated that he gives a per centage on the sale to the author, which gives him a right to be indignant, if he chooses. But the Earl of Carlisle and Routledge might have reserved their indignation against slavery, it strikes us, until they had taken to honest courses themselves. Another publisher in London issues an edition and proposes to share profits with the author, while a penny subscription has been got up as a testimonial to her from all the readers of the work in Great Britain and Ireland. We have seen it stated that there were thirty different editions published in London, within six months of the publication of the work here, and one firm keeps four hundred men employed in printing and binding it. There have been popular editions published also, in Edinburgh and in Glasgow; and it has been dramatized and produced on the boards of nearly every theatre in the Kingdom. Uncle Tom was played in six different theatres in London at the same time. An illustrated edition is now publishing in London by a bookseller named Cassell, the illustrations being furnished by the famous and inimitable George Cruikshank. The same publisher has issued an Uncle Tom Almanac, with designs by some of the most eminent artists of London. The whole Beecher family, of which Mrs. Stowe is a member, have been glorified in the English periodicals, and are exciting as much attention just now, as the Napoleonic family, to which they bear great resemblance; one being a family of Kings and Queens, and the other of preachers and authorssovereigns in the intellectual world.

Uncle Tom was not long in making his way across the British Channel, and four

rival editions are claiming the attention of the Parisians, one under the title of le Père Tom, and another of la Case de l'Oncle Tom. But the fresh racy descriptions of the author, lose their vigor and force when rendered into French, though the interest of the narrative remains. The book reads better in German than in French, and makes a deeper impression on the Teuton than upon the Gallic mind.

The Allgemein Zeitung, of Augsburg, says of it in the course of a long review:

"We confess that in the whole modern romance literature of Germany, England and France, we know of no novel to be called equal to this. In comparison with this glowing eloquence, that never fails of its purpose, this wonderful truth to nature, the largeness of these ideas, and the artistic faultlessness of the machinery in this book, George Sand, with her Spiridion and Claudie, appears to us untrue and artificial; Dickens, with his but too faithful pictures from the popular life of London, petty; Bulwer, hectic and selfconscious. It is like a sign of warning from the New World to the Old. In recent times a great deal has been said about an intervention of the youthful American Republic in the affairs of Europe. In literature, the symptoms of such an intellectual intervention are already perceptible."

This is rather stronger praise, than any of the French critics have bestowed upon Üncle Tom, one of whom thinks it inferior to Hildreth's Archy Moore. But Mrs. Stowe's epic is more read in Paris, just now, than any other book, and it is said to have a greater success than any similar production since the publication of Paul and Virginia.

Uncle Tom has found its way into Italy, where there are more American travellers than American books. Our chargé, at Sardinia, reports that it is making its mark there, as in other parts of Europe, in a manner that astonishes the people. Two editions in Italian have been published in Turin, and one of the daily papers was publishing it as a feuilleton, after the manner of the Paris press.

India

What progress Uncle Tom has made in the other northern nations of Europe, in Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Poland and Lapland, we have not been informed; but it is undoubtedly drawing its tears from the eyes of the hyperboreans, as well as from the inhabitants of the mild south. and Mexico, and South America, have yet to be Uncle Tomitized, for we have not heard of any editions of Mrs. Stowe's great romance among the descendants of the Aztecs, the Gauchos, or the Brazilians. It must spread over the whole earth, like the cholera, only reversing its origin and the