MEDON. But Dannecker must have been poor in spirit as in pocket-simple indeed, if he did not profit by the opportunities which Paris afforded of studying human nature, noting the passions and their physiognomy, and gaining other experiences most useful to an artist. ALDA. There I differ from you. Would you send a young artist-more particularly a young sculptor -to study the human nature of London or Paris? -to seek the ideal among shop-girls and operadancers Or the sublime and beautiful among the frivolous and degraded of one sex, the moneymaking or the brutalized of the other? Is it from the man who has steeped his youthful prime in vulgar dissipation, by way of " 'seeing life, as it is called, who has courted patronage at the convivial board, that you shall require that union of lofty enthusiasm and patient industry, which are necessary, first to conceive the grand and the poetical, then consume long years in shaping out his creation in the everlasting marble ? 66 MEDON. But how is the sculptor himself to live during those long years? It must needs be a hard struggle. I have heard young artists say, that they have been forced on a dissipated life merely as a means of "getting on in the world," as the phrase is. ALDA. So have I. It is so base a plea, that when I hear it, I generally regard it as the excuse for dispositions already perverted. The men who talk thus are doomed: they will either creep through life in mediocrity and dependence to their grave; or, at the best, if they have parts as well as cunning and assurance they may make themselves the fashion, and make their fortune; they may be clever portrait-painters and bustmakers, but when they attempt to soar into the historical and ideal department of their art, they move the laughter of gods and men; to them the higher, holier fountains of inspiration are thenceforth sealed. MEDON. But think of the temptations of society! ALDA. I think of those who have overcome them. "Great men have been among us," (6 though they be rare. Have we not had a Flaxman? But the artist must choose where he will worship. He cannot serve God and Mammon. That man of genius who thinks he can tamper with his glorious gifts, and for a season indulge in social excesses stoop from his high calling to the dregs of earth, abandon himself to the stream of common life, and trust to his native powers to bring him up again;-0 believe it, he plays a desperate game!-one that in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is fatal. MEDON. I begin to see your drift; but you would find it difficult to prove that the men who executed those works, on which we now look with wonder and despair, lived like anchorites, or were unexceptionable moral characters. ALDA. - Will you not allow that they worked in a different spirit? Or do you suppose that it was by the possession of some sleight-of-hand that these things were performed? That it was by some knack of chiselling, some secret of colouring now lost, that a Phidias or a Correggio still remain unapproached, and, as people will tell you, unapproachable? MEDON. They had a different nature to work from. ALDA. A different modification of nature, but not a different nature. Nature and truth are one, and immutable, and inseparable as beauty and love. I do maintain that, in these latter times, we have artists, who in genius, in the power of looking at nature, and in manual skill, are not beneath the great ancients, but their works are found wanting in comparison; they have fallen short of the models their early ambition set before them; and why?-because, having genius, they want the moral grandeur that should accompany it and have neglected the training of their 1 1 own minds from necessity, or from pride, SO that having imagination and skill, they have yet wanted the materials out of which to work. Recollect that the great artists of old were not mere painters or mere sculptors, who were nothing except with the pencil or the chisel in their hand. They were philosophers, scholars, poets, musicians, noble beings whose eyes were not ever on themselves, but who looked above, before, and after. Our modern artists turn coxcombs, and then fancy themselves like Rafaelle; or they are greedy of present praise, or greedy of gain; or they will not pay the price for immortality; or they have sold their glorious birthright of fame for a mess of pottage. Poor Dannecker found his mess of pottage bitter now and then, as you shall hear. He set off for Italy, in 1793, with his pension raised to four hundred florins a year, that is, about thirty pounds; he reached Rome, on foot, and he told me that, for some months after his arrival, he suffered from a terrible depression of spirits, and a painful sense of loneliness: like Thorwaldson, when he too visited that city some years afterwards, a friendless youth, he was often home-sick and heart-sick. At this time he used to wander about among the ruins and relics of almighty Rome, lost in the sense of their grandeur, depressed by his own vague aspirations-ignorant, and without courage to apply himself. Luckily for him, Herder and Goethe were then residing at Rome; he became known to them, and their conversation directed him to higher sources of inspiration in his art than he had yet contemplated-to the very well heads and mother-streams of poetry. They showed him the distinction between the spirit and the form of ancient art. Dannecker felt, and afterwards applied some of the grand revelations of these men, who were at once profound critics and inspired poets. He might have grasped at more, but that his early nurture was here against him, and his subsequent destinies as a court sculptor seldom left him sufficient freedom of thought or action to follow out his own conceptions. While at Rome he also became acquainted with Canova, who, although only one year older than himself, had already achieved great things. He was now. at work on the monument of the Pope Ganganelli. The courteous, kind-hearted Italian would sometimes visit the poor German in his studio, and cheer him by his remarks and encouragement. Dannecker remained five years at Rome, he was then ordered to return to Stuttgard. As he had already greatly distinguished himself, the Duke of Wurtemberg received him with much kindness, and promised him his protection. Now, the protection and the patronage which a sovereign accords to an artist generally amounts to this: he begins by carving or painting the portrait of his patron, and of some of the various members of his patron's family. If these are approved of, he is allowed to stick a ribbon in his button-hole, and is appointed professor of fine arts, with a certain stipend, and thenceforth his time, his labour, and his genius belong as entirely to his master as those of a hired servant; his path is marked out for him. It was thus with Dannecker; he received a pension of |