OBITUARY.

pre

THORWALDSEN.-Letters from Copenhagen announce the death of Thorwaldsen on the 25th ult. "He went," says the writer, "as was his custom, to the theatre. Before the commencement of the performance he suddenly fell back in his seat; he was immediately carried out of the theatre, and soon after breathed his last. He was born on the 19th of November, 1770, and was consequently in his 74th year. To the last day of his life he served his activity and cheerfulness of spirits, and was still engaged on some important works, among which may be mentioned the colossal statue of Hercules for the Palace of Christiansburg. On Saturday, the 30th of March, the mortal remains of the great master were interred in the Holm Church. All he died possessed of he has bequeathed to the Thorwaldsen Museum; but, with the exception of his works of art, his property is not so great as was imagined. He had been working on a bust of Luther on the day of his death."

metropolis; we saw it at the sculptor's own studio in Rome, when the statues were all finished. It struck us as of a style more dignified than elevated, more severe than sublime, the conception better than the execution (which seemed journeyman's), yet the execution better than the stuff-we can give no higher name to the coarse blue marble that made the figures look frost-bitten, or covered over with chilblains. Carelessness upon this score-upon that of execution also distinguishes to its great loss Thorwaldsen's sculpture in general, while the chief merit, if not the whole charm, of Canova's are its the two competitors have raised antagonist monubeauty of material and manipulation. In St. Peter's ments at opposite sides of the basilica, and epitomize their adverse characters. By the main strength of a sound architectonic principle, Thorwaldsen's mausoleum to Pius VII. impresses the spectator's mind with a deep and sacred awe, though it exhibits little attractiveness throughout the details, a somewhat ponderous effect, and an invention almost as frigid as the chill-gray marble. It might even be said that the ordonnance is too severe for the florid character of the edifice. On the other hand, Canova's mausoleum to Pope Rezzonico was not raised in defiance of architectonic principles, but in complete ignorance of them; its general effect of details-among which the Lions are pre-eminent; therefore is nil, or distraction; its real effect is one whence by preposterous mishap, it becomes rather a monument to these Lions than to his Holiness Clement XIII.! A like distinction evinces itself between all the works of the northern and southern sculptors; purified, stern, ice-cold taste freezes the imagination of the Dane into rigid correctness; meretricious, sensual, Sybarite taste melts that of Canova had the greater genius, Thorwaldsen the the Italian into effeminate licentiousness. Perhaps generally contain something to disgust, the worst higher judgment; while the best works of the former of the latter always display something to reverence : this brief parallel may illustrate their respective merits, as well as to strike a just balance between

them.

The great Scandinavian sculptor, then, is dead, and the Genius of Sculpture has died with him. That the latter will soon revive, we have more hope than expectation, but Thorwaldsen has left a large mantle to be filled by his successor. We of course say this tropically, yet there was some mysterious connection or unison, as often occurs between the personal form of the man and his works; both were massive, square-built, and stalwarth, while his compeer, Canova, made his own lank and long-limbed frame, the model for the central form of his marble personages; and to push the fanciful verisimilitude one step farther, who does not recognize in the plain honest features and stout low stature of their coeval, if far from co-equal, sculptor, Chantrey, the solid, sterling, un-poetic character of his productions? Thorwaldsen had a very fine head, perhaps yet finer, and fuller of apparent genius, than his noblest creations; silver-grey locks, as if blown back upon his shoulders, gave him an air of bard-like enthusiasm and rapture; his wild blue eye seemed to blaze perpetually with inward fire, though its brightness was tempered with almost feminine sweetness of expression; his "fair, large front," however, presented the rectangular, mechanic conformation, instead of the irregular oval-shaped organism ascribed to imaginative crania. We have elsewhere mentioned Mr. Rothwell's likeness of the Danish artist, which we thought still a better portrait, and picture too, while a mere sketch: it has now acquired double interest and value. This is neither the place nor the time to enter upon any lengthened discussion of statuary so important, that it signalizes a new epoch and a particular school in the Art; but we may state a few leading points. Critics, we believe, consider The Triumph of Alexander the triumph of Thorwaldsen; it forms a bas-relief frieze after the Parthenon model, which evidently inspired it, though this be denied by the idolatrous sticklers for his creative powers: although he had never seen the Elgin Marbles, they were known throughout Europe from sketches and drawings long before Bonaparte commissioned the Triumph to adorn his triumphal arch at Milan (be-acquire complete mastery over the other. Take an gun 1807). A mere outline furnishes inspiration enough where amplifying faculties exist, ctherwise the marbles themselves would furnish none. Thorwaldsen's frieze now, we can scarcely say, adorns the Palace of Christiansburg, Copenhagen, as it has not yet obtained a proper emplacement. His next most remarkable work, Christ and the Twelve Apostles,' is in the Church of Our Lady at the same

་

Thorwaldsen's medallion reliefs, Night, &c. are famous and familiar; his other works, more or less renowned, bestud all Europe; some have reached England. Their number would have been less, but their excellence enhanced, had the artist's own hand oftener impressed con amore their surface like the finger of Love dimpling the cheek of Beauty; he limited himself overmuch to the clay-model, and thus his statues have a manufactured air. True, the chief merit of statuary lies in the model; sculptors do not reflect enough, however, that if the clay inspire the marble, the marble inspires the clay; we mean, that dealing with the stone itself has a re-active effect, suggests its capabilities and capacities, which nothing else can suggest, and thereby teaches how to deal with the clay, for future sculptural enterprises. Hence Michael Angelo obtained his miraculous glyphtic power-he was a mighty workman in the material itself of his works! Clay is not stone, although its next neighbor; nor will ever so much manipulation of the one educate the artist's hand to

extreme case, as a " production of the experiment:'' a painter who always copied from sculpture, or a sculptor from pictures, could never understand the full and true scope of his own art; now clay-models bear but a closer affinity to the subtance of those marble images copied from them-their scope is different, albeit, kindred, and is still more near that of the potter's art than the sculptor's. We offer

these remarks lest Thorwaldsen's example should friends of Stiglmayer, whom interest in the casting be cited to sanction an erroneous and deleterious, of the statue had led to the foundry, entered singly practice, long prevalent, because profitable, before into his chamber to congratulate him; and he, suphis time. England has already Manufacturing-porting his head on the breast of his beloved nephew, Statuaries enough !—Athenæum.

spoke to each a friendly grateful word, and received from each, with gentle consolation, the best wishes JEAN BAPTISTE STIGLMAYER.-The Journal des for a speedy recovery. But these were the last Debats announces the death, on the 18th ult., at the words which he spoke on earth-this was the last early age of 52, of Suglmayer, director of the Royal joy which he experienced amongst us: he laid himFoundry at Munich. This great artist (says the self down, as if wearied; the breath, which had be writer) had carried the art of casting metals to the fore been drawn with difficulty, was light and easy, highest point it had ever reached in Germany. The but about half-past nine in the evening was stilled monuments of colossal grandeur for which the for ever. Thus he parted from us, attended by all Germans are indebted to him amount in number to that the pious confidence of his heart, the joy of his 193, amongst which figure in the first rank the eques- profession, the love of his family, the faithful attachtrian statues of Maximilian I. of Bavaria, and the ment of his friends could give, and the memory of Electors, his predecessors; the obelisk erected at the just follows him. Stiglmayer, on the 18th of last Munich, in commemoration of 30,000 Bavarians kill- October, was fifty-two years of age; he was the son ed in Russia; the statues of Schiller, Richter, Mo- of a shoeing-smith of Fürstenfeldbruck, in the neighzart, Beethoven, Bolivar (Bolivia), and last, the borhood of Munich. He was originally a die-enstatue of Goethe, who was the intimate friend of graver, but in the year 1820, during a residence in Stiglmayer, at the execution of which the latter, al-Italy, especially in Naples, where he was present though ill, worked with so much ardor, that two at the casting of Canova's equestrian statue of hours after the cast was terminated, and even be- Charles III., he had his attention turned to bronzefore the mould was broken, he expired in the arms founding, to which he has been devoted ever since. of his assistants. Some months previously M. Stigl- The success of great and difficult undertakings, the mayer, although he then enjoyed excellent health, casting of bronze obelisks, the monument of King had a solemn presentiment of his approaching death. Maximilian, of the equestrian statue of the Elector From that moment he occupied himself night and Maximilian, of Jean Paul at Bayreuth, of Mozart at day in preparing instructions for the execution in Salzburg, have created for him, and the royal instibronze of the statue of Bavaria, of which the cele- tution under his guidance, a widely spread and unibrated sculptor, Schwanthaler, is now completing versally acknowledged celebrity, so that besides the the model, a monument which is to be 68 feet high, commissions of the King of Bavaria, he received and which after the famous Colossus of Rhodes, orders from all parts of Germany, Carlsruhe, Darmwill be the largest piece of sculpture which ever ex-stadt, Frankfurt, Vienna, Prague-nay, from Naples, isted. Fortunately, the instructions given by M. Stiglmayer, have been committed to writing. They are most complete, and will be of the utmost utility to the artist to whom shall be intrusted the gigantic operation of casting in bronze this immense monument."

Since the above was in type we have received the Allgemeine Zeitung, which contains the following letter:

and even from South America itself. Arisen from the sound root of the Bavarian people, he still preserved unspoiled his natural feeling, his unreserved candor, and inviolable rectitude and fidelity when he had ascended into the circle of higher refinement. Earnest and severe in the fulfilment of his duties, mild and kind in word and conduct towards every one, alike capable of enjoyment as well as of giving joy, acting together in thought and feeling, artist Munich, March 4. and man at once from the same mould, he called With a heavy heart I now take the pen, in order forth involuntarily in all who approached him, an irto acquaint you of the loss which has befallen us could know him without becoming attached to him; resistible emulation of love and esteem. No one Johannes Stiglmayer is dead. For the last two years, suffering from an incurable stomach complaint, and as his life has given to his name an imperisha he saw his strength decrease, but still endeavored-ble glory in the history of German art, so has his if not in himself, at least in his family to keep friends. His remains were interred at Neuhausen, too early death given an imperishable pain to his alive, with a cheerful spirit, the hope of recovery. Since the middle of January, from which time he and the great concourse of people of all ranks who had been almost constantly confined to his couch, attended, testified the high estimation in which he he occupied himself principally with the casting of was held, both as an artist and as a man.-Athen. the colossal statue of Goethe, which was ordered to ornament the native city of the poet; for although Stiglmayer had brought up his sister's son, Ferdinand Miller, to be a valuable assistant and representative, still he knew too well, from his many years' experience, the importance and the danger of so great an undertaking, to be quite free from all anxiety respecting the result. The work, in the meantime, was no longer to be delayed, and, after al! preparations had been made, the casting commenced on Saturday, the 2nd of March. With alternate feelings of confidence and fear, the disabled artist lay upon his sick bed, waiting for intelligence, which was brought to him every five minutes, respecting the progress of the work; till at length, on the completion of the casting, his nephew entered the room and took the burden from his heart, by announcing the perfect success of the undertaking, and was embraced by him with a twofold fervency of joy and affection. The

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

Great Britain.

A Grammar of the Icelandic, or Old Norse Tongue.
Translated from the Swedish of Erasmus Rask.
By George Webbe Dasent, M. A. London. Pick-
ering. 1843.

We do not plead guilty on behalf of our age to the charge M. Dasent brings against it, of regarding with indifference what was done before it, of being so eagerly bent on going forward, that it cannot spare a glance behind. On the contrary, we think one of the most peculiar characteristics of our times is an earnest desire to search out the forms and the spirit of the past, and to apply its lessons to

GREAT BRITAIN.

the present. We are rushing eagerly onwards, but | SELECT LIST OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS. with fearfulness and doubt, and we do cast many an anxious look behind, to see if haply we may gather from the dim light of ancient days some means of piercing the deeper obscurity of the future. We trust that the reception given to the work before us, by English scholars, will be such as to convince Mr. Dasent that he has not bestowed his valuable labor on a thankless generation. We need not dilate on the importance of his work to all zealous investigators of English history, tradition, laws, language, and institutions. A knowledge of the old northern tongues is indispensable to the English archæologist. No better guide to the treasures of the Old Norse literature need any

Complete Works of the Venerable Bede in the original Latin, with an English Translation of the Historical works, and a Life of the Author. By Rev. J. A. Giles, D. C. L.

Memoirs of Gaspar de Colligny, Admiral of France: with an account of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, Aug. 24, 1572. Translated and edited by D. D. Scott. Our Indian Empire, its History and Pre

man desire than Rask, the author of the well-sent State, from the earliest settlement of the known Anglo Saxon Grammar;' and Rask may congratulate himself on having fallen into the hands of such a translator.-Foreign Quarterly Rev.

The Literature of Germany from its Earliest Period to the Present Time. By Franz L. J. Thimm. Edited by William Henry Farn. London. Nutt. 1844. 18mo. pp. 300.

British in Hindostan to the close of the year 1843. By Charles MacFarlane.

The Historical Geography of Arabia; or the Patriarchal Evidences of Revealed Religion. By the Rev. Charles Foster, B. D.

The Epistles of Barnabas, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and the Epistle to Diognetus, in Greek, from the Text of Hefele; with an Introduction and Notes. By Algernon Greenfell, M. A., one of the Masters of Rugby School.

A Grammar of the Icelandic or Old Norse Tongue. Translated from the Swedish of Erasmus Rask, by George Webbe Dasent,

M. A.

This little book will supply a want much felt by incipient students of German literature, and will be useful even to more advanced scholars as a compact manual; an index, as it were, to the more voluminous guides to the literary history of Germany. Astronomers are in the habit of annexing a small telescope to each of their larger instruments; with the former they sweep rapidly over a wide range of the heavens, and so having discovered the star they want, they bring the focus of the more unwieldy instrument to bear upon it. Besides its compactness, this modest little book has another The Literature of Germany, from its earmerit. Unlike many works of its class of greater liest period to the present time, historically pretensions, it is not tinctured by the prejudices of developed. By Franz L. I. Thimm. Edited an individual or of a school. English readers may smile at some of the opinions put forth in it; but if by William Henry Farn. these are, as we believe them to be in general, faithful transcripts of the notions predominating in Germany, they then have an obvious value irrespective of their absolute truth; and equally obvious must be the convenience of being able to lay our hands upon them so readily.—Ibid.

Poems, by Mrs F. Hornblower.

The voice of the Muse will never cease to gladden the heart of man, even though, among the harsh discords of politics and polemics, it may sound low and faint, like that of the stock-dove brooding. Talk of Time dying, then talk of Poetry dying. Poetry is life-immortal, eternal-and a giver of such life to things which were else dead, or not in being. It is good to be a poet-to be a reader of poetry-in order to feel what vitality is in ourselves, or receive the impression of it from others.

As a specimen of Mrs. Hornblower's poetry we take the opening verses of a pleasing amplification of Wordsworth's sonnet, beginning" Books, dreams are each a world."

Books! sweet associates of the silent hour,
What blessed aspirations do I owe
To your companionship-your peaceful power
High and pure pleasure ever can bestow.-
Of noble ones I trace the path through life,

Joy in their joys, and sorrow as they mourn;
Gaze on their Christian animating strife,
And shed fond tears o'er their untimely urn;
Or with heroic beings tread the soil

Of a freed country, by themselves made free,
And taste the recompense of virtuous toil,
The exaltation of humanity.-Athen.

GERMANY.

Praktischer Commentar über die Propheten des Alten Bundes mit exeget. u. krit. Anmerkungen. Von F. W. Umbreit. 3 Bd. Hesekiel. Hamburg.

Anselm von Canterbury. Von F. R. Hasse.
Leipsig.

System der Metaphysik.
George. Berlin.

Von Dr. L.

Adversaria in Eschyli Prometheum vinctum et Aristophanis Aves philologica atque archæologica. Von F. Wieseler. Göttinge.

FRANCE.

Le Chevalier Guisan, sa vie et ses travaux à la Guyane. Par Charles Eynard. Paris. Esquisse d'une Histoire Universelle envisagée au point de vue chrétien; pour servir de guide dans l'enseignment des écoles. Par A. Vulliet. Tomes I. et II. Paris.

Etudes sur Pascal, par l'abbé Flottes, professeur à la faculté des lettres de Montpellier. Paris.

Journal d'un Voyage en Orient. Par le Comte Joseph D'Estourmel. Paris.

THE

ECLECTIC MAGAZINE

OF

FOREIGN LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

JULY, 1844.

dith, standing by his bed, said in her heart, O Lord God of all power, look at this present upon the works of my hands for the exaltation of Jerusalem. For now is the time to help thine inheritance, and to execute mine enterprises to the destruction of the enemies which are risen up against us.

"Then she came to the pillar of the bed which was at Holofernes's head, and took down his falchion from thence, and approached to his bed, and took hold of the hair of his head, and said, Strengthen me, O Lord God of Israel, this day. And she smote twice upon his neck with all her might, and she took away his head from him."

SIR CHARLES BELL'S ESSAYS ON EX- higher branches of the subject, that they

PRESSION.

From the British and Foreign Review.

The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression, as connected with the Fine Arts. By the late Sir CHARLES BEell. Third edition, enlarged. London: Murray, 1844.

must be considered as a new work. They formed, indeed, the earliest and latest object of their lamented author's tasteful solicitude.

They were originally composed, chiefly perhaps with reference to the very striking designs of his own ingenious pencil, before the serious pursuits of life began, and before his subsequent experience and reflection had THESE Essays have long been prized by given him the key to those phenomena those who are so fortunate as to possess which in art he illustrated, and explained in even the former editions of them, as one of science. The first edition of the work apthe most valuable contributions of English peared nearly forty years ago, in 1806, when literature to the arts, and one of the most Sir Charles Bell left Edinburgh to fix his pleasing volumes of an English library. We professional residence in London. During gladly therefore announce their re-appear- the most active years of a life which was ance in an entirely new form, re-written, unceasingly devoted to the arduous duties rather than revised, and with such copious of the medical profession, and to the proadditions, especially with reference to the motion of the highest branches of medical JULY, 1844. 19

knowledge and to perfect the truth of art; whilst either gift was used alike to simplify our understanding of the works of the Creator, and to raise our conceptions of natural beauty.

science, the revisal and illustration of this volume was his habitual recreation. In 1824 a second edition was produced, with considerable additions; but from that time Sir Charles Bell resisted the demand of the public for a farther issue of this book, until It has sometimes been asserted that the he should have had an opportunity of veri- pursuits and practices of the medical profying his principles of criticism in art, by fession tend to deaden sensibility, and to the study of the greatest works of the Italian bring the loftiest and noblest powers of the masters. With this especial object, he vis- human mind into too close a subjection to ited the continent in 1840; a brief but ex- the conclusions of material science. The tensive excursion enabled him to refresh philosophy of Broussais and the heartlessand to corroborate those impressions and ness of Roux or Dupuytren, may have givconvictions which had been the delight and en a color to such imputations; but a host the study of his life; and upon his return of names crowd upon the memory from the he recomposed the whole work for a third records of all nations, and from none more edition. Materials were collected in abun- than our own, to repel the charge. The dance, and for the most part they had been proper function of medical science in its already adapted to the purposes and subjects highest sense, is not to degrade the spirituof these Essays. The text had already been al inmate of the human frame to the level prepared for the press; and the care of the of the machinery so admirably adapted to editor appears to have surmounted most of his service, but rather to pursue through the the disadvantages inseparable from post- intricacies of contrivance the purposes of humous publication. Some of the more fu- life, to acknowledge the energy of being in gitive notes from the author's journals have those functions to which it imparts activity, been subjoined, which record with the rap- and to trace in the mysterious sympathies id grace of an artist's pencil the vivid plea- and expressions of the body the higher laws sures of an Italian journey to a man endow- of that vital power which the body obeys. ed with so simple a love of nature, and so To such objects as these no man ever ascultivated a comprehension of art. These pired more constantly, and we will add, remarks bear with singular originality and more devoutly, than Sir Charles Bell. His acuteness on the style and the works of the sensibility was of the most delicate kind; great masters and if they sometimes wear and his mind seemed to turn with predilecthe shape of a sudden conception, rather tion from the distressing studies of patholothan of mature thought, they are not the gy to the observation of the phenomena of less characteristic of that ingenuity and en- health. It is related of him, that in the thusiasm which Sir Charles Bell carried as course of his great discoveries in the nervfar in the practice of the fine arts as in the ous system, which it was absolutely necesmore profound researches of science. It sary to carry on upon a living animal, he deserves, indeed, to be recorded that his was arrested on the very verge of demonearly studies on the subject of expression stration by a degree of compassion for an in painting, and his observation of the ass, which he could not surmount; and he effects of passion and emotion on the face declared that he had rather abandon the disand frame of man, first engaged this emi- covery on which his fame was to rest, than nent surgeon in those investigations of the put that animal to torture. An abler hand, nature of the nerves and of their influence however, in a contemporary journal, has on the muscles, which led to his important traced the course of his professional life and discoveries in the nervous system; still, as his scientific discoveries, and we are most he advanced in the demonstration of those happy to perceive that the services rendertruths which he detected in the animal ed by Sir Charles Bell to the course of scieconomy, he derived from his more extend-ence have since been acknowledged by a ed knowledge of the physiology of man, a pension to his widow, out of that most inadmore complete theory of art and a more solid equate fund which the parsimony of Parliafoundation for those principles of criticism, ment has placed at the disposal of the Crown, which no one had before applied with equal for the reward, or rather the bare recogni precision to the productions of the great tion, of the most important benefits which artists. Thus he tended, by a noble sym- can be rendered to the nation and to hu pathy between his habitual and favorite manity. The appearance of the volume bepursuits, at once to increase the sphere of fore us suggests a different view of the pur