THE YOUNG SCULPTOR.

lofty branch of art there is no room for secondrate merit, no middle path between hopeless obscurity and splendid reputation.

To attain this proud eminence was not the destiny of Henry Warner. With funds almost exhausted, a broken constitution, and a half-broken heart, he left the great city-so dreary and so desolate to those who live alone, uncheered by bosom sympathy, unsoothed by home affection-and retired to Belford, as his medical adviser said, to recruit his health-as his own desponding spirit whispered, to die!

At the Friary Cottage he found unexpected comfort. The quiet was delightful to him; the situation, at once melancholy and picturesque, fell in with his taste and his feelings; and with the cheerful kindness of Mrs. Duval and the ardent admiration of her enthusiastic boy, it was impossible not to be gratified.

new works, which, under the temporary re-
vival caused by change of scene, and of air,
he in his happier moments began to think it
possible that he might live to complete.

His great pleasure, however, was in ram-
bling with Louis through the lanes and mea-
dows, now in the very prime and pride of
May, green and flowery to the eye, cool and
elastic to the tread, fresh and fragrant to the
scent, pleasant to every sense; or in being
rowed by him in a little boat (and Louis was
a skilful and indefatigable waterman) amongst
the remotest recesses of the great river; be-
tween beech-woods with the sunbeams wan-
dering with such an interchange of light and
shadow over the unspeakable beauty of their
fresh young tops; or through narrow channels
hemmed in by turfy hills and bowery islets,
beautiful solitudes from which the world and
the world's woe seemed excluded, and they
and their little boat sole tenants of the bright
water, into whose bosom the blue sky shone
so peacefully, and whose slow current half
seemed to bear along the slender boughs of
the weeping willow as they stopped to kiss
the stream.

Henry was himself one of those gifted persons who seem born to command affection. The griefs that were festering at the core, never appeared upon the surface. There all was gentle, placid, smiling, almost gay; and the quickness with which he felt, and the In such a scene as this, Henry's soothed sweetness with which he acknowledged, any trifling attention, would have won colder spirit would sometimes burst into song-such hearts than those of Louis and his mother. song as Louis felt no one had ever heard beThe tender charm of his smile and the sunny fore. It was in truth a style of singing as look of his dark eyes were singularly pleas-rare as it was exquisite, in which effect was ing, and without being regularly handsome, his whole countenance had a charm more captivating than beauty. Sweetness and youthfulness formed its prevailing expression, as grace was the characteristic of his slight and almost boyish figure; although a phrenologist would have traced much both of loftiness and power in the Shaksperian pile of forehead and the finely-moulded head.

His conversation was gentle and unpretending, and occasionally, when betrayed into speaking on his own art, fervent and enthusiastic. He talked little, as one who had lived much alone, preferring to turn over the French and Latin books of which the poor Abbé's small library consisted, or buried in "Haley's Essay on Sculpture," a chance-found volume, of which not merely the subject, but the feelings under which the poem was written, particularly interested him;* or forming plans for

completely sacrificed to expression, and the melody, however beautiful, seemed merely an adjunct to the most perfect and delicious recitation. Perhaps none but the writer of the words (and yet, considered as poetry, the words were trifling enough) could have afforded to make that round and mellow voice, and that consummate knowledge of music, that extraordinary union of taste and execution, so entirely secondary to the feeling of the verse.

One great charm of Henry's singing was its spontaneity-the manner in which, excited by the merest trifle, it gushed forth in the "How sweetly that skylark middle of conversation, or broke out after a long silence. sings!" cried Louis one morning, laying aside his oar that he might listen at his ease-" and the deep-soothing cooing of the wood-pigeon, and the sighing of the wind, and the rippling of the waters! How delightful are all na

“Ay,” rejoined Henry—

"There is a pure and holy spell

In all sweet sounds on earth that dwell:
The pleasant hum of the early bee,
As she plies her cheerful industry;

The Letters on Sculpture were addressed to Flax-tural sounds!" man, whose pupil, Thomas Haley,, the poet's only son, was, during the time of their composition, rapidly declining of a lingering and painful disease. He did actually die between the completion and the publication of the poem; and the true and strong expression of the father's grief for the sufferings and death of this amiable and promising youth, is to me singularly affecting. It is very old-fashioned to like the writings of Haley, who paid in the latter part of his career the usual penalty for having been over-praised in his earlier days, and is now seldom mentioned but as an object of ridicule and scorn; but, set aside the great and varied learning of his notes, I cannot help feeling some kindness for the accomplished and elegant scholar who in his greater works, the Essays on History,

on Epic Poetry, on Painting, and on Sculpture, has communicated so agreeably, so rich a store of information, and whose own observations are always so just, so candid, and so honourable-so full of a tempered love of liberty, and of the highest and purest admiration for all that is great and beautiful in literature or in art.

33*

The whir of the mailed beetle's wing,
Sailing heavily by at evening;
And the nightingale, so poets say,
Wooing the rose in his matchless lay.

There is a pure and holy spell

In all sweet sounds on earth that dwell;
The Indian shell, whose faithful strain
Echoes the song of the distant main;
The streamlet gurgling through the trees,
The welcome song of the cool night-breeze;
The cataract loud, the tempest high,
Hath each its thrilling melody."

"Yes," continued Louis, after warmly thanking the singer for though the matter was little, the manner was much-"Yes! and how much beauty there is in almost every scene, if people had but the faculty, not of looking for it-that were too much to expect -but of seeing it when it lies before them. Look at the corner of that meadow as it comes sloping down to the water, with the cattle clustered under the great oak, and that little thicket of flowery hawthorn and shining holly, and golden-blossomed brown, with the tangled sheepwalk threading it, and forming a bower fit for any princess.'

Again Henry answered in song:

"She lay beneath the forest shade

As 'midst its leaves a lily fair-
Sleeping she lay, young Kalasrade,
Nor dreamt that mortal hover'd there.
All as she slept, a sudden smile

Play'd round her lips in dimpling grace,
And softest blushes glanced the while

In roseate beauty o'er her face;
And then those blushes pass'd away
From her pure cheek, and Kalasrade
Pale as a new-blown lily lay,

Slumbering beneath the forest shade.

Oh! lovely was that blush so meek,
That smile half playful, half demure,
And lovelier still that pallid cheek-
That look so gentle, yet so pure.
I left her in her purity,

Slumbering beneath the forest glade;
I fear'd to meet her waking eye,
The young, the timid Kalasrade.
I left her; yet by day, by night,
Dwells in my soul that image fair,
Madd'ning as thoughts of past delight,
As guilty hope, as fierce despair."

garden. I withdrew as silently as possible, the more so as I saw another young lady, her sister, approaching, who, in endeavouring to dispose a branch of the bay-tree, so as to shelter the fair sleeper from the sun, awakened her."

"What a subject for a group!" exclaimed Louis. "Did you never attempt to model the two sisters ?"

"It is a fine subject," replied Henry; "and" it has been attempted, but not completed. Do, you not remember singling out a sketch of the recumbent figure, the other day, when you were turning over my drawings?"

66

Yes, and saying how like it was to the exquisite bust marked 'EAENH.-Helena! But all your female figures are more or less like that Helen. She is your goddess of beauty."

Perhaps so," rejoined Henry. "But where are we now? Is this the old church of Castlebar which you were promising to show me, with its beautiful tower, and the great yew trees? Yes, it must be. You are right in your admiration, Louis. That tower is beautiful, with its fine old masonry, the quaint fantastic brickwork left, to the honour of the rector's taste, in the rich tinting of its own weather-stains, undaubed by whitewash, and contrasting so gracefully with the vivid foliage of that row of tall limes behind. A strange tree for a churchyard, Louis, the honeyed, tasselled lime! And yet how often we see it there blending with the dark funeral yew-like life with death! I should like to be buried there."

66

Nay," said Louis, "a churchyard is sometimes devoted to gayer purposes than burials. Hark! even now!" and as he spoke the bells struck up a merry peal, the church-door opened, and the little procession of a rustic wedding, the benign clergyman looking good wishes, the smirking clerk, the hearty jolly bridal-father, the simpering bride-maidens, the laughing bridesmen-and the pretty, blushing, modest bride, listening with tearful smiles to the fond and happy lover-husband, on whose arm she hung-issued from the porch. "I should like just such a wife as that myself," added Louis, talking of marrying as a clever boy of thirteen likes to talk ;* "should not you?"

"Is that subject quite imaginary ?" Louis at last ventured to inquire, taking care, however, from an instinctive delicacy, that .he would have found it difficult to account for, to resume his oar and turn away from Henry as he spoke" or did you ever really see a sleep- *It was somewhere about that ripe age that a very ing beauty in a bower, such as I was fancy-clever friend of mine, travelling in the North with a ing just now?" young clergyman, his private tutor, wrote to his mother a letter beginning as follows:

66

"It is and it is not imaginary, Louis," replied Henry, sighing deeply; "Gretna Green, Thursday. or rather, it is a fancy piece, grounded, as rhymes and of love and matrimony; and it is a thousand pities "My dear mother,-Here we are, in the very land pictures often are, on some slight foundation that my little wife is not here with us, for Mr. G. of truth. Wandering in the neighbourhood being at hand, we could strike up a wedding without of Rome, I strayed accidentally into the pri- loss of time, and my father and Mr. D. would have vate grounds of an English nobleman, and nothing to do but to settle the income and the dowry saw a beautiful girl sleeping as I have de-sidered at thirteen! At three-and-thirty, the case is at their leisure." So lightly are those matters conscribed under a bay tree, in the terraced Italian altered.

Louis was about to utter some expression of admiration, which the ringing, air, and the exquisite taste and lightness of the singing, well deserved, when he perceived that the artist, absorbed in his own feelings and re-eminently suited as the passage in question t collections, was totally unconscious of his presence. Under the influence of such associations, he sang, with a short pause between them, the two following airs:

solitude of the double avenue of old oaks that | October evening, Stephen, who had been ab

skirted the upper part of the common; and

there

"Like hermit, near his cross of stone,
To pace at eve the silent turf alone,
And softly breathe, or inly muse a prayer."
Rhymed Plea for Tolerance.*

More fitting place for such meditation he could hardly have found than that broad avenue of columned trunks, the boughs arching over his head, a natural temple! the shadows falling heavily as between the pillared aisles of some dim cathedral, and the sunbeams just glinting through the massive foliage, as if piercing the Gothic tracery of some pictured window. The wind came sweeping along the branches, with a sound at once solemn and soothing; and to a mind high-wrought and fancy-fraught as Henry's, the very song of the birds, as they sought their nests in the high trees, had something pure and holy as a vesper-hymn.

avenue.

sent for some weeks on a visit to a married
daughter, met the young sculptor in his usual
haunt, Sunham Avenue, and was struck with
the alteration in his appearance. Crabbe has
described such an alteration with his usual
graphic felicity.

"Then his thin cheek assumed a deadly hue,
And all the rose to one small spot withdrew:
They call'd it hectic; 't was a fiery flush
More fix'd and deeper than the maiden blush;
His paler lips the pearly teeth disclosed,
And lab'ring lungs the lengthened speech opposed."
Parish Register.

But, perhaps, Haley's account of his son still more resembles Henry Warner, because it adds the mind's strength to the body's attenuation. "Couldst thou see him now"he is addressing Flaxman—

Thou might'st suppose I had before thee brought
A Christian martyr, by Ghiberti wrought,
So pain has crush'd his form with dire control,
And so the seraph Patience arm'd his soul."
Letters on Sculpture.

The sweetest hour in all the day to Henry Warner was that of his solitary walk in the He was leaning against a tree in the full Quite solitary it was always; for light of the bright Hunter's moon, when SteLouis had discovered that this was the only phen accosted him with his usual rough kindpleasure which his friend wished to enjoy un-ness, and insisted on his accepting the support shared, and with instinctive delicacy contrived of his stout arm to help him home. Henry to keep away at that hour. took it gratefully; in truth, he could hardly have walked that distance without such an aid; and for some time they walked on slowly and in silence; the bright moonbeams checkering the avenue, sleeping on the moss-grown thatch of the cottage roofs, and playing with a silvery radiance on the clear ponds that starred the common. It was a beautiful scene, and Henry lingered to look upon it, when his companion, admonished by the fallen leaves damp and dewy under foot, and the night wind sighing through the trees, begged him not to loiter, chiding him, as gently as Stephen could chide, for coming so far at such an hour.

The only person who ever accosted Henry on these occasions was our good friend Stephen Lane, who used sometimes to meet him when returning from his farm, and who, won first by his countenance, and then by his manner, and a little, perhaps, by the close but often unsuspected approximation which exists between the perfectly simple and the highly refined, had taken what he called a fancy to the lad, and even forgave him for prognosticating that Louis would some day or other be a painter of no common order,-that he had the feeling of beauty and the eye for colour, the inborn taste and the strong love of art which indicate genius. "So much the worse!" thought our friend Stephen; but such was the respect excited by the young artist's gentleness and sweetness, that, free-spoken as he generally was on all matters, the good butcher, on this solitary occasion, kept his thoughts to

himself.

In strenuous application to the Procession, and lonely twilight walks, the summer and part of the autumn passed away. One bright

* A poem of which (if it were not presumptuous in me to praise such a work) I should say, that it united the pregnant sense and the beautiful versification of Pope, the eloquent philosophy of Wordsworth, the wide humanity of Scott, and the fervent holiness of Cowper, with a spirit of charity all its own. That little volume is a just proof (if such were needed) how entirely intellect of the very highest class belongs to virtue. The work is out of print: must it continue so? Is it quite consistent in one imbued with so sincere a love for his fellow-creatures to withhold from them such an overflowing source of profit and delight?

"It was foolish," replied Henry; "but I love these trees, and I shall never see them again." And then he smiled, and began talking cheerfully of the bright moonbeams, and their fine effect upon the water; and Stephen drew the back of his hard huge hand across his eyes, and thought himself a great fool, and wondered how sweet smiles and hopeful happy words should make one sad; and when an acorn dropped from a tree at his feet, and the natural thought passed through his mind, "Poor youth, so he will fall!" Stephen had nothing for it but to hem away the choking sensation in his throat, and began to lecture the invalid in good earnest.

After landing him safely in his own parlour, and charging Louis to take care of his friend, Stephen drew his good hostess to the gate of her little garden:

"This poor lad must have the best advice, Mrs. Duval."