3. Reports on the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867; viz. Report on Seeds and Saplings of Forest Trees. By Dr. Hooker. Report on the Products of Forest Cultivation. By P. L. Simmonds, Esq. Report on Timber and Forest Produce. By T. W. Webber, IV. The Memoirs of Sir John Reresby, 1634-1689. Edited 359 € 394 V.-The History of Israel. By Heinrich Ewald, Professor of the University of Göttingen. Translated from the German. Edited, with a Preface and Appendix, by Russell Martineau, M.A., Professor of Hebrew in Man- chester New College. 5 vols. London: 1869-1874, 432 VI.-1. The Archæology of Rome. By John Henry Parker, C.B. Two volumes, 8vo. London: 1875. 2. La Vita di Nino Bixio, narrata da Giuseppe Guer- 3. L'Italia Economica nel 1873. Publicazione Ufficiale. 4. Stato Attuale della Finanza in Italia. Per Francesco VIII. Der Preussische Feldzug in Holland, 1787. Von Frei- herr von Troschke. Berlin: 1875,. IX.-1. Reports of the Municipal Corporations Commissioners. 2. Report of the City Corporation Commissioners. Lon- 3. Reports of the Select Committee of House of Commons .586 THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, JULY, 1875. No. CCLXXXIX. ART. I.-1. The Life of Thorvaldsen, collated from the Danish of J. M. THIELE. By the Rev. M. R. BARNARD, B.A. London: 1865. 2. Thorvaldsen: his Life and Works. Translated by Mrs. CASHEL HOEY. nine engravings on steel and wood. IF By EUGENE PLON. Illustrated by thirtyLondon: 1874. F ever Rome was justly apostrophised as 'Thou City of the 'Soul,' it must have been by some artist of bygone days located within the precincts of her intolerance and superstition, her dirt and dilapidation, her double charm of classic and Christian association, and that ever-sympathising world of art and letters, which, till lately, has been her one only surviving form of active life. The intolerance and superstition touched not him, so long as he touched not them; the dirt and dilapidation he soon viewed under other colours, and learned to call' by other names; while the glory of the Past and the fellowship of the Present shed a halo over his existence of which few minds have more than dreamed. Favoured, indeed, among the sons of men have been those to whom the vision has been fulfilled, as in John Gibson's case, of the eagle which uplifted him from the land of frost and fog and commonplace, and bore him, Ganymede like, to that bright sphere where reality and romance became identical. And these not artists only; for truly may it be said that all who have visited Rome with a soul of any kind within them-no matter what their antecedents-have felt, as it were, new-born; Circe's Isle not more fascinating, nor her spells more potent. Rome, it is true, converted them neither into beasts, nor, in days of yore, into Papists. But many a miracle, as remarkable in its way, has been wrought by her upon natures in whom no spark of poetry or enthusiasm VOL. CXLII. NO. CCLXXXIX. B had been previously suspected. Dry country squires, and stiff London bankers-men, be it understood, of education-resigned only to endure, for the pleasure of others, a temporary residence devoid of every usual occupation and comfort, have marvelled at their own transformation as they gradually gave way to the conviction that the only thing to distress them in Rome was the thought of having to leave her. However paralysed the Italian race may have been for centuries, however doting and decrepid their ancient capital, yet both continued to play a part more harmonious and inspiring to man's poetic and aesthetic sympathies than that supplied by any other member of the great European family. Thus the society that gathered within the gates of Rome and wandered about her monuments was as mixed as it was choice and exotic-comprehending the rarer spirits from all parts of the world; men of learning and men of taste-students of history, antiquity, archæology, and the fine arts-painters and sculptors from every country in Europe-fine ladies to give entertainments, and English milords to lavish patronage-all equally necessary to each other and to Rome. But the artists were especially her natural subjects; they more than any other class combined the charm of a Roman residence with the one great condition of mortal life and human happinesswork; and that condition never so lightly fulfilled as under the magical glow of a Roman sun. If the doom of Rome, as regards the purely artist life, has in some measure gone forth with her late increased political importance, and no less increased order, cleanliness, bustle, and dearness of living, what shall replace her? No one can compute the value of such neutral ground as she has afforded to the busy and ambitious nations of the earth-ground where all the surplus sentiment of the human breast could freely expatiate, and where, in one sense, those weary of the contention and commonplace of the work-a-day world could be at rest. The period when foreign artists resorted to Rome begins with the decline of Italian art, and at first bore fruits of no genial or genuine character. For the works of Bernard van Orley, Frank Floris, with many others from the Flemish schools, are rather warnings against the false attempt to produce a cross between Northern feeling and Southern forms. But the art-pilgrims to Rome who succeeded these in the seventeenth century had a more sensible and healthy purpose in view. They went there not so much to try to imitate Raphael and Michael Angelo, as to study those picturesque remains, natural beauties, and radiant skies nowhere else found in such enchanting conjunction. Sandrart and Rosa di Tivoli, both from Frankfort-with names of such magical import as Claude Gelée from Lorraine, and the Poussins from Soissons, head the list of those who studied her sunrises and sunsets, watched her winds and storms, portrayed her ancient tombs and aqueducts, and traced the ineffable grace and solemnity of the landscape lines which encompass them. As soon as England began to rear the children of art, Rome, and Italy generally, exercised the same attraction for them. Again two great names led the way-Richard Wilson and Joshua Reynolds, both in 1749, the one thirty-six years, the other then twenty-six years of age. To this intercourse with the dawning English school may be attributed that exchange of benefits which in some measure ensued; for, whatever the contempt for English art which it was fashionable, chiefly on the part of Germans, to assert in Rome, it is notorious that English patronage and intelligence stood so high with native Italian artists as to bring many of them, in the eighteenth century, over to England. The new-born Royal Academy also was among the first of the institutions of that class to recognise the value of the study, though condemning the direct imitation, of the old masters, and to found a travelling studentship which usually landed the fortunate. possessor on the Seven Hills. This means of study was interrupted by the French Revolution and all its consequences, and no student was sent abroad by the Royal Academy between the years 1795 and 1818. For all that there were plenty of devotees from different countries who found their way to the shrine, and Rome was perhaps never more the nursing mother of art and the paradise of the artist than during that space of its modern history when the mine of learning opened by Winckelmann and Visconti, and further developed by Niebuhr, Zoega, and Bunsen-the founding of the Museo Clementino-the excavations of the Villa Hadrian-the discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii-the publication of Piranesi's engravings and other grand works -the enlightened rule of Cardinal Gonsalvi-the courteous benevolence of Canova, and the aesthetic sympathies of the gentle Chevalier Kestner-offered a combination of favouring elements which can hardly occur again. Among those whose happy lot cast them in Rome while this atmosphere of art, learning, and amenity prevailed was the object of this article-Bertel Thorvaldsen-then, as still, the pilgrim who has hitherto migrated from the latitude farthest north of the Eternal City. But Art, like Poetry, seems in tended to be indigenous to every climate. In Thorvaldsen's case it sprang, if not from Greenland's icy mountains,' yet from the contiguous island to which the Muse of Poetry had been no stranger. For Gottschalk Thorvaldsen, father of the celebrated sculptor, was the son of a poor Icelandic pastor, who sent him to earn a living in the comparatively genial climate and bountiful resources of Copenhagen. Gottschalk himself may be said to have preceded his son in the path of art, inasmuch as, having a knack of wood-carving, he found occupation in the shipbuilder's sheds by carving the figure-heads for merchant vessels. His art, however, was so rudimental, that, being once employed to fashion a lion for a new vessel, the nearest approach he succeeded in making to the king of animals was the semblance of a poodle. Thus, among the many great artists who have had small artists for their progenitors, it would be difficult to name an instance in which the distance between the one and the other has been greater. That Thorvaldsen, constituted as he was, should have traversed that distance, is, as we shall see, one of the strangest facts in his history. Bertel Thorvaldsen was born 1770, of parents doubly low in the social scale; for his father was indolent and given to drink, and his mother was a Jutland peasant. Aged workmen, proud of their townsman's subsequent fame, used to remember the pretty boy with fair hair and blue eyes who would bring his father's dinner to the timber-yards on the quays of Copenhagen. He was an only child, and, in the absence of even the most humble education, his turn for wood-carving seems to have been his only form of intelligence. Such was his aptitude, that some friend urged his learning what his father was utterly incompetent to teach, and procured for him, at eleven years of age, admission to the free school of the Danish Academy of the Fine Arts. Here he made such progress that Gottschalk's performances began to show signs, both in conception and execution, of an intelligent colleague. Friends also endeavoured to stimulate the young lad to other forms of cultivation, but Bertel cared for nothing but the pencil or the carving tool, and not very ardently even for them, while for all further acquisition he was as stolid as a true Icelander. Like Claude Lorraine also, who could neither be taught to make a tart (his father was a pastry cook) nor to read a book, he was impervious to the charm of letters. Nevertheless, his progress in drawing and modelling was such as to entitle him to the prize of the small silver medal awarded by the Academy-a circumstance published in the Copenhagen |