mortal sculptors of Greece saw in sunshine, he sees in twilight-his art is dimly reflected back from the light of ancient ages. The Grecian beauty and nature which he has chosen for his models, he sees through the eyes of other men-he cannot contemplate living, the very excellence he seeks to attain. Of the meek austere composure of ancient art, he seems to feel but little, and that late in life-he retires from the awful front of Jupiter, to pipe with Apollo among the flocks of Admetus. Though with the severe and the majestic, he has limited acquaintance with the graceful, the gentle, and the soft, he seems particularly intimate, and this, though a high, is but a recent acquirement. His earlier works are all infected with the theatrical or affected styles-every figure strains to make the most of the graces of its person. He was polluted by his intercourse with the French. He seems not a sculptor by the grace of God alone, but has become eminent by patient study and reflection. The character of his works lives not in living nature, he deals with the demi-gods, and seems ambitious to restore the lost statues of older Greece to their pedestals. He looks not on nature and revealed religion as Raphael looked-he has no intense and passionate feeling for the heroes or the hero ines of whom Tasso sung so divinelyhe seeks not to embody the glorious forms of the Christian faith. He has no visions of angels ascending and descending-he feels for a race which forsook the world when the cross was seen on Calvary, and he must be content to feel alone. He has no twilight visitations from the muse of modern beauty. The softness, the sweetness, and grace of his best works have been felt and echoed by all. His Hebe is buoyant and sylphlike, but not modest-with such a loose look and air, she never had dared to deal ambrosia among the graver divinities. The Cawdor Hebe came from the hands of Canova, with her cheeks vermilioned. His statue of Madame Mere, the mother of Napoleon, is a work of great merit-easy and dignified; and his colossal statue of Buonaparte, now in Apsley-house, aspires to the serene majesty of the antique.

It is customary to couple the names of Canova and Chantrey together, and some have not scrupled to add that of Thorwaldsen, the Dane. Their styles

and their powers are essentially different, and widely removed from each other. Canova seeks to revive the might and beauty of Greek art on earth-the art of Chantrey is a pure emanation of English genius-a style without transcript or imitation-resembling the ancients no more than the wild romantic dramas of Shakspeare resemble the plays of Euripides, or the heroes of Walter Scott's chivalry, the heroes of heathen song. It seeks to personify the strength and the beauty of the "mighty_island." From them both the Dane differs, and we are sensible of a descent, and a deep one, when we write his name. He has not the powerful tact of speculating on ancient and departed excellence like the Roman-nor has he the native might, and grace, and unborrowed vigour of the Englishman in hewing out a natural and noble style of his own. The group of the graces which he modelled in feverish emulation of those of Canova, measure out the immense distance between them; they are a total failure, and below mediocrity. His figure of the Duke of Bedford's daughter is unworthy of the company of her sister Louisa by Chantrey. He studies living nature, but with no poet's eye.

Of the impressions which the works of Michael Angelo made on our Englishman, we may be expected to say something-it would be unwise to be silent, yet what we have to say must be of a mixed kind; we have to speak of great excellencies and grievous faults. Of the powers of this wonderful man the world is fully sensible, but he seems always to have aspired at expressing too much-grasping at unattainable perfections beyond the power of his art. He wished to embody and impress the glowing, the sublime, and extensive associations of poetry, and was repulsed by the limits of art, and the grossness of his materials. Amid all his grandeur he has constrained elevations, and with all his truth, an exaggeration of the human form, which he mistook for strength. He was remarkably ardent and impatient; few of his works are finished. A new work presented itself to his restless imagination, and he left an hero with his hand or his foot

for ever in the block, to relieve the form of some new beauty of which his fancy had dreamed. Had he not aimed at so much, he would have ac

No XXXVII.

VOL. VII.

A MAN of genius and taste, Gray the poet, lamented that his native country had made no advance in sculpture. This reproach has been removed, and removed too by a masterly hand. Those who wish to trace the return of English sculpture from the foreign artificial and allegorical style, to its natural and original character-from cold and conceited fiction to tender and elevated truth, will find it chiefly in the history of Francis Chantrey and his productions. Of him, and of them, we shall try to render some account. For it is instructive to follow the progress of an original and powerful mind, from the rudeness of its early conceptions, till it comes forth with native and unborrowed might in creations of grace, and beauty, and dignity.

Francis Chantrey was born at Norton, a small village on the borders of Derbyshire, on the 7th of April, 1782. His ancestors were in respectable if not opulent circumstances, and some heritable possessions still belong to the family. He was deprived of his father very early in life, and being an only child, was educated by his mother with abundance of tenderness and solicitude. He attended the school at Norton-but of his progress there, we have been unable to obtain any particular account. Education and agriculture shared his time between them till his seventeenth year; and a farmer's education is not always the most liberal. About this time he became weary of the pursuits of his forefathers, and resolved to study the law under a respectable solicitor at Sheffield. Whether this was his own choice or that of his relations we have not learned, and it matters not, for another destiny awaited him. To accident, we owe much of what we are willing to attribute to our wisdom; and, certainly to pure accident, we owe whatever delight we have received from the productions of Mr Chantrey.

During the hours of intermission from labour at the farm, and instruction at the school, he had amused him VOL. VII.

self in making resemblances of various objects in clay, and to this employment he was much attached. But his affection thus early shown for art was but a matter of amusement-he calculated as little of the scope it presented to the ambition of genius, as he was unconscious that it was the path which nature had prepared for his fame. The day named for commencing his new profession arrived, and with the usual eagerness of youth for novelty, he reached Sheffield a full hour sooner than his friends had appointed to meet him. As he walked up and down the street, expecting their coming, his attention was attracted by some figures in the window of one Ramsay, a carver and gilder. He stopped to examine them, and was not without those emotions which original minds feel in seeing something congenial. He resolved at once to become an artist; and perhaps, even then, associated his determination with those ideas and creations of beauty from which his name is now inseparable. Common wonder is fond of attributing the first visible impulse of any extraordinary mind to some singular cir cumstance, but nothing can be better authenticated than the fact which decided the destiny of his talents. What his friends thought of his sudden resolution it is useless to inquire-we have heard that they did not condole with him, like the illustrious Burns over the pursuits of Fergusson:

"Thy glorious parts

Ill suited laws dry musty arts." The labours in which Ramsay employed him were too limited for his powers; his hours of leisure were therefore dedicated to modelling and drawing, and he always preferred copying nature. He had no other idea of style but that with which nature supplied him-he had his own notions of art and of excellence to rough-hew for himself, and the style and character he then formed, he pursues with success now. These we have learned were much more pleasant speculations to him than to Ramsay, who, incensed

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