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dual face. From one of his marbles we derive definite ideas of the human character of its subject, what its ambition is, and what its weakness; what have been its loves and its antipathies, its struggles and its victories, its joys and its sorrows, may be revealed to him who has learned what the human face becomes under the influence of these incessant forces. No mere talent can accomplish such results. Behind all that kind of strength lies the fact of peculiar sympathies, relating the artist to this phase of Art-representation; and within certain limits, which should have been undebatable, his rule was absolute.
The great mistake with Mr. Powers has been his oversight regarding these limits. There has been debate, hesitation, and a continual wandering away from the duties of his errand. Years have been devoted to those ghosts of sculpture, allegorical figures; other years wasted in the elaboration of machinery. Not that his ideal statues are worthless, or fall short of great beauty and exquisite delicacy; not that his skill as a mechanician is other than great. But the age cannot afford these things, nor can the sculptor afford them. A year is too great a sum to give for a statue of California. Better than that, the several portraits of valued men which might have been acquired,--one bust, even, like those which surprised and compelled the reverence of Thorwaldsen. Better the perfected ability which would have given his country the Webster he should and might have made than a hundred "Americas."
There are two considerations which may have misled Mr. Powers. One, a pecuniary one, which he should have disposed of as did Agassiz, when such was advanced to induce him to give lyceum lectures:--"Sir, I cannot afford to make money!" The other may have been the weight of the prevailing error that portrait-sculpture is a less honorable branch of Art.
Less than what? The historical? What finer history than Titian's Paul III., Raphael's Leo X., Albert Dürer's head of himself? What finer t