The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851. Various
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Название: The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851

Автор: Various

Издательство: Public Domain

Жанр: Журналы

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СКАЧАТЬ but the book of a traveller. The traveller is obviously a very charming and veracious one, but after all, the landscape and the persons, scenes, and manners he describes are so idealized by him as to have lost much of their natural identity, and put on the somewhat artificial look of museum specimens. However, the Notes are not, therefore, to us the less, but all the more, readable, because we have abundance of mere books of travel, and scarcely any traveller worth remarking. Mr. Kinglake, the author of Eothen, to be sure, was a host in himself. And Mr. Thackeray, in his Journey from Cheapside to Cairo, proved himself a fit companion of that gentleman. But a certain sneering humor, a certain mephistophelian irony, in these persons, prevent one from feeling entirely at ease with them, or believing, in fact, in their complete sincerity. It is not so with the author of Nile Notes, than whom a June breeze is not more bland, and moonlight not less gairish or oppressive. This conviction, indeed, strikes us in a very peculiar manner as we read, that no more genial nature ever penetrated that dismal and incredible East, to avouch the eternal freshness of man against the decay of nature and the mutability of institutions. An actually weird effect is produced by the sight of this plump and rosy Christian pervading the graves of dead empires, and thinking democracy amidst the listening ghosts of the Pharaohs. Did these solemn empires, did these absolute and strutting monarchs mistake their grandeur, and exist after all only that this modern democrat might laugh and live a life devoid of care? Such is the lesson of the book. It is sweeter to know the freshness and kindly nature that penned it; it is sweeter to feel the graceful and humane fancies that baptize every page of it, than to remember whole lineages of buried empires, or recognize whole pyramids of absolute and dissolved Pharaohs. The book is a mine of beautiful descriptions, and of sentences which tickle your inmost midriff with delight. (Harpers.)

      We have been surprised lately at several long discussions in the New-York Historical Society of the question whether copies, extracts, or abstracts of the MSS. and other historical documents in the Society's collections might be published without the Society's special permission. We do not know who introduced the prohibitory proposition, but it is in the last degree ridiculous; there cannot be said in its support one syllable of reason; that it has been entertained so long is discreditable to the Society. The prime object of the Society is the collection and preservation of the materials of history; the more numerous the multiplication of copies, the more certain the probabilities of their preservation. A private collector may for obvious reasons hoard his treasures, and wish for the destruction of all copies of them; but the considerations which govern him are the last that should influence a historical society under similar circumstances.

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      The first and second editions appeared in Philadelphia, and the third in Cooperstown. It was reprinted in 1830 in London, Paris, and Brussels: and an abridgment of it, by the author, has been largely introduced into common schools.

      STATUE OF JOHN C. CALHOUN, BY HIRAM POWERS.

      The above engraving of the statue of John C. Calhoun is from a daguerreotype taken in Florence immediately after the work was completed, and therefore presents it

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The first and second editions appeared in Philadelphia, and the third in Cooperstown. It was reprinted in 1830 in London, Paris, and Brussels: and an abridgment of it, by the author, has been largely introduced into common schools.

STATUE OF JOHN C. CALHOUN, BY HIRAM POWERS.

The above engraving of the statue of John C. Calhoun is from a daguerreotype taken in Florence immediately after the work was completed, and therefore presents it as it came from the hand of the sculptor, unmutilated by the accidents to which it was subjected in consequence of the wreck of the Elizabeth. The statue of Mr. Calhoun was contracted for, we believe, in 1845, and completed in 1850. It is the first draped or historical full-length by Mr. Powers, and it amply justifies the fame he had won in other performances by the harmonious blending of such particular excellences as he had exhibited in separation. It indeed illustrates his capacities for the highest range of historical portraiture and characterization, and will occasion regrets wherever similar subjects have in recent years been confided to other artists. We have heard that it is in contemplation to place in the park of our own city a colossal figure of Mr. Webster, by the same great sculptor. It is fit that while Charleston glories in the possession of this counterfeit of her dead Aristides (for in the indefectable purity of his public and private life Mr. Calhoun was surpassed by no character in the temples of Grecian or Roman greatness), New-York should be able to point to a statue of the representative of those ideas which are most eminently national, and of which she, as the intellectual and commercial metropolis of the whole country, is the centre. For plastic art, Mr. Webster may be regarded as perhaps the finest subject in modern history, and the head which Thorwaldsen thought must be the artist's ideal of the head of Jove, when modelled to the size of life, in the fit proportions of such a statue as is proposed, would be more imposing than any thing that has appeared in marble since the days of Praxitiles.

This figure of Mr. Calhoun is considerably larger than that of the great senator. The face is represented with singular fidelity as it appeared ten years ago. The incongruous blending of the Roman toga with the palmetto must be borne: civilization is not sufficiently advanced for the historical to be much regarded in art; and our Washingtons, Hamiltons, Websters and Calhouns, must all, like Mr. Booth and Mr. Forrest, come before us in the character of Brutus. With this exception as to the design, every critic must admit the work to be faultless; and Charleston may well be proud of a monument to her legislator, which illustrates her taste while it reminds her of his purity, dignity, and watchful care of her interests.

By the wreck of the ship Elizabeth, the left arm of the statue was broken off, and the fragment has not been recovered.

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The appearance of Whitehall from the Thames in the reign of Charles II. may be seen in our woodcut. The beautiful Banqueting-house of Inigo Jones was crowded among a heterogeneous mass of ugly buildings connected with the exigencies of the court. Beside the houses, to the spectator's left, was a large garden extending to the river, with fountains and parterres. A small garden also projected into the river in front of the buildings; and here Charles used to view the civic processions of the Lord Mayor, who on the day of his taking the oaths at Westminster, generally gratified the sovereign and other sight-seers with a pageant on the Thames, in some degree adulatory of the monarch. The king resided here so constantly, that the most striking pictures of his private manners are recorded to have happened at Whitehall, and for which the graphic pages of Pepys, Evelyn, and De Grammont may be consulted. Whitehall, indeed, has obtained its chief interest from its connection with the Stuarts. The Banqueting-house, erected by James I., in front of which his unfortunate son was executed; the residence of Cromwell here in a quietude, strangely contrasted with the voluptuousness of the Restoration; the flight of James II., and his queen's escape with her infant son by the water-gate, shown in our cut, closes the history СКАЧАТЬ