impressed the art-loving public of the time as marked by strong artistic power and as entitled to permanent rank in sculpture.
Mr. Crawford died young; but his name lives in the majestic bronze statue of “Beethoven” which is in the beautiful white and gold interior of Symphony Hall, in Boston; and his “Orpheus” and some other works claim high appreciation. Writing of Crawford, Mr. Hillard said:—
“Crawford’s career was distinguished by energy, resolution, and self-reliance. While yet a youth, he formed the determination to make himself an artist; and with this view went to Rome—alone, unfriended, and unknown—and there began a life of toil and renunciation; resisting the approaches alike of indolence and despondency. His strength of character and force of will would have earned distinction for powers inferior to his. Nothing was given to self-indulgence; nothing to vague dreams; nothing to unmanly despair. He did not wait for the work that he would have, but labored cheerfully upon that which he could have. Success came gradually, but surely; and his powers as surely proved themselves to be more than equal to the demand made upon them.”
On the death of Mr. Crawford, Thomas William Parsons wrote a memorial poem in which this stanza occurs:—
“O Rome! what memories awake,
When Crawford’s name is said,
Of days and friends for whose dear sake
That path of Hades unto me
Will have no more of dread
Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice!
O Crawford! husband, father, brother
Are in that name, that little word!
Let me no more my sorrow smother;
Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred.”
Thomas Ball, who went in early manhood to Florence, where he remained until when nearly at the age of fourscore he returned to his native land, still continues, at the age of eighty-five, to pursue the art he loves. He has created works, as his equestrian statue of “Washington” in the Public Gardens and his “Lincoln Freeing the Slave” in Park Square, both in Boston; his great Washington Memorial group in Methuen, Massachusetts; his “Christ Blessing Little Children,” and many other historic and ideal sculptures, that seem endowed with his beautiful and winning spirit as well as with his rare gifts. Larkin G. Mead chose Florence rather than Rome for his home and work. His noble “River God,” placed at the head of the Mississippi near St. Paul, as well as other interesting creations, link his name with that of his native land. Randolph Rogers, a man of genius; Rinehart, Paul Akers, and Thompson all died before the full maturity of their powers; Akers at the early age of thirty-six, leaving, as his bride of a year, the poet, Elizabeth Akers Allen, who, under the nom de plume of “Florence Percy,” has endeared herself to all lovers of lyric art. In a monograph on Paul Akers, written after his death, the writer says of his studio in Rome:—
“Linked with this studio is Hawthorne’s tale of ‘The Marble Faun,’ as Kenyon’s studio was none other than Paul Akers’s. Though Hawthorne in his romance saw fit to lay the scene in the rooms once occupied by Canova, it was in the Via del Crecie that he wove the thread of his Italian romance.
“Paul Akers’s growing reputation and increase of work ere long made it necessary for him to seek a more commodious studio, and he took rooms once occupied by the famous Canova. Here he had made under his supervision copies in marble of many of the famous works of the Vatican and the Capitol. The largest collection of these was a commission from Mr. Edward King of Newport, and among them were busts of Ariadne, Demosthenes, and Cicero, and a facsimile of the ‘Dying Gladiator’ which Mr. King presented to the Redwood Library of Newport.
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“During his first winter in Rome he was permitted by the authorities to make a cast of a mutilated bust of Cicero which had long lain in the Vatican. A critic writing from Rome in 1857 says of this bust of Cicero: ‘Mr. Akers obtained permission to take a cast from it; he then restored the eye, brow, and ears, and modelled a neck and bust for it in accordance with the temperament shown by the nervous and rather thin face. He has succeeded admirably. It is the very head of the Vatican, yet without the scars of envious time, and sits gracefully on human shoulders, instead of being rolled awkwardly back upon a shelf.’ This bust is unlike the portrait which so long passed for Cicero’s, but has been identified by means of a medal which was struck by the Magnesians in honor of the great orator during his consulate, and is now the authorized portrait of Cicero. The finest of Paul Akers’s creations executed during his stay in Rome are ‘St. Elizabeth of Hungary,’ which represents the princess at the moment the roses have fallen to the ground; ‘Una and the Lion,’ an illustration of the line in Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene,’—
‘Still while she slept he kept both watch and ward;’
the head of Milton and the ‘Pearl Diver.’ The ‘Pearl Diver,’ now owned by the city of Portland, represents a youth stretched upon a sea-worn rock and wrapped in eternal sleep. The arms are thrown above the head, and about the waist is a net containing pearl-bearing shells for which he has risked his life. There is no trace of suffering; all is subdued to beauty. It is death represented as the ancients conceived it, the act of the torch-reverting god. This youth, who has lost his life at the moment when all that for which he had dared was within his grasp, suggests Paul Akers’s own untimely death on the eve of his triumph.”
It was from his Roman studio that Mr. Akers wrote to a friend:—
“Yesterday Browning called. He looked a long time at my Milton, and said it was Milton, the man-angel. He praised the wealth of hair which I had given the head, and then said that Mrs. Browning had a lock of Milton’s hair, the only one now in existence. This was given her by Leigh Hunt, just before his death, who had the records proving it to be genuine. The hair was, he said, like mine. He invited me to visit him in Florence, where he would show me the first edition of Milton’s poems, marked to indicate the peculiar accent which the poet sometimes adopted, a knowledge of which makes clear somewhat that otherwise seems discordant. Milton was so great a musician that there could have been no fault in sound in his compositions. He looked over my books; said my edition of Shelley was one which he had corrected for the press, not from a knowledge of the original MS., but from his internal evidence that so it must have been; said Poe was a wonderful man; spoke of Tennyson in the warmest terms. Took up a copy of his own poems published in the United States, and remarked that it was better than the English edition, yet had some awful blunders, and wished me to allow him to correct a copy for me. My head of the ‘Drowned Girl’ caught his eye and interested him. I told him that I had thought of Hood’s ‘Bridge of Sighs.’ He then said that Hood wrote that on his deathbed, and read it to him before any one else had seen it. Hood was doubtful whether it was worth publishing. To-morrow Mrs. Browning is to come; she has been quite ill since she came to Rome, and I have seen her but once. I derive much comfort from the friendship of Charlotte Cushman. She has just gone from here. She has frequent breakfast parties; I have attended but one. Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fields, Wild, the painter, and myself were the guests. Fields I like much.”
The first works of Mr. Akers were two portrait busts, of Longfellow and of Samuel Appleton. Of his bust of Milton, Hawthorne in the “Marble Faun” has said:—
“In another style, there was the grand, calm head of Milton, not copied from any one bust or picture, yet more authentic than any of them, because all known representations of the poet had been profoundly studied and solved in the artist’s mind. The bust over the tomb
