Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/442

Rh my room, nor yet the angel-poems, with all their bright anticipations.

The fine arts have hitherto received but little attention in the United States; it may be that there is but little distinguished talent, or, which I suspect is the case, that the people in general are deficient in artistic feeling. I have heard a deal said of an American painter, named Alston, who is considered one of the greatest painters, and I have heard his works very highly praised and admired; yet, nevertheless, I read in one of the letters of the noble old Channing these words: “As long as I see such men as Alston in want of the necessaries of life, I feel that I have no right to possess its superfluities.”

And I have heard my friends, the S.'s, of New York, speak of a young landscape painter of that city, a man of estimable character, and possessed of unmistakeable talent, who not long since, consulting with his young wife as to the best mode of managing for themselves and their two little ones, came to the agreement that the best mode of all would be for them—to die! Good God! And that in this young, wealthy New World! And yet the pictures of this young artist are of the class which I would gladly see in every American home. And thus encouraged, he would soon become for America what our Fahlkranz is to us, a poet in colours of the peculiar natural scenery of his country!

Sculpture has, in the United States, a much greater hope of successful progress; and in Hiram Powers they have produced an artist of the highest class, not so much as a creative genius, as for feeling and execution. His Proserpine, his listening Fisher-Boy, his Greek Slave, have been admired in old Italy. The expression so refined, and so full of soul, is as admirable in his works as the perfected beauty of the form. His creations seem to live.

Hiram Powers was born in Cincinnati, and worked there as a poor boy in the shop of a watchmaker. Here