TRS. GRANT'S "Memoirs of an MRS. American Lady" have preserved a charming memorial of olden times in Albany. The tone of manners, and the simplicity of life she describes, have the pure and cheerful spirit of the domestic and rural scenes delineated in the Vicar of Wakefield. Equality seems to have existed with the most genuine self-respect; Addison and Milton were the literary oracles; hospitality was too instinctive and habitual to rank as a virtue; abundant game and fruits, and universal thrift, with comfortable domiciles and ample domains, equalized the gifts of fortune; an honest chivalry of sentiment, choice though limited reading, the right kind of family pride, and no casual interest in the songs and sermons of the day, gave a refinement to minds and manners thus developed in a secluded region, where truth and individuality of character were fostered by the fireside and around the porch; the fairest scenes of nature appealed to the imagination; the most candid social intercourse elicited the affections; and even negro slavery became contented domestic servitude, patriarchal in its household comfort and loyalty. As the capital of the state, Albany, at a later period, gathered a select and honored circle of eminent lawyers, statesmen, and divines; and boasted more aristocratic families than any town of its size in the Union. The eloquence and acumen exhibited in the courts, the wit of the banquets, the intelligent conversation, and the deference to mental superiority, are traditional features of those times. Arguments are yet cited by venerable barristers, memorable sayings, original characters, the zest of a new Waverley novel, and the discussion incident to a fresh Bonaparte victory, live in the reminiscences of a few who

survive that dignified and brilliant society; and nowhere in the country is evident more of the exclusiveness of a proud lineage than among its descendants.

All the famous names associated with great landed estates in New York, with colonial distinction and revolutionary statesmanship, are identified with that old city.

A few superior professional men, and, in the winter, some eminent officials, still give a certain intellectual life to the place. The Rev. Dr. Sprague, with his urbane and reminiscent conversation, and most interesting collection of autographs, may charm away an evening, spared from parochial duties and the labor he so constantly bestows on a large biographical work, devoted to the American clergy of past generations; and at the state Library may be found, ever at his post, the guardian of its treasury of wisdom, the Flemish limner, in verse, of native scenery-Alfred B. Street. To the visitor of the present day, Albany, however, with these exceptions, offers little to distinguish it from other flourishing inland cities, save an influential political journalist, and some notable wire-pullers in the arcana of faction. With difficulty one finds a Dutch house, with quaint gables and broad stoop. A few old-fashioned mansions, however, with spacious front inclosure, where umbrageous shrubs and fine elms remind us of the rural aspect of the ancient settlement, and some lingering customs and celebrated names, are eloquent of the past.

But the bustle of a mart, and the confusion of a railway dépôt, are more obvious to the passing traveler. It was, therefore, with little anticipation of so delightful a surprise, that I strolled forth to beguile two hours of a summer afternoon at Albany, while awaiting the

train, and under the wing of the capitol discovered the studio of a sculptor, whose achievements and history are equally remarkable. Indeed, the mere fact that, by patient devotion to his art in his native state, without the least attempt to conciliate public favor, or the usual eagerness to study abroad, as the indispensable means of success at home, struck me as no common evidence of self-reliance. The commodious atelier and dwelling-house-fruits of his professional labors-plainly indicate that they have been successful, even according to the external American standard; but still more impressive is the fact that, brief as his career has been, and unaided by foreign and conventional appliances as has been his culture, a high ideal, a progressive taste, the most individual conceptions, and an execution scrupulous in its refinements, are Palmer's normal characteristics.

I had scarcely crossed the threshold of Palmer's studio, when it seemed, as if by some magical process, Albany was transformed to Florence. The huge blocks of marble at the door, the workmen in the lower rooms engaged in blocking out from the same material the plaster-casts before them; a young man, of artistic look, giving the finishing touches to a child's statue; above, the clay model on which the sculptordressed in a blouse and cap, exactly like those Greenough and Powers used to wear-was intent, his height and air, as well as occupation, adding to the resemblance-made the scene a counterpart of those so often encountered in Italy while the entrance of one of the artist's young daughters, with dark hair and eyes, and a broad hat of Tuscan pattern, enhanced the illusion. The building and its arrangements were more like a studio, as that term is understood at Rome, than any edifice I had seen in this country; the method, order, and activity, the reproduction of favorite heads, and the different apartments each process approximately occupied, gave the impression of the art of statuary, pursued as a regular and lucrative business, for which the visitor is unprepared. To learn the antecedents of such an efficient and isolated votary becomes a natural desire; and the incidents of the sculptor's life are not less illustrative of the triumph of a native aptitude than of the success which is certain to attend merit in a free land.

The first work in marble that excited high anticipations of Palmer's future triumphs in sculpture, was a head known as the Infant Ceres. It was modeled from one of his young children—a lovely girl-and idealized with strict regard to nature as a basis. The exquisite contour and sublimated infantile expression of this bust attracted a crowd of delighted gazers at the N. Y. Academy Exhibition: the conception proved a remarkable eye for beauty, while the finish indicated an exactitude and refinement of chiseling. Next came two basreliefs representing the Morning and Evening Star, in the form of two beautiful winged heads, one with drooping, and the other with intent eyes; and soon after he produced the " 'Spirit's Flight," in similar style, but of yet higher poetic significance. The mother looks earnestly upon the cross, and the child is full of graceful simplicity-two ideal busts of such lovely impressiveness that they seem conceived in the trance of beauty which wraps an enamored soul-such a personification of the chaste and tender attributes of grace and thought in woman's face as cling to memory and haunt imagination. There are two distinct species of

artistic forms-one that instructs us in the difficulties and inspires us with admiration of creative genius. We deem the hour thenceforth memorable when it was first our lot to behold them. They constitute a standard of taste, embody a whole formula in the philosophy of the beautiful and the grand, and serve as landmarks in æsthetic experience but we no more think of appropriating them, or desire to render the sensations they awaken permanent, than we wish to linger forever on a beach, enjoy a monopoly of the sunset, or have a waterfall at our threshold. Such are the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, the more elaborate miracles of color bequeathed by Titian and Rubens, the Cathedral wonders of England, the Sphinx, the Campanile of Brunaleschi, and other monuments, whose interest, however powerful, is enshrined in local, historical, or rare associations: they are sublime generalizations or specific exemplars, invaluable, unique, and broadly suggestive. Another class of works have an endearing individuality. Wo love them, as Desdemona did the Moor, "to live with them;" and would fain look upon them in the familiar admira

tion of constant sympathy: like Wordsworth's true woman, though of surpassing charms, they

"Are not too bright and good

For human nature's daily food."

The first order of art is as a sacred temple, into which we would reverently enter in an exalted mood; the other appeals so directly to the heart, as well as the imagination, that our instinctive desire is, to make of its works our household gods. Of this latter kind are the ideal busts of Resignation" and "Spring" rife, the one with womanly, and the other with maiden traits. There is superinduced upon, or rather interfused with these, in the first instance, an expression of subdued happiness, divine trust, and latent hope-which is the Christian idea of resignation-a holy consciousness that all is well, a spiritual insight which charms the heart that we yet can see has bowed to sorrow; and this feeling kindles features in themselves so pure and lovely, yet so human and feminine, that consummate beauty seems to overflow with the sentiment of the patriarch-"it is good for me that I have been afflicted." "Spring," on the other hand, is the sweetest type of maidenhood; the gentle swell of the child-like bosom, the delicate, fresh lips parted, as if about to utter some accent of love and promise, the girlish head rounded with a grace, half of sprightliness, and half of expanding nature, and the wreath of grass, not ripe and full, but at the moment when the blade is about to merge into a head -all this embodies the language of that mysterious and enchanting season when the embryo forces of earth and air stir with the bursting life of rejuvenated elements. The only example of an entire figure yet modeled by Palmer, is the Indian Girl." The design is equally felicitous for simplicity and invention. An aboriginal maiden is supposed to be wandering in the forest in search of stray feathers to decorate her person, when she discovers one of the little crosses placed here and there in the wilderness, by the early missionaries, as symbols of the faith to which they endeavored to convert the savage tribes. As she looks upon the hallowed emblem, the divine story of Jesus recurs to her mind, and awakens emotions of awe and tenderness; the religious sentiment thus accidentally

roused, lures her into a reverie: the crucifix is held before her downcast eyes in the palm of her right hand; in her left, with grasp unnerved by this abstracted mood, rest, rather than are held, the plumes already gathered; the unconscious attitude, the fixed gaze, and the musing air betoken her absorbed and pre-occupied mind; the expression of the face is pensive and thoughtful; the deckings of vanity are evidently forgotten in the predominance of an idea dearer than self." It is a single figure, but it tells a comprehensive story-the dawn of Christianity upon savage life— the first glimmer of divine truth upon an untamed and ignorant, but thoroughly human soul. Such is the allegorical lesson of the statue; but attention is, ere long, diverted from the myth, truly as it is embodied, to the details of the execution; and, herein, Palmer's success is not less remarkable. Perhaps a better torso was never modeled in this country-it is a keen pleasure to an intelligent lover of nature to trace the sculptor's hand in the truest undulations of surface, the most correct and mobile distribution of muscle, and the almost breathing convolutions of the form-each line and curve, each indentation and swell has the chaste expressiveness of nature. An eye of singular correctness, and a touch of rare facility and temper, could alone have reproduced-not merely the form of humanity, but-what a genuine artist will understand-the humanity of form. It is needless to say, that a result like this could never have been attained, except by the aid of careful studies from life; and the artist may count it among his other fortunate or, we prefer to say, providential advantages, that, in this country, he was enabled to profit by a living model of such admirable proportions. In the face he has carefully followed the aboriginal type; it is Indian in feature and genus-but, in accordance with his invariable principle, the details are refined upon, so as to combine truth to the general facts with an artistic and consistent idealization. The back of this statue, alone, is a charming study, anatomically and artistically; the right arm, so abstractedly pendent, so gracefully wrought, the feet, and the bosom, challenge scientific scrutiny, while they allure the worshiper of beauty.

From this work turn to one of the artist's portrait-busts-of which there are

several in an adjoining room-that, for instance, of Erastus Corning. Instantly there is a positive revelation of character; the brow, alive with practical energy; the mouth, remarkably beautiful in itself, expresses clearly benignity and firmness, exquisitely blended; how uncommon the degree and precision of expressiveness in the eye, peculiarly natural, from the shadow cast by the lidtwice the size of nature-but in marble, giving the effect of the absent lashes by a similar amount of shadow: the finish is so exactly like a fleshy surface, that the hard stone loses its apparent density and glint; it not only has the flexible appearance of life, but that of the skin of a man of sixty. In each product of his chisel around us, somewhat of these merits is discernable; here is a boy's foot which looks warm with life, so vital is its shape and surface; there is a mortuary tablet-merely a sad face, but the very folds of the cap are eloquent of death.

It is this absolute fidelity to the essential in nature, combined with a peculiar feeling for beauty in her ab-. solute relations, that gives to Palmer's executive skill a meaning and a value of its own. He not only has the language of art, but something always genuine to say in that divine vocabulary. In conversation, I elicited a few of the elements of the faith that is in him, enough to confirm the inference unavoidable from his works-that no lucky accident ushered him on the way of progressive excellence, but the faithful exercise of his intelligence, inspired by an instinctive love of beauty. In the first place, he is repelled by the mannerism engendered by too gregarious a life among the votaries of art; he is wisely jealous of academic conventionality; he believes the aim and origin of art to be, in the last analysis, spiritual, and, therefore, to be mainly sought in the individual study of nature, and interpretation of her principles; he relies more upon unhampered observation and earnest feeling, more upon consciousness, than prescription. He asserts what is apparently paradoxical, but literally true; that, in order to make a good likeness, we must deviate from nature. He repudiates absolute imitation, and recognizes in art the truth, that it is not her function to copy but to represent, and in order to do this, effects, not literal imitation, must

be the aim. In the instance already referred to, for example, it is requisite to make the eye-lid, in marble, larger than in life, in order to make up for the absence of the lashes, which cannot be represented otherwise; and so in regard to the hair-its texture cannot be imitated in stone, but the effect of it, and an appropriate arrangement, will secure the desired result. To carry out what nature hints, to give her obvious intention by seizing the best characteristic expression, the better moments, the soulful mood-what the individual face indicates, but rarely expresses-is his great object. And is not this, in point of fact, the true interpretation that art owes to nature? Is not the soft light in the eye, the dimple born of sympathetic smiles, the expanding nostril under noble excitement, the kindling look, the heart-born glow-what we really see, recall, cherish, and so identify with those we love, that the bust or picture, that conveys none of these attributes of the soul's proper individuality, is to us but a meaningless effigy ?

There is a little wooden house, almost lost to view amid its more ostentatious neighbors, in the handsome avenue at Utica, called Genesee street, which was built, a few years ago,by Erastus Palmer, a thrifty young carpenter. When he put the last touches to his modest but comfortable domicile-the work of his own hands, and the fruit of long and patient industry-he doubtless felt a glow of honest pride, and a consciousness of material advancement, so often the reward of the American mechanic, and usually better earned, and more worthily enjoyed, than by any other class of our people. In the basement of this humble dwelling, and during the intervals of his regular toil as a joiner, Palmer, incited by the sight of a cameo portrait he saw, and prompted by a constructive talent, already exhibited by ingenious carvings on wood, essayed, with a bit of shell and a file, to execute a similar head of his wife; never having witnessed the delicate process, his work was purely experimental, yet he undertook it with singular zest, though with many misgivings. As he wrought at this, in a double sense, real labor of love, and subsequently contemplated the result, the impulse to a higher sphere than had yet occupied his mind began to stir within him; but his ability was not less marked than the self-distrust which

usually accompanies genuine merit, and he longed to test his aptitude for such work by the judgment of one of taste, knowledge, and experience. Fortunately, in his immediate neighborhood resided a gentleman-one of those rare exceptions to the mere utilitarian character of our professional men-who loved art for its own sake, was familiar with its history and memorable trophies, and honored it as a career with the true enthusiasm of a disciple of the beautiful. To him Palmer determined to submit his cameo: it was a momentous interview for the neophyte; his aspirations might be checked by indifference; his consciousness of a vocation for art set forever aside, if unrecognized by one he believed could speak on the subject with authority. I was sitting in my office," says this gentleman, "one summer afternoon, when there entered a tall man, whom I remembered as an honest and industrious mechanic of the town; his dress betokened his occupation, his manner was unassuming, and his expression somewhat anxious. He told me he had understood I was acquainted with such things,' diffidently exhibiting his cameo, and desired to know what I thought of this. I took it from his hand, turned it to the light, and carefully examined the outline and finish little did I then realize the earnest feelings which agitated this new species of client; my surprise and delight were immediate. This,' said I, is beautiful; you have extraordinary talent.' Hearing no response, I looked from the exquisite medallion to the artist's face, and saw the tears of gratified sympathy in his eyes."

Thenceforth this noble lover of genius became the warm friend of the future sculptor: the latter's next effort was a likeness, in the same style, of one who had so seasonably encouraged him; and this served to make his skill public. For two years he was constantly and profitably engaged in a department of art in which successful portraiture is scarce. I have seen many of the best originals and plaster copies of nearly all of these heads, and for fidelity of resemblance, nicety of execution, and picturesque arrangement, they are the most pleasing specimens imaginable of one of the most difficult and beautiful spheres of artistic labor. Some of them are perfect gems, and far more satisfactory than most of the cameo portraits

for which travelers pay such exorbitant prices at Rome. The cutting is bold, distinct, unevasive; a masterly air is evident at a glance, and it seems marvelous that a hand, previously habituated to the coarser efforts of the joiner, could, in so brief a space, acquire facility in our most delicate workmanship. From shell-cutting to basso-relievo in clay is a natural transition; but the consistent zeal of Palmer might have long confined him to the limited range of his earliest success, had not the details of the work seriously affected his eyes. After a somewhat unprosperous sojourn in New York, he returned to Utica, with his sight much weakened, and his spirits depressed, from a conviction that this infirmity would compel him to abandon the new and elevated life of art for his old mechanical employment, as the only available means to support his family. On this occasion he had recourse to the same loyal friend who first urged him on the career he loved, and he proved again a faithful counselor-citing the remark of an experienced artist, to whom he stated the case: "This is providential; he will now model in clay, and achieve wonders." And so it proved. With the "Infant Ceres," he fairly began the pursuit of a sculptor, and with it, a methodical course of self-education. Having been at school but six months in his life, he began, with his intelligence quickened in every direction by the associations of his present employment, keenly to feel the want of early advantages; and, with characteristic energy, to atone for the deficiency by every means in his power. His evenings were devoted to study; he profited by the counsel and the discourse of eminent men, who interested themselves in his welfare; and for many hours, daily, his wife read aloud to him the best English authors. It is marvelous how loyalty to one source of truth opens avenues to all others; how earnestness in a single aim intensifies and widens the general intelligence; and as our artist has progressed in his special occupation, his ideas on all subjects have multiplied, his knowledge of beauty under all forms has deepened, his vocabulary, faculty of acquisition, and whole mental and moral discipline have steadily advanced.

In one of those rural homesteads, which proved the fruitful nursery of