Volume I Part 3 (1/2)

In entering the church, Dr Nott had deprived the world of a statesman of no ordinary calibre, but in the eyes of the Protestant, as of the Catholic Church, in the country which had its precedents to make, as in that which had precedents a thousand years old, the maxim, ”once a priest always a priest,” kept him in the pulpit, to which he had no irresistible call, and to which the accident of his career only had led hianized with an episcopal governue and incoherent condition of the Congregational churches, to one of which he belonged, there was no career beyond that of the isolated pastorate of a single congregation In this insufficiency of interest for an active and influential life there was only the educational calling left to satisfy his enormous mental activity, and in this he found his place The future, which may look for his record in libraries, or in the results of research, scientific or literary, will not find hireat e of hust others, of anthracite coal combustion for American steareatest teacher of young eneration

nobody could know him except the pupils to whonanimous nature was unreservedly open, and they were few, and the list is fast being canceled; e are gone, no one will ever comprehend how he could have been what he was But the power he always exercised over his favorite boys was extraordinary; any of us would have done anything permitted to human nature to satisfy his wish An instance of his influence, occurring later in my life, will illustrate his power over his old pupils When, several years subsequent to raduation, and on the election of Lincoln as President, I had used what influence I could enlist with the governet the appointiven to an artist, the principal petition in e Gray (now on the Suprened by nearly every ee, but it lay at the Department of State more than six months, unnoticed In the interione ho, to volunteer in the ar excluded by thefull,--800,000 volunteers being then enrolled,--I turned tohis promise of years before to use his influence in my favor, if ever it were needed

He inclosedan indorsement of it, and sent it to Seward, the Secretary of State, and the appointiven to Howells, but to Rome--came by return of post

Union was then the only university of importance not under some form of denominational control, and for this reason had, perhaps, more than the usual share of extreme liberalisst the students; and one of my classmates, a man a couple of years older than e intellectual power, anda of the most advanced opinions He also introduced Philip James Bailey's ”Festus” to our attention, and for a tireat revulsion froical convictions was the cause of infinite perplexity and distress Up to that ti had ever shakenfro faith in the old ideas ht out the question all alone It was impossible to follow my classmate so completely as to accept his conclusions and become the materialist that he was, and so find a relative repose; and the conflict becarave The entire scheme of Christianity disappeared from my firmament; but, in the i, and I held immovably an intuition of immortality,--or, if the term intuition be denied me, the conviction that irounded in ht,--and this never failed le, though I could never see ical education had been entirely incidental, for ion, and ence had never been, therefore, so kept captive as to rateful Christianity had never been a doctrinal burden to me, or any form of belief inconsistent in ht there was only one thing utterly profane, and that was self-righteousness And there happened to me in this conjuncture, what has in ious views imposed on us by the superior force of another mind--a persuasion of what seems to be truth as it is only seen by others' vision--could not hold its own against the early convictions, and that a revulsion to the old faith was sooner or later inevitable and generally healthy The epidereat distress for the tier in the end It is, I think, Max Muller who says that no ious education I have seen, in my experience of life and men, many curious proofs of that law, men who have lived for ions, returning in their old age to the sie of religious convictions which holds its own against all influences is that which coht At any rate, in my own case, the rationalistic revolution coht me back to that simple faith to remain in which is a reproach to no man, and the departure from which, to be healthy, must be made on lines conformed to our better natures

I felt the better for ions, and the freedo the story of a phase of huious character will be to some readers, perhaps, one of the chief subjects of interest, and as to me the whole subject is now purely objective, as a mental phenomenon in the life of another man would be, I am tempted to tell a romantic incident of this period of my evolution, because it illustrates clearly the state of mind and sentis of my youth In one of the winter vacations of uine proselyter in the Seventh-Day doctrine, charged me with an expedition up the Mohawk valley as a colporteur, to distribute Sabbath tracts, and, occasion arising, to discuss, with those who offered, the doctrine involved The snoas deep, and, wading in it from house to house in all the towns as far as Utica, I finished with a visit to the home at Whitestown, near by, of my old friend the former preceptress of the De Ruyter Acadeht(very littleand poetical creature I had not heard of her for years, and the latest neas that she had becoh a cruel disappoint a pretext, broken off the engage day,--and had been sent to a lunatic asylum I found her at home, a wretched shadow of her old self, listless, and in a settled melancholy, which the doctors said was incurable She had in fact been discharged froh the violent phase of the insanity had passed It occurred to ain to a sense of the present, and I tried to draw her back to the acade had happened That so in her mind soon became evident, and finally she burst out with, ”Why, Willie” (she had always so called me in the old times), ”didn't you know I had been crazy?” The manner, the suddenness of the conflict between old associations and her present state, theof our old affection, for I had in my boyhood held her very dear, as she had me, so overpowered me that I burst into tears, and she threw her arain

What the feeling which sprang up on her part was I could never quite understand,--doubtless it was partly the delight of a sudden relief fro of a tense and overborne mind and momentary obliteration of the dreary immediate past, and partly the outburst of a passionate temperament which I had never suspected; but on ht of Arthur's tih to have been my mother did not in the leastfolks feel it; but in my heart I offered myself a bearer of her sorrows I had only recently recovered froious faith was as vivid as when I had been at my mother's knee--Providence ruled, and God answered prayer This phase of my life, juvenile as I now perceive it to be, I respect as the most honest in it I honor the weakness as I cannot alhat seeth Those who read my life may put the estimate on it which suits their creed; I only speak of it as a phenoht take on ht be healed and coht, for her faone to pass the Sabbath with the e, but that night I was taken with a sharp attack of bronchitis, with high fever, and obliged to keepthe matter serious, I sallied out and returned to the house of her parents, and re constitution was ht of as really a sharp attack of acute trouble, which kept e of my friend

What any physician of minds would have foreseen took place She found in the attention to her patient the diversion froot in this absolutely novel situation the old trouble To the delight of the faan to take an interest in the affairs of the house, and, though for years she had utterly neglected the most trivial attention to her dress and personal appearance, and had shown such a detered to sleep in the same bed with her to be able to watch her effectively, she now becaain From that time forward she rapidly recovered, and when I went back to college we began a close correspondence which was the beginning of my real literary education, for her taste in literature was excellent, if a little sentimental, and her criticisms were so sound that in some respects they have never lost their effect on ht She was persuaded to come to Schenectady and pass the period of my next vacation in our family Her insanity absolutely disappeared, she returned to healthy activity in her old vocation as teacher, and the year after, to ry with her, not forhim after his shameful treatment of her She seemed to me, and to her family also, to have thrown herself away on a man who had proved himself utterly unworthy any woman's devotion All my chivalry, too, seemed wasted, and the only result of the experiment was the dissipation of an ideal, the nave expectation of the vicarious penalty to which I had inpassed away Convinced, that I had cured her, I was indignant at having cured her for him, but I suffered no visitation of conte that remained from the experience, except the literary impulse born of the persistent effort to interest her in my correspondence and the consequent search for e life and the nature around us; and the habit of noticing and ht be of interest to others in the most trivial incidents of life never quite left me I becah all the letters of that part of my life and for years after were recalled and burnt scrupulously, I areat degree owing to the impulse I received in that romantic attachment

What was, perhaps,of myself, made in my morbid enthusiasm, and the commonplace result of it, hastened the end of that phase of ious experience It was only because my boyhood had been frozen up in those seven years of apathy and began to thaw out in later years, whenthe reins, that all that passage of childhood and unsophisticated devotion intruded in the wrong place, to fill up the void in the forious status, as well as my conception of life, were only advanced to where they should have been at an earlier period

Atheis the students, and in opposition to it there began an antagonistic evangelical iously inclined In my class, at this time, were several who becast theuished in thefor the prayer-s of the students, but I joined the ious services in the city almshouse, a primitive institution which had no chaplain, and where were sent not only the incurably poor and the incurably sick, but the idiots and half-witted, as well as the temporarily incapacitated poor, ould have been, in a better and anization, sent to a hospital, which did not exist in Schenectady With several other students and two or three young ladies of the city we held services at the ”poorhouse” every Sunday Short exhortations with prayers and the singing of hyiving out a hy o through it alone, the ladies whose business was theable to acco I made my solo as short as possible, and finished with the ill-suppressed giggling of the girls, but my audience of poor cripples and weak-les with Festus and my atheistic friend, and the partial influence of the ambient, the sincere piety of the old doctor, which dothen the reaffirmation of my orthodox Christianity, and, for several years after, I had no more question of the divine authority of the tenets of our church, including the Seventh Day Sabbath, than I had of the laws of nature; but the truly spiritual character of ot If I had been trained in the dogmas of Christianity, I have no doubt I should have then beco I must confess that I enjoyed the occasional larks in which my classmates sometimes led and sometimes followed me, as well as any of them Our Greek professor, Doctor R, was a bit of a snob, and the plebeians of the class, est part, always held hiarden bordered on our section, and his fowls roosted in the trees overhanging the green, we one day decided to ht a party of the students of the section scaled the fence (I well re the necks of four of his fohich we sent into town nextto be roasted, and which, acco,carefully--bones and bits of pie-crusts included--deposited at the professor's front door before daylight of next day, which happened to be Sunday The package, carefully made up and directed like an express parcel, was addressed to him in all the fullness of formality, but it had rained in the interval, and when in thethe door, the wet paper broke and the remnants of the feast bestrewed the doorway The boy afterwards told me that the profanity of the professor was terrible to hear, and as he cut me two in my report of the Greek that term, I always suspected that he comprised me in the execration As it happened the cut was undeserved, for there were few men in the class who did their Greek better than I, and the cut cost regate98 But as he always held me in disrespect on account of ave good reports to the sons of wealthy ave _max_ that term to the son of a famous quack doctor, who always caot 98 Naturally we had little respect for the e course, I retained only what held my sympathies I never went in for honors, or occupied myself beyond the required measure with studies which did not _per se_ interest me Greek and Latin, but especially physics, the humanities, and literature enlisted all my ambitions, and the little weekly paper which was read at the s of our secret society occupied ree of course, but not with distinction The athered at or near New York city,attained their object in re in Schenectady, moved to New York, and I, finally liberated for the study of art, gave myself seriously to that end

CHAPTER V

ART STUDY IN AMERICA

During the ti artist had happened to find his way to Schenectady, one of the restless victiiven other lishman by the name of John Wilson, a pupil of the brothers Alfred and Edward Chalons, fashi+onable London miniature painters of the early part of the century In years long gone by he had established hi his wife and two children by a flood of the Neva, which occurred during his land, he abandoned Russia and went to one of the Western States of Ariculture Here fate found hi another wife and other children, he becae He had been taken by Pitraphy, and his chief occupation at that ti it wherever at any school he could fore, to this end, and had been recoladly availed herself of the opportunity to get forin return for his board He was a constitutional reformer, a radical as radicalism was then possible, had beconant at the treatment accorded him by destiny, and was _au fond_ an honest and philanthropic ht me the simplest rudiments of portrait and landscape in water-color, and of perspective, of which he was raphicfor hiions and I never heard froht me I soon lost, except the perspective

A little later, and while at work in my father's shop, there came in for a piece of ironwork our local artist, a man of curious artistic faculties, a shoe and had made hiion He desired to ure, and for the articulations had conceived a new form of universal joint, which he desired my father to put into shape My father refused the job, as out of the line of his work, and I volunteered to take it, stipulating for so in return The joint did not ansorked out, but the friendshi+p between sexton and h his life, and a truer example of the artistic nature never caot from books, save for an annual visit to the exhibition of the American Academy at New York, but his conception of the nature of art was very lofty and correct, and had his education been in keeping with his natural gifts, he would have taken a high position as a painter His was one of the most pathetic lives I can recall--a fine sensitive nature, full of the enthusiasifts in the ee, limited in every direction, in facilities, in education in art and in letters, and having his lot cast in a community where, except the wife of President Nott, there was not a single person as capable of giving him sympathy or artistic appreciation Not least in the pathos of his situation was the simplicity and humility hich he accepted hi towards an ideal which he knew to be as unattainable as the stars, without impatience or bitterness towards iven him, no one could see it, and he was so filled with the happiness that nature and his liave him that he had no room for discontent at the liave me the opportunity to share this man's walks and make my crude sketches of his favorite nooks and bends of our beautiful river Mohawk, and listen to his experiences while he worked I can see now that it was more nature than art that evoked my enthusiasms, and that in art I felt mainly the expression of the love of the beauty of nature sexton gave me some idea of the use of oils, and froiven to painting in an otherwise untaughtsuch pictures as I could borrow, or translating engravings into color--wretched things most certainly, but to reater pleasure than the better productions of later years

The three years of e course had left me little room or leisure for such studies, and at the end of them I realized that so far as the object I had set before e of my enthusiasms In preparation for the career which I proposed to myself I had, however, been in correspondence with Tho painter of landscape in America, and an artist to this day unrivaled in certain poetic and iifts by any American painter He was a curious result of the influence of the old lish land in the epoch of the poetic English school to which Girtin, Turner, and their colleagues belonged, and h to become impressed by the influence of priht in technique and isolated in his development, he became inevitably devoted to the element of subject rather than to technical attainment, and in the purely literary quality of art he has perhaps been surpassed by no landscape painter of any time His indifference to technical qualities has left hilect at present, but in the influence he had on American art, and for his part in the history of it, he remains an important individuality now much underrated It was settled that I should becoraduation, but a few months before that he died

At that le school of art, and except Cole, who had one or two pupils when he died, there was no competent landscape painter who accepted pupils, nor perhaps one as capable of teaching Drawing masters there were here and there, mostly in the conventional style adapted to the se portrait painter of the day, had taken pupils, but his powers did not extend to the treato beyond it I applied to AB

Durand, then the president of our Acadeh in a purely naturalistic vein, and a painter of real power in a manner quite his ohich borrowed, however, , to which Cole inclined Durand was originally an engraver of the first order, and afterwards a portrait painter, but his careful painting fro of her , as a specialist in landscape, to which he later gave himself entirely His was a serene and beautiful nature, perfectly reflected in his art, and he first showed American artists what could be done by faithful and unaffected direct study of nature in large studies carefully finished on the spot, though never carried to the elaboration of later and younger painters But he was so restrained by an excess of humility as to his oork, and so justly diffident of his knowledge of technique, that he could not bring himself to accept a pupil, and I finally applied to FE Church, a young painter, pupil of Cole, and forlandscape painter of the country He was then in his first success, and I was his first pupil

Church in many respects was the most remarkable painter of the phenomena of nature I have ever known, and had he been trained in a school of wider scope, he reat individualities of his art But he had little i had not eerated insistence on detail, which so completely controlled his treatment of his subject that breadth and repose were entirely lost sight of A graceful composition, and most happy command of all the actual effects of the landscape which he had seen, were his highest qualities; his retention of the eneric or specific characteristics of tree, rock, or cloud was unsurpassed by the work of any landscape painter whose work I know, and everything he knew he rendered with a rapidity and precision which were simply inconceivable by one who had not seen him at work I think that his vision and retention of even thebefore him must have been at the maximum of which the huher and broader qualities of art Histhat passed before it was recorded per which sprang fro of the perception that makes it conception, and individual The primrose on the river's briraphic lens, but it re , form and color, of what had flitted past his eyes, with unsurpassed fidelity ofHis recognition of art as distinguished from nature was far too rudimentary to fit him for a teacher, for his love of facts and detail blinded him to every other aspect of our relations with nature, in the recognition of which consist the highest gifts of the artist

My study with Church lasted one winter, and showedwas to be hoped for from him, and that the most intimate superficial acquaintance with nature did not involve the perception of herthat orth re portrait painter, who had a studio in the sa, an Irishman named Boyle, a pupil of Inher order, and tosu in the valley of the Mohawk, I owe the first clear ideas of what lay before ar A Poe, a slender, nervous, vivacious, and extree But at that juncture I came across ”Modern Painters,” and, like many others, wiser or otherwise, I received from it a stimulus to nature worshi+p, to which I was already too much inclined, which made ineffaceable the confusion in my mind between nature and art Another acquaintance Imy technical abilities--that of a well-known amateur of New York, afterwards a professional artist, Dr

Edward Ruggles, a physician whose love of painting finally drove him out of medicine He had the most catholic and correct taste I had then e, the most remarkable portrait painter in many respects America has ever produced, whose talks on art used to e was the most brilliant talker I everto Schenectady the following suh studies frost these was one, a view froardens and a churchyard with the church spire in the distance; a small study which incidentally had a ht in the autumn by the Art Union of New York, and on the proceeds, thirty dollars, the first considerable suo to Europe and see what the English painters were doing Of English art I then knew only directly the pictures of Doughty, an early artistic iland, and, as afterwards appeared to me, a fair example of the school which had its lead from Constable, to whom he had, however, no resemblance except in choice of motive He had a comprehension of technique possessed by none of our home painters--a rapid and rays, but, within this gamut, of exquisite refinement Constant repetitions of the same motive wore out his welcome on the part of the A in losing its power over land at the first opportunity But to see Turner's pictures was always the chief o

I was, in knowledge of worldly life, scarcely less a child then than I had been when, at the age of ten, I detero out into the world and ined to be preventingdeveloped inProvidence had , made me quite oblivious of or indifferent to the chances of disaster, for the assurance of protection and leading to the best end left no place for anxieties It was a mental phenomenon which I now look back on with a wonder which I think e when raduated at twenty, I should have been capable of going out into a strange world like one of the children of the Children's Crusade, with an unfaltering faith that I should be led and cared for by Providence as I had been by my parents I had no apprehension, from the moment that one of the shi+p-owners as in business relations with e on one of his sailing shi+ps to Liverpool, that I should not find a sied into six sovereigns, and a little valise with only a change of clothes, I went on board the Garrick, a packet of the Black Ball line, sailing in the last days of December, 1849 There had been a thaw and the Hudson River was full of floating ice, which in the ebbing of the tide endangered the shi+pping lying out in the streaer (the extent of which was shown by the top above water where she had been sunk by the floating ice) that the shi+p had her anchor apeak before the boat which carried my brother and myself out could reach it We barely arrived in ti our way a difficult That ht be deduced from the fact that my brother, who had from boyhood stood to me _in loco parentis_, had not askedaboard, what my means of subsistence were, and, when he found that I had only ns, he told me to wait at Liverpool for a letter of credit he would send e is one of the htful memories of my life I loved the sea; and every phase of it, storer, a German doctor of philosophy, Dr Seemann, who had been an ardent radical in Ger in the United States the developence under de to his native land with the profound conviction that deovernment was destined to be a failure