BY CHARLES MACKAY.

I. Daniel O’Connell—Serjeant Talfourd—Robert Carruthers.

The three gentlemen whose names appear at the head of this chapter of my reminiscences, breakfasted together at the table of Mr. Rogers, along with our host and myself, in the summer of 1845. They were all remarkable and agreeable men, and played a part more or less distinguished in the social life of the time. Mr. O’Connell called himself, and was called by his friends, the Liberator, but was virtually the Dictator, or uncrowned king, of the Irish people. Serjeant, afterwards Judge, Talfourd, was an eminent lawyer—a very eloquent speaker, and a poet of some renown. Mr. Robert Carruthers was the editor of the Inverness Courier, a paper of much literary influence; a man of varied acquirements and extensive reading, particularly familiar with the literature and history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and more especially with the writings of Pope, his contemporaries and predecessors. Whenever Mr. Macaulay, while engaged on the “History of England,” which, unfortunately, he did not live to complete, was in doubt about an incident, personal or national, that occurred during the reigns of James II., William and Mary, or Queen Anne, and was too busy to investigate for himself, he had only to appeal for information to Mr. Carruthers, and the information was at once supplied from the abundant stores of that gentleman’s memory. I was well acquainted with all of these notables, but had never before met the three together.

Mr. O’Connell had long passed his prime in 1845—being then in his 70th year—but appeared to be in full bodily and mental vigor, and in the height of his power, popularity, and influence. He had for years been extravagantly praised by one half of the nation and as extravagantly blamed and denounced by the other, and his support had been so absolutely necessary to the existence of the Whig and Liberal Ministry in England, that when this support seemed to be of doubtful continuance, or any indications of his present lukewarmness or future opposition were apparent, the baits of power, place, or high professional promotion were constantly dangled before his eyes, to keep him true to the cause to which he had never promised allegiance, but to which he had always adhered with more or less of zeal and consistency. For upwards of a quarter of a century his name figured more frequently in the leading columns of all the most prominent journals of London and the provinces than that of any statesman or public character of the time. As he jocularly but truly said of himself, he was the best abused man in the country; but though he did not choose to confess it, he was, at the same time, the most belauded. He was a man of a fine personal presence, of a burly and stalwart build, with quick glancing eyes full of wit, humor and of what may be called “rollicking” fun; and of a homely, persuasive, and telling eloquence, that no man of his day could be truly said to have equalled. The speeches of his great contemporary and countryman, Richard Lalor Shiel, were more elegant, scholarly, and ambitious; but they were above the heads of the commonalty, and often failed of their effect by being “caviare to the general,” and sometimes tired or “bored” those who could understand and even appreciate them, by their great length and too obvious straining after effect. No exception of the kind could be taken to the speeches of Daniel—or, as he was affectionately called, “Dan” O’Connell. They were all clear as day, logical as a mathematical demonstration, and warm as midsummer. If he had many of the faults he had all the virtues of his Celtic countrymen, and even in his strongest denunciations of his political opponents there was always a touch of humor that forced a laugh or a smile from the persons he attacked. He once, in Parliament, spoke of the great Duke of Wellington as “a stunted corporal with two left legs,” and the Duke of Wellington, who was said to be proud of his legs, remarking to Lucas, the artist who had painted his portrait, pointing to his legs—without taking notice of the facial likeness—“those are my legs,” had sense enough to laugh. The description, however, was not quite original, inasmuch as Pope, more than a hundred years previously, had applied the same epithet to Lintot the bookseller. Daniel O’Connell could excite at will the laughter or the indignation of the multitude, and was not in reality an ill-tempered or an ill-conditioned man, though he often appeared to be so when it suited his purpose. But though choleric he was never malicious.

On this occasion the conversation was almost entirely literary. O’Connell’s voice was peculiarly sweet and musical, and in the recitation of poetry, of which he had a keen and critical appreciation, it was impossible to excel, and difficult to equal him, in either comic or pathetic passages. The manner in which he declaimed “The Minstrel Boy to the War Has Gone,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” and other favorite songs of Thomas Moore was perfect, and had almost as pleasant an effect upon the hearer’s mind as if they had been sung by a well-trained singer. He was, in short, a delightful companion, and fascinated every society in which he felt himself sufficiently at ease to be induced to give free play to his wit, his humor, his imagination, and his wonderful power of mimicry.

Though seemingly at this time in the full high noon of his power and popularity, his influence was in reality on the wane, and circumstances over which he had no control, and which he had done nothing to produce, were at work to divert from his person and his cause the attention and the love of the Irish people. The first symptoms of the mysterious disease in the potato, which was unfortunately the chief food of the Irish millions, began to make themselves apparent, and to divert the attention of the Irish from political to more urgent questions of life and death. The too probable consequences of this great calamity tended necessarily to diminish the rent or tribute collected from the needy as well as the prosperous to recompense the “Liberator” for the sacrifices he had made in relinquishing the practice of his profession to devote his time, talent, and energies entirely to the parliamentary service of the people. Added to this, a race of younger and more impulsive men, fired by his example, had arisen to agitate the question of the Repeal of the Union on which he had set his heart, and scorning, in their impatience, the peaceful and legal methods which he employed, did their best to goad the impulsive people into open rebellion. Foremost among these were Mr. Smith O’Brien, whose futile treason came to an inglorious collapse in a cabbage garden; and next, the members of the party of Young Ireland, and the gifted poets of the “Nation,” among whom were Mr. D’Arcy McGee, and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, whose tuneful violence was far more agreeable to the youthful agitators of the new generation than the more prudent strategy of O’Connell. The potato disease and the fearful famine that followed on its devastating track, which sent at least a million of people to the United States and two millions into untimely graves in Ireland, preyed upon the spirit of the great agitator, impaired his health, and ultimately led to his death of a broken heart, at Genoa, in 1847, in the 72nd year of his age. He was, at the time, on a pilgrimage to Rome to crave the blessing of the Pope, but was not destined to reach the, to him, “holy city,” the capital of his faith. His heart, however, was embalmed and taken to Rome, and his corpse conveyed to his native country for interment. I little thought on that joyous morning of 1845, when we sat seriously merry and intellectually sportive at the social board of Mr. Rogers in St. James’s Place, that the end was so near, and that the light which shone so brilliantly was so speedily to be extinguished, and the sceptre of democratic authority to be so shattered that none could take it up when it fell from the hands which had so long wielded it.

The second of the guests this morning was also an orator, not celebrated for his power over crowds, but highly distinguished in the Senate and the Forum. Serjeant Talfourd did not speak often in Parliament or at public meetings, but when he did he was listened to with pleasure and attention. The scenes of his triumphs were the law courts, and especially the Court of Common Pleas, where he was the leading practitioner. He was noted among the members of the Bar and the attorneys for his power over the minds of jurymen, and his winning ways of extorting a favorable verdict for the client who was fortunate enough to have him for an advocate. He had room enough in his head both for law and literature—the law for his profit and his worldly advancement, and literature for the charm and consolation of his life. He was well known too, and highly esteemed by the leading literary men of his time, and took especial interest in the laws affecting artistic, musical, and literary copyright. He was largely instrumental in extending the previously allotted term of twenty-eight years to forty-two years, and for seven years after the death of the artist, composer, or author. This measure put considerable and well-deserved profits into the pockets of the heirs of Sir Walter Scott, and was said at the time to have been specially devised and enacted for that purpose and for that only. This, however, was an error which Serjeant Talfourd emphatically contradicted whenever it was hinted or asserted. It had, incidentally, that effect, which no one was churlish and ungrateful enough to grudge or lament, but was advocated in the interest of all men of letters, and of literature itself in its widest extent, and if it erred at all, only erred on the side of undue restriction to so short a period as forty-two years. It ought to have been extended to the third generation of the benefactors of their country, and probably will be so extended at a future time, when the rights of authors will be as strictly protected—and will be thought of at least as much importance—as the right of landlords to their acres; of butchers, bakers, and tailors to be paid for their commodities; or those of doctors and lawyers to be paid for their time and talents.

Mr. Charles Dickens dedicated to Serjeant Talfourd the “Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”—the early work by which his great fame was established—in grateful acknowledgment of the Serjeant’s services to the cause of all men of genius, in the enactment of the new law of copyright. “Many a fevered head,” he said, “and palsied hand will gather new vigor in the hour of sickness and distress, from your exalted exertions; many a widowed mother and orphaned child, who would otherwise reap nothing from the fame of departed genius but its too pregnant legacy of sorrow and suffering, will bear in their altered condition higher testimony to the value of your labors than the most lavish encomiums from lip or pen could ever afford.”

Serjeant Talfourd was raised to the Bench in 1848, being then in his fifty-third year. This promotion had the natural consequence of removing him from the House of Commons. He was a singularly amiable man—of gentle, almost feminine character—of delicate health and fragile form. He possessed little or none of the staid or stern gravity popularly associated with the idea of a judge, and looked more like the poet that he undoubtedly was, than the busy lawyer or magistrate. He died suddenly in the year 1854, under circumstances peculiarly sad and pathetic. After attending Divine Service on Sunday, the 11th March, in the Assize town of Stafford, apparently in his usual health, he took his seat on the bench on the following morning, and proceeded to address the grand jury on the state of the calendar. It contained a list of more than one hundred prisoners, an unusually large number of whom were charged with atrocious offences, many of which were to be directly traced to intemperance. He took occasion, in the course of his remarks, to comment upon the growing estrangement in England between the upper and lower classes of society, and the want of interest and sympathy exhibited between the former and the latter, which he regarded as of evil augury for the future peace and prosperity of the country. While uttering these words he became flushed and excited—his speech became thick and incoherent, and he suddenly fell forward with his face on the desk at which he was sitting. He was removed at once to his lodgings in the immediate vicinity of the court, but life was found to be extinct on his arrival. Thus perished a singularly able and estimable man, universally beloved by his contemporaries.

Mr. Carruthers, who resided in the little town of Inverness, sometimes called by its inhabitants the “Capital of the Highlands,” was often blamed by his intimate friends for hiding his great abilities in so small a sphere, and not launching boldly forth upon the great sea of London, which they considered a more suitable arena for the exercise of his talents and the acquirement of fame and fortune by the pursuits of literature. But he was not to be persuaded. He loved quiet; he loved the grand and solemn scenery of his beautiful native country, and perhaps if all the truth were told, he preferred to be a great man in a provincial town, than a comparatively small one in a mighty metropolis. In Inverness he shone as a star of the first magnitude. In London, though his light might have been as great, it might have failed to attract equal recognition. In addition to all these considerations, the atmosphere of great cities did not agree with his health, and the fine, free, fresh invigorating air of the sea and the mountains was necessary to his physical well-being. This he enjoyed to the full in Inverness. The editing of the weekly journal, which supplied him with even greater pecuniary results than were necessary to supply the moderate wants of himself and his household, left him abundant leisure for other and congenial work. He soon made his mark in literature, and became noted not only for the vigor and elegance of his style, but for his remarkable accuracy of statement, even in the minutest details of his literary and historical work. He edited, with copious and accurate notes, an edition of Pope, and of Johnson and Boswell’s “Tour to the Hebrides,” and greatly added to the value of those interesting books by notes descriptive and anecdotical of all the places and persons mentioned in them. He also contributed largely to the valuable “CyclopÆdia of English Literature” edited by Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh; besides contributing essays and criticisms to many popular serials and reviews, published in London and Edinburgh. He was one of the most admirable story tellers of his time, or indeed of any time, had a most retentive and abundantly furnished memory, and never missed the point of a joke, or overlaid it with inappropriate or unnecessary words or phrases. His fund of Scottish anecdotes—brimful of wit and humor—was apparently inexhaustible, and his stories followed each other with such rapidity as to suggest to the mind of the listener the beautiful lines of Samuel Rogers:

The good things for which Mr. Carruthers was famous were not derived from books, but from actual intercourse with men, and if collected, would have formed a finer and more diverting repertory of Scottish wit and humor, than has ever been given to the world. He was often urged to prepare them for publication, and as often promised to undertake the work, but always postponed it until he had more leisure than he possessed at the time of promising. But that day unfortunately never came. If it had come, the now celebrated work of Dean Ramsay on the same subject would have been eclipsed, or altogether superseded in the literary market.

His local knowledge, and the fascination of his conversation were so great, that every person of any note in the literary or political world who visited Inverness, came armed with a letter of introduction to Mr. Carruthers, or made themselves known to him during their stay in the Highlands. The first time that I travelled so far North, through the magnificent chain of freshwater lochs that are connected with each other by the Caledonian Canal, a leading citizen of Inverness, who was a fellow-passenger on the trip, seeing I was a stranger, took the pains to point out to me all the objects of interest on the way, and to name the mountains, the straths, the glens, and the waterfalls on either side. On our arrival at Inverness, he directed my attention to several mountains and eminences visible from the boat when nearing the pier. “That,” said he, “is Ben Wyvis, the highest mountain in Ross-shire; that is ‘Tom-na-hurich,’ or the hill of the fairies; that is Craig Phadrig, once a vitrified fort of the original Celtic inhabitants; and that,” pointing to a gentleman in the foremost rank of the spectators on the landing-place, “is Mr. Carruthers, the editor of the Courier!”

Mr. Carruthers used to relate with much glee that he escorted the great Sir Robert Peel to the battle-field of Culloden, and pointed out to him the graves of the highland warriors who had been slain in that fatal encounter. Seeing a shepherd watching his flocks feeding on the scant herbage of the Moor, he stepped aside to inform the man of the celebrity of his companion. The information fell upon inattentive ears. “Did you never hear of Sir Robert Peel?” inquired Mr. Carruthers. “Never dud!” (did), replied the shepherd. “Is it possible you never heard of him. He was once Prime Minister of England.” “Well!” replied the shepherd, “he seems to be a very respectable man!”

On another occasion, he escorted Mr. Serjeant Talfourd and his friend Mr. John Forster, who was also the intimate friend of Mr. Charles Dickens, over the same scene, and was fond of telling the story that the same or some other shepherd shouted suddenly to another of the same occupation at a short distance on the Moor, “Ian! Ian!” Serjeant Talfourd, who was the author of the once celebrated tragedy of “Ion,”—with a bland smile of triumph or satisfaction on his face, turned to Mr. Forster, laid his hand upon his breast, and said, “Forster, this is fame.” He did not know that Ian was the Gaelic for John, and that the man was merely calling to his friend by his Christian name.

Among the odd experiences of the little town in which he passed his days, Mr. Carruthers related that a gentleman, who had made a large fortune in India, retired to pass the evening of his life in his native place. Finding the time hanging heavy on his hands, and being of an active mind, he established a newspaper, sometime about the year 1840. He grew tired of it after two or three years, and discontinued it in a day without a word of notice or explanation. With equal suddenness he resumed its publication in 1850, and addressed his readers, in his first editorial, “Since the publication of our last paper, nothing of importance has occurred in the political world.” Nothing had occurred of more importance than the French Revolution of 1848—the dethronement and flight of King Louis Philippe—and convulsions in almost every country in Europe, Great Britain excepted.

Mr. Carruthers, who had received the degree of Doctor of Laws a few years previously, died in 1878, full of years and honors, regretted and esteemed by all the North of Scotland, and by a wide circle of friends and admirers in every part of the world where English literature is appreciated; and Scotsmen retain a fond affection for their native country, and the men whose lives and genius reflect honor upon it.

II. Patric Park, Sculptor.

I am glad to be able in these pages to render tribute, however feeble, to one of the great but unappreciated geniuses of his time; a man of powerful intellect as well as powerful frame, a true artist of heroic mould and thought, who dwarfed the poor pigmies of the day in which his lot was cast by conceptions too grand to find a market: Patric Park, sculptor, who concealed under a somewhat rude and rough exterior as tender a heart as ever beat in a human bosom. Had he been an ancient Greek, his name might have become immortal. Had he been a modern Frenchman, the art in which he excelled would have brought him not only bread, but fortune. But as he was only a portrayer of the heroic in the very prosaic country in which his lot was cast, it was as much as he could do to pay his way by the scanty rewards of an art which few people appreciated, or even understood, and to waste upon the marble busts of rich men, who had a fancy for that style of portraiture, the talents, or rather the genius, which, had encouragement come, might have produced epics in stone to have rivalled the masterpieces of antiquity.

Patrick, or, as he usually signed himself, Patric, Park was born in Glasgow in 1809, and I made his acquaintance in the Morning Chronicle office in 1842, when he was in the prime of his early manhood. He sent a letter to the editor to request the insertion of a modest paragraph in reference to a work of his which had found a tardy purchaser in Stirling, where it was destined to adorn the beautiful public cemetery of the city. The paragraph was inserted not as he wrote it, but with a kindly addition in praise of his work and of his genius. He came to the office next day to know the writer’s name. And when the writer avowed himself, a friendship sprung up between the two, which suffered no abatement during the too short life of the grateful man of genius, who, for the first time, had been publicly recognized by the humble pen of one who could command, in artistic and literary matters, the columns of a powerful journal. Park’s nature was broad and bold, and scorned conventionalities and false pretence. George Outram, a lawyer and editor of a Glasgow newspaper, author of several humorous songs and lyrics upon the odds and ends of legal practice, among which the “Annuity” survives in perennial youth in Edinburgh and Glasgow society, and brother of the gallant Sir James Outram, of Indian fame, used to say of Park, that he liked him because he was not smooth and conventional. “There is not in the world,” he said to me on one occasion, “another man with so many delightful corners in his character as Park. We are all of us much too smooth and rounded off. Give me Park and genuine nature, and all the more corners the better.”

Park had a very loud voice, and sang Scotch songs perhaps with more vehemence than many people would admire, but with a hearty appreciation that was pleasant to witness. It is related that a deputation of Glasgow bailies came up to London, with Lord Provost Lumsden at their head, in reference to the Loch Katrine Water Bill, for the supply of Glasgow with pure water, which was then before Parliament, and that they invited their distinguished townsman to dine with them at the Victoria Hotel, Euston Square. After dinner Park was called upon for a song, and as there was nobody in the dining-room but one old gentleman, who, according to the waiter, was very deaf, Park consented to sing, and sang in his very best style the triumphant Jacobite ballad of “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye wauking yet,” till, as one of the bailies said, “he made the rafters ring, and might have been heard at St. Paul’s.” The deaf gentleman, as soon as the song was concluded, is reported to have made his way to the table, and apologising for addressing a company of strangers, to have turned to Park and said, with extraordinary fervor and emotion, “May God Almighty bless you, sir, and pour his choicest blessings upon your head! For thirty years I have been stone deaf and have not heard the sound of the human voice. But I heard your song, every word of it; God bless you!”

Upon one occasion, when we were travelling together in the Western Highlands, the captain of one of the Hutcheson steamers was exceedingly courteous and attentive to his passengers, and took great pains to point out to those who were making this delightful journey for the first time all the picturesque objects on the route. At one of the landing-places the young Earl of Durham was taken on board, with his servants, and from that moment the captain had neither eyes nor ears for any other person in the vessel. He lavished the most obsequious and fulsome attention upon his lordship, and when Park asked him a question, cut him short with a snappish reply. Park was disgusted, and expressed his opinion of the captain in a manner more forcible than polite. As there was a break in the navigation in consequence of some repairs that were being effected in one of the locks, the passengers had to disembark and proceed by omnibus to another steamer that awaited their arrival at Loch Lochy. Park mounted on the box by the side of the driver, and was immediately addressed by the captain, “Come down out of that, you sir! That seat’s reserved for his lordship!” Park’s anger flashed forth like an electric spark, “And who are you, sir, that you dare address a gentleman in that manner?”

“I am the captain of the boat, sir, and I order you to come down out of that.”

“Captain, be hanged!” said Park, “the coachman might as well call himself a captain as you. The only difference between you is, that he is the driver of a land omnibus and that you are the driver of an aquatic omnibus.” The young Earl laughed, and quietly took his place in the interior of the vehicle, leaving Park in undisputed possession of the box-seat.

His contempt for toadyism in all its shapes and manifestations was extreme. There was an engineer of some repute in his day, with whom he had often come into contact, and whom he especially disliked for his slavish subservience to rank and title. The engineer meeting Park on board of the boat, said, “Mr. Park, I wish you not to talk about me! I am told that you said, I was not worth a damn! Is it true?” “Well,” replied Park, “it may be; but if I said so I underrated you. I think you are worth two damns, and I damn you twice!”

On another occasion, when attending a soirÉe at Lady Byron’s, he was so annoyed at finding no other refreshment than tea, which he did not care for, and very weak port wine negus, which he detested as an unmanly and unheroic drink, that he took his departure, resolved to go in search of some stronger potation. The footman in the hall, addressing him deferentially in search of a “tip,” said, “Shall I call your carriage, my lord?” “I’m not a lord,” said Park, in a voice like that of a stentor. “I beg pardon, sir, shall I call your carriage?” “I have not got a carriage! Give me my walking stick! And now,” he added, slipping a shilling into the man’s hand, “can you tell me of any decent public-house in the neighborhood where I can get a glass of brandy-and-water? The very smell of her ladyship’s negus is enough to make one sick.”

Park resided for a year or two in Edinburgh, and procured several commissions for the busts of legal and other notabilities, and, what was in a higher degree in accordance with his tastes, for some life-size statues of characters in the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott, to complete the Scott monument in Princes Street. He also executed, without a commission, a gigantic model for a statue of Sir William Wallace, for whose name and fame he had the most enthusiastic veneration, with the idea that the patriotic feelings of the Scottish nation would be so far excited by his work as to justify an appeal to the public to set it up in bronze or marble (he preferred bronze,) on the Calton Hill, amid other monuments to the memory of illustrious Scotsmen. But the deeds of Wallace were too far back in the haze of bygone ages to excite much contemporary interest. The model was a noble work, eighteen feet high, and wholly nude. Some of his friends suggested to him that a little drapery would be more in accordance with Scottish ideas, than a figure so nude that it dispensed even with the customary fig-leaf. Park revolted at the notion of the fig-leaf, “a cowardly, indecent subterfuge,” he said. “To the pure all things are pure, as St. Paul says. There is nothing impure in nature, but only in the mind of man. Rather than put on the fig-leaf I would dash the model to pieces.” “But the drapery?” said a friend, the late Alexander Russel of the Scotsman. “What I have done I have done, and I will not spoil my design. Wallace was once a man, and if he had lived in the last century and I had to model his statue, I would have draped it or put it in armor as if he had been the Duke of Marlborough or Prince Eugene. But the memory of Wallace is scarcely the memory of a man but of a demigod. Wallace is a myth; and as a myth he does not require clothes.” “Very true,” said Russel, “but you are anxious to procure the public support and the public guineas, and you’ll never get them for a naked giant.” “Then I’ll smash the model,” said the indignant and dispirited artist. And he did so, and a beautiful work was lost to the world for ever.

At the time of our first acquaintance Park was somewhat smitten by the charms of a beautiful young woman in Greenock, the daughter of one of his oldest and best friends. The lady had no knowledge of art, and scarcely knew what was meant by the word sculptor. She asked him one day whether he cut marble chimney-pieces? This was too much. He was dÉsillusionnÉ and humiliated, and the amatory flame flickered out, no more to be relighted.

Park and I and three or four friends were once together on the top of Ben Lomond, on a fine clear day in August. The weather was lovely, but oppressively hot, and the fatigue of climbing was great, but not excessive. At the summit, so pure was the atmosphere that looking eastward we could distinctly see Arthur’s Seat, overlooking Edinburgh, and the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, twenty miles beyond. Looking westward, we could distinctly see Ailsa Craig in the Firth of Clyde. Thus the eye surveyed the whole diameter of Scotland. By a strange effect of atmosphere the peak of Goatfell in Arran, separated optically from the mountain by a belt of thick white cloud, seemed to be preternaturally raised to a height of at least 20,000 feet above the sea. I pointed it out to Park. “Nonsense!” he said. “Why Goatfell would be higher than the Himalayas if your notion were correct.” “But I know the shape of the peak,” I replied; “I have been on the top of Goatfell at least half-a-dozen times, and would swear to it, as to the nose on your face.” And as we were speaking the white cloud was dissipated, and the Himalayan peak seemed to descend slowly and take its place on the body of Goatfell, from which it had appeared to have been dissevered. “Well,” he said, “things are not what they seem, and I maintain that it was as high as the Himalayas or Chimborazo while the appearance lasted.”

The mountain at this time shone in pale rose-like glow, and Park, inspired by the grandeur of the scene, preached us a very eloquent little sermon, addressing himself to the sun, on the inherent dignity and beauty of sun-worship as practised by the modern Parsees and the ancient Druids. He concluded by a lament that his own art was powerless to represent or personify the grand forces of nature as the Greeks had attempted to do. “The Apollo Belvidere,” he said, “is the representative of a beautiful young man. But it is not Apollo. Art can represent Venus—the perfection of female beauty, and Mars—the perfection of manly vigor; but Apollo; no! Yet I think I would have tried Apollo myself if I had lived in Athens two thousand years ago.”

“‘A living dog is better than a dead lion.’”

“True,” said Park, “I am a living dog, Phidias is a dead lion. I have to model the unintellectual faces of rich cheesemongers, or grocers, or iron masters, and put dignity into them, if I can, which is difficult. And when I add the dignity, they complain of the bad likeness, so that I often think I’d rather be a cheesemonger than a sculptor.”

I called at Park’s studio one morning, and was informed that he every minute expected a visit from the great General Sir Charles James Napier—for whose character and achievements he had the highest admiration. He considered him by far the greatest soldier of modern times—and had prevailed upon the general to sit to him for his bust. Park asked me to stay and be introduced to him, and nothing loth, I readily consented. I had not long to wait. The general had a nose like the beak of an eagle—larger and more conspicuous on his leonine and intellectual face than that of the Duke of Wellington, whose nose was familiar in the purlieus of the Horse Guards. It procured for him the title of “conkey” from the street urchins, and I recognised him at a glance as soon as he entered. On his taking the seat for Park to model his face in clay, the sculptor asked him not to think of too many things at a time, but to keep his mind fixed on one subject. The general did his best to comply with the request, with the result that his face soon assumed a fixed and sleepy expression, without a trace of intellectual animation. Park suddenly startled him by inquiring, “Is it true, general, that you gave way—retreated in fact—at the battle of ——?” (naming the place, which I have forgotten). The general’s eyes flashed sudden fire, and he was about to reply indignantly when Park quietly remarked, plying his modelling tool on the face at the time, “That’ll do, general, the expression is admirable!” The general saw through the manoeuvre, and laughed heartily.

The general’s statue in Trafalgar Square is an admirable likeness. Park was much disappointed at not receiving the commission to execute it.

Park modelled a bust of myself, for which he would not accept payment. He found it a very difficult task to perform. I had to sit to him at least fifty times before he could please himself with his work. On one occasion he lost all patience, and swearing lustily, more suo, dashed the clay into a shapeless mass with his fist. “D—n you,” he said, “why don’t you keep to one face? You seem to have fifty faces in a minute, and all different! I never but once had another face that gave me half the trouble.”

“And whose was the other?” I inquired.

“Sir Charles Barry’s” (architect of the Houses of Parliament at Westminster). “He drove me to despair with his sudden changes of expression. He was a very Proteus as far as his face was concerned, and you’re another. Why don’t you keep thinking of one thing while I am modelling, or why can’t you retain one expression for at least five minutes?”

It was not till fully three months after this outburst that he took courage to begin again, growling and grumbling at his work, but determining, he said, not to be beaten either by Sir Charles or myself. “Poets and architects, and painters and musicians, and novelists,” he said, “are all difficult subjects for the sculptor. Give me the face of a soldier,” he added, “such a face as that of the Emperor Napoleon. There is no mistake about that; or, better still, that of Sir Charles James Napier! If there is not very much immortal soul, so called, in the faces of such men, there is a very great deal of body.”

Park was commissioned by the late Duke of Hamilton to model a bust of Napoleon III., and produced, perhaps the very finest of all the fine portrait-busts which ever proceeded from his chisel. The Emperor impressed Park in the most favorable manner, and he always spoke of him in terms of enthusiastic admiration, as well for the innate heroism as for the tenderness of his character. “All true heroes,” he said, “are tender-hearted; and the man who can fight most bravely has always the readiest drop of moisture in his eye when a noble deed is mentioned or a chord of human sympathy is touched.” The bust of Napoleon was lost in the wreck of the vessel that conveyed it from Dover to Calais, but the Duke of Hamilton commissioned the sculptor to execute a second copy from the clay model, which duly reached its destination.

Patric Park died before he was fifty, and when, to all appearance, there were many happy and prosperous years before him, when having surmounted his early difficulties, he might have looked forward to the design and completion of the many noble works to which he pined to devote his mature energies, after emancipation from the slavery of what he called “busting” the effigies of “cheesemongers.” He had been for some months in Manchester, plying his vocation among the rich notabilities of that prosperous city, when one day, emerging from a carriage at the railway station, he observed a porter with a huge basket of ice upon his head, staggering under the load and ready to fall. Park rushed forward to the man’s assistance, prevented him from falling, steadied the load upon his head by a great muscular exertion, and suddenly found his mouth full of blood. He had broken a blood-vessel; and stretching forth his hand, took a lump of ice from the basket, and held it in his mouth to stop the bleeding. He proceeded to the nearest chemist’s shop for advice and relief, and was forthwith conveyed to his hotel delirious. A neighboring doctor was called in, Park beseeching him for brandy. The brandy was refused. A telegram was sent to his own physician in London. He came down by the next train, and expressed a strong opinion on seeing the body and learning all the facts, that the brandy ought to have been given. But he arrived too late. The noble, the generous, the gifted Park was no more, and an attached young wife and hundreds of friends, amongst whom the writer of these words was one of the most attached, were “left lamenting.”—Gentleman’s Magazine.

(To be concluded.)