the sculptor, the painter, the composer, and the poet, but some
chance bent of nature has decided them to choose different mediums of
expression.

Some critic has written, had Coles' 'Voyage of Life' been executed in
verse, instead of a series of pictures, it would have ranked as one of
the grandest poems of the age. High art, then, whatever its kind, is the
language of the aesthetic feeling in man--it symbolizes the god-like
element in his nature. Cumulative and progressive, it keeps even pace
with an improving civilization, and should therefore furnish fairer
products to-day than in any period of the past. It assimilates the
spirit of the times in which it is exercised; for as Ralph Waldo Emerson
remarks in his subtle, essay: 'No man can quite emancipate himself from
his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the
religion, the politics, usages, and arts of his times shall have no
share.'

So we see from the very necessity of this truism, that if our painters
and sculptors would not be mere imitators of the exponents of another
age, there would be soon established a national school of art. We do not
mean by this a mere conventional type in finish and mode of treatment,
but certain marked, characteristic excellences and features that would
identify it with the history of our country and the peculiarities of our
people. There are a few native artists who have struggled to achieve
this consummation, and preeminent among these is Erastus D. Palmer, the
American sculptor.

The history of his career, his origin, his process of study, his choice
of subjects in all his great works, his rise and triumph as an artist,
all entitle him to this distinctive appellation. He commenced life as a
carpenter and joiner, but, while practising his trade in Utica, N. Y.,
his eye accidentally fell on a cameo likeness, and as the dropping of an
apple suggested to Newton the laws of gravitation, so the sight of this
little trifle was the talisman that revealed to Palmer the artistic
capabilities of his genius. Being thus led to attempt the portrait of
his wife upon a shell, he executed his task--which was in a twofold
sense a labor of love--with such fidelity to nature, such bold outline,
and delicacy of finish, that connoisseurs detected in it the hand of a
master. Thus encouraged, he for two years made cameo cutting his
business, and followed it with remarkable success, till, his eyes
becoming affected by the exercise