LITTLE BIOGRAPHIES.—HOW SUCCESS IS WON.

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LITTLE BIOGRAPHIES.—HOW SUCCESS IS WON.

By Saran K. Bo.tTon.

VII.
WILLIAM M, HUNT.

HERE is no royal road to art. The ascent

of the glittering ladder is no whit easier

than the exploration of the wilds of Africa, by a
Stanley, or the accumulation of seven -millions by
a Johns Hopkins. The essentials of a success,
persistent work and indomitable will, have never
been other since the days of Adam. Certain, too,
is it that the story of most artists is the old story
of long poverty and long struggle, before victory.

Giotto, the “regenerator of Italian art,” was
the son of a herdsman, and he tended sheep
near Florence, using his spare time in drawing
pictures: of his flock on flat pieces of slate with a
pointed stone. One day the great painter, Cima-
bue, saw the unlettered boy of fourteen intently
at work, and he asked him if he would like to go
home to learn his art with him. Gliotto’s father
consented, and by and by the shepherd-boy sur-
passed his master. Pope Boniface VIII. sum-
moned him to Rome, and kings were eager to pur-
chase his paintings. He created a new school of
art, built the famous Cathedral Tower at Florence,
which Longfellow calls “‘ The builder’s perfect and
centennial flower,” and of which Ruskin says,
“ Power and beauty in the highest degree exist, as
far as I know, only in ove building in the world —
the campanile of Giotto. It is the model and
mirror of perfect architecture.”

Dannecker, the great German sculptor, was the
son of an ignorant stable-keeper, but he had a
refined and aspiring mother who fostered her boy’s
artistic tastes. He worked in the stable till he
was thirteen, but whenever he could, he stole off
to the yard of a stone-cutter and there he staid
and covered the marble slabs with his designs,
although he well knew he should be beaten by his
rough father for what would be considered idle-
ness. At last, he set forth into the world and
walked to Paris, and there, always hungry and
always meanly clad, he worked for two years in
the Louvre. Thence he walked on to Rome; and
though often discouraged and heartsick, he de-
voted himself untiringly to his art. At fifty years
of age, he made his celebrated Ariadne, a beautiful
woman reclining on the back of a panther, a mas-
terpiece of sculpture, which draws thousands every
year to Frankfort. Fortunes have been offered
for it, but money cannot buy it from Germany.

For eight long years too, Dannecker worked upon
his famous statue of the Christ, which was pur-
chased by the Empress of Russia for her son
Alexander J. Goethe and Canova were proud to
become the intimate friends of the man who was
once a stable-boy.

Thorwaldsen, the great Dane, was the son of a
poor wood-carver and a peasant mother, and he
had the same bitter struggle with poverty. It is
the old story: shy and melancholy, teaching draw-
ing and working with his father; going to Rome
on an academy pension of ten dollars a month ;
sending his work back to Copenhagen for sale,
which nobody wanted because he was not famous ;
carving his Jason with the Golden Fleece, and
breaking the cast because people only admired
and did not buy; at last, after nine weary years at
Rome, selling his humble furniture to go back to
obscure wood-carving in Denmark — when, lo!
the tide turns —a rich man from England sees his
work, orders a Jason in marble, and Thorwaldsen
is thenceforth famous. Now the academy at Co-
penhagen sends him five hundred dollars as an
expression of pleasure in his work. How much
more he had needed it when he lived, half-starved
in his comfortless studio! But the world has few
smiles for the struggling, but ah, how many smiles
when the struggles are over. Many a poor fellow
fails just at the border-land of success, when a
little more self-reliance and faith in self, and per-
sistent effort, would have won!

Hiram Powers, in our own country, is another
remarkable instance of hard-earned success. His
story, too, runs the old way: He was born on a
bleak Vermont farm, the eighth among nine chil-
dren, his family removing to Ohio where, by the
death of the father, all the children were obliged
to work for their own support; he himself was
first a clerk in a hotel reading-room, then in a
produce store; then he collected debts for a clock
maker; afterward, for seven years, he took charge
of wax figures in a Cincinnati museum ; then he
learned to model in plaster from a German —
working, trusting, hoping, in this fashion till he
was thirty. Then the long path of toil turned, but
it turned as it usually does, only by his own deter-
mined effort to tread a new way. He resolved
to go to Washington, and try his hand at model-
ling busts of distinguished men. But for such
bold venture, he might have spent his life among
the wax figures. Two years later, with a little
money laid by, and some aid from Mr. Nicholas