This is an allegory, but of very general application; and it has more
especially a political application. Cranch may have intended it to
illustrate the life of Alexander Hamilton.

Cranch was not a giant himself, but he knew how to distinguish true
greatness from the spurious commodity. Emerson considered his varied
accomplishments his worst enemy; but that depends on how you choose to
look at it. It is probable enough that if Cranch had followed out a
single pursuit to its perfection, and if he had not lived so many years
in Europe, he would have been a more celebrated man; but Cranch did not
care for celebrity. He was content to live and to let live. Men of great
force, like Macaulay and Emerson, who impress their personality on the
times in which they live, communicate evil as well as good; but Cranch
had no desire to influence his fellow men, and for this reason his
influence was of a purer quality. It was like the art of Albert Durer. No
one could conceive of Cranch's injuring anybody; and if all men were like
him there would be no more wars, no need of revolutions. Force, however,
is necessary to combat the evil that is already established.

He died at his house on Ellery Street January 20, 1890, as gently and
peacefully as he had lived. There is an excellent portrait of him by
Duveneck in the rooms of the University Club, at Boston; but the sketch
of his life, by George William Curtis, was refused on the ground that he
was an Emersonian. The same objection might have been raised against
Lowell, or Curtis himself with equally good reason.



T. G. APPLETON.