Chapter II: Part 2

The oldest art school, the Accadémia di San Luca, founded in 1507 by Sixtus, when he called to Rome all the leading artists of Europe to assist in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, is an organization that magically links the present with the days of Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson, as it linked them, also, with the remote and historic past. The father of the present custodian of the Academy knew Thorwaldsen well. The grandfather of the gifted Italian sculptor, Tadolini (who has recently completed the tomb for Pope Leo XIII, placed in the Basilica of San Giovanni Laterano), modelled the bust of Thorwaldsen, and in one gallery hangs the great Danish sculptor's portrait, painted by himself. The first director of San Luca was Federigo Zuccaro. In the early years of the nineteenth century this Academy was a vital centre of art life, and it is still a school that draws students, although the visitor who does not loiter and linger in his Rome may fail to know of this most alluring place. The San Luca is in the Via Bonella, one of the old, dark, narrow, and gloomy streets of the oldest part of Rome,--a short street of hardly more than two blocks, running between the Via Alessandra and the Forum. Hawthorne vividly pictures all this old Rome when he speaks of the "narrow, crooked, intricate streets, so uncomfortably paved with little squares of lava that to tread over them is a penitential pilgrimage; so indescribably ugly, moreover; so cold, so alley-like, into which the sun never falls and where a chill wind forces its deadly breath into our lungs; the immense seven-storied, yellow-washed hovels, or call them palaces, where all that is dreary in domestic life seems magnified and multiplied; those staircases which ascend from a ground floor of cook shops and cobblers' stalls, stables and regiments of cavalry, to a middle region of princes, cardinals, and ambassadors, and an upper tier of artists just beneath the unattainable sky: ... in which the visitor becomes sick at heart of Italian trickery, which has uprooted whatever faith in man's integrity had till then endured;" the city "crushed down in spirit by the desolation of her ruin and the hopelessness of her future;" one recalls these words when passing through the unspeakable gloom and horror and desolation and squalor of ancient Rome. In these surroundings one's cab stops at "No. 44," and ringing the bell the door is open, whether by super-normal agency or by some invisible terrestrial manipulation one is unable to determine; but in the semi-darkness of the narrow hall he discerns before him a flight of steep stairs, and, as no other vista opens, he reasons that, by the law of exclusion, this must be the appointed way. Along the wall are seen, here and there, some antique casts from Trajan's Column, and reliefs from Canova and Thorwaldsen. The galleries above hold only a small and a comparatively unimportant collection of pictures. There are marines from Vernet and Claude Lorraine; a "Venus Crowned by the Graces" from Rubens; Giulio Romano's copy of Raphael's "Galatea,"--the original of which (in the Villa Farnesina) represents Galatea surrounded by Nymphs, Cupids, and Tritons, being carried in a shell across the sea. There is a Cupid, and also the "Fortuna" of Guido Reni,--the latter a figure of ineffable grace floating in the air. One of Raphael's early works representing "St. Luke Painting the Madonna" is here. There are several works by Titian, but these have less than would be expected of the glory usually associated with his name; and a Vandyke representing the Virgin and Child, with two angels playing, the one on a lute, the other on the violin.

One salon filled with portraits of artists is especially interesting, and that of Thorwaldsen is so feminine in its costume and the parting of the hair, that it is almost inevitably mistaken for that of a woman. Guido's graceful "Fortuna" is represented as a female figure flying through the air, her long hair streaming in the wind, and the picture recalls to one the Greek legend of Opportunity, as told by Kainos. The legend runs:--

"'Of what town is thy sculptor?'

"'Of Lukzon.'

"'What is his name?'

"'Lysippos.'

"'And thine?'

"'Opportunity, controller of all things.'

"'But why standest thou on tiptoe?'

"'I am always running.'

"'Why, then, hast thou wings on both feet?'

"'I fly like the wind.'

"'But wherefore bearest thou a razor in thy right hand?'

"'As a sign to men that I am sharper than any steel.'

"'And why wearest thou thy hair long in front?'

"'That I may be seized by him who approaches me.'

"'By Zeus! And thou art bald behind?'

"'Because once I have passed with my winged feet no one may seize
me then.'"

From one landing, on the steep narrow staircase of San Luca, opens the Biblioteca Sarti, an art library of some fifteen thousand volumes. The sculpture gallery is now closed and can only be entered by special permission. This is the more to be regretted as it contains the principal collections in Rome of the original casts of the works of Thorwaldsen and Canova.

The latter-day artists who have been setting up their Lares and Penates in Rome at various periods during the early and into the later years of the nineteenth century have found the Eternal City in strong contrast with its twentieth-century aspects, however it may have differed from the Rome of the Popes. The earlier American artists to seek the Seven-hilled City were painters; and Allston, Copley, and Stuart had already distinguished themselves in pictorial art before America had produced any sculptor who could read his title clear to fame. It is to Hiram Powers (born in Vermont in 1805) that America must look as her first sculptor, chronologically considered, closely followed by Thomas Crawford, who was but eight years his junior, and by Horatio Greenough, who was also born in the same year as Powers, and who preceded him in Italy, but whose work has less artistic value. Mr. Greenough has left a colossal (if not an artistic) monument to his gifts in stately shaft marking Bunker Hill which he designed. Problematic in their claim to artistic excellence as are his "Washington"--a seated figure in the grounds of the Capitol in Washington--and his group in relief called "The Rescue" in the portico of the Capitol, his name lives by his personality as a man of liberal culture and noble character, if not by his actual rank in art. First of the American group in Italy, he was followed by Powers, who sought the ineffable beauty and enchantment of Florence in 1837. Horatio Greenough died in comparatively early life, leaving perhaps the most interesting of his works in a relief (purchased by Professor George Ticknor, the distinguished historian of Spain) "representing in touching beauty and expression a sculptor in an attitude of dejection and discouragement before his work, while a hand from above pours oil into his dying lamp, an allegory illustrative of the struggles of genius and the relief which timely patronage may extend to it."

Mr. Powers passed his entire life in Florence. His work attracted great attention and inspired ardent appreciation. In portrait busts Powers was especially successful; and his "Greek Slave," his "Fisher Boy," "Il Penseroso," and "Proserpine" impressed the art-loving public of the time as marked by strong artistic power and as entitled to permanent rank in sculpture.

Mr. Crawford died young; but his name lives in the majestic bronze statue of "Beethoven" which is in the beautiful white and gold interior of Symphony Hall, in Boston; and his "Orpheus" and some other works claim high appreciation. Writing of Crawford, Mr. Hillard said:--

"Crawford's career was distinguished by energy, resolution, and
self-reliance. While yet a youth, he formed the determination to
make himself an artist; and with this view went to Rome--alone,
unfriended, and unknown--and there began a life of toil and
renunciation; resisting the approaches alike of indolence and
despondency. His strength of character and force of will would have
earned distinction for powers inferior to his. Nothing was given to
self-indulgence; nothing to vague dreams; nothing to unmanly
despair. He did not wait for the work that he would have, but
labored cheerfully upon that which he could have. Success came
gradually, but surely; and his powers as surely proved themselves
to be more than equal to the demand made upon them."

On the death of Mr. Crawford, Thomas William Parsons wrote a memorial poem in which this stanza occurs:--

"O Rome! what memories awake,
When Crawford's name is said,
Of days and friends for whose dear sake
That path of Hades unto me
Will have no more of dread
Than his own Orpheus felt, seeking Eurydice!
O Crawford! husband, father, brother
Are in that name, that little word!
Let me no more my sorrow smother;
Grief stirs me, and I must be stirred."

Thomas Ball, who went in early manhood to Florence, where he remained until when nearly at the age of fourscore he returned to his native land, still continues, at the age of eighty-five, to pursue the art he loves. He has created works, as his equestrian statue of "Washington" in the Public Gardens and his "Lincoln Freeing the Slave" in Park Square, both in Boston; his great Washington Memorial group in Methuen, Massachusetts; his "Christ Blessing Little Children," and many other historic and ideal sculptures, that seem endowed with his beautiful and winning spirit as well as with his rare gifts. Larkin G. Mead chose Florence rather than Rome for his home and work. His noble "River God," placed at the head of the Mississippi near St. Paul, as well as other interesting creations, link his name with that of his native land. Randolph Rogers, a man of genius; Rinehart, Paul Akers, and Thompson all died before the full maturity of their powers; Akers at the early age of thirty-six, leaving, as his bride of a year, the poet, Elizabeth Akers Allen, who, under the _nom de plume_ of "Florence Percy," has endeared herself to all lovers of lyric art. In a monograph on Paul Akers, written after his death, the writer says of his studio in Rome:--

"Linked with this studio is Hawthorne's tale of 'The Marble Faun,'
as Kenyon's studio was none other than Paul Akers's. Though
Hawthorne in his romance saw fit to lay the scene in the rooms once
occupied by Canova, it was in the Via del Crecie that he wove the
thread of his Italian romance.

"Paul Akers's growing reputation and increase of work ere long made
it necessary for him to seek a more commodious studio, and he took
rooms once occupied by the famous Canova. Here he had made under
his supervision copies in marble of many of the famous works of the
Vatican and the Capitol. The largest collection of these was a
commission from Mr. Edward King of Newport, and among them were
busts of Ariadne, Demosthenes, and Cicero, and a facsimile of the
'Dying Gladiator' which Mr. King presented to the Redwood Library
of Newport.

* * * * *

"During his first winter in Rome he was permitted by the
authorities to make a cast of a mutilated bust of Cicero which had
long lain in the Vatican. A critic writing from Rome in 1857 says
of this bust of Cicero: 'Mr. Akers obtained permission to take a
cast from it; he then restored the eye, brow, and ears, and
modelled a neck and bust for it in accordance with the temperament
shown by the nervous and rather thin face. He has succeeded
admirably. It is the very head of the Vatican, yet without the
scars of envious time, and sits gracefully on human shoulders,
instead of being rolled awkwardly back upon a shelf.' This bust is
unlike the portrait which so long passed for Cicero's, but has been
identified by means of a medal which was struck by the Magnesians
in honor of the great orator during his consulate, and is now the
authorized portrait of Cicero. The finest of Paul Akers's creations
executed during his stay in Rome are 'St. Elizabeth of Hungary,'
which represents the princess at the moment the roses have fallen
to the ground; 'Una and the Lion,' an illustration of the line in
Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,'--

'Still while she slept he kept both watch and ward;'

the head of Milton and the 'Pearl Diver.' The 'Pearl Diver,' now
owned by the city of Portland, represents a youth stretched upon a
sea-worn rock and wrapped in eternal sleep. The arms are thrown
above the head, and about the waist is a net containing
pearl-bearing shells for which he has risked his life. There is no
trace of suffering; all is subdued to beauty. It is death
represented as the ancients conceived it, the act of the
torch-reverting god. This youth, who has lost his life at the
moment when all that for which he had dared was within his grasp,
suggests Paul Akers's own untimely death on the eve of his
triumph."

It was from his Roman studio that Mr. Akers wrote to a friend:--

"Yesterday Browning called. He looked a long time at my Milton, and
said it was Milton, the man-angel. He praised the wealth of hair
which I had given the head, and then said that Mrs. Browning had a
lock of Milton's hair, the only one now in existence. This was
given her by Leigh Hunt, just before his death, who had the records
proving it to be genuine. The hair was, he said, like mine. He
invited me to visit him in Florence, where he would show me the
first edition of Milton's poems, marked to indicate the peculiar
accent which the poet sometimes adopted, a knowledge of which makes
clear somewhat that otherwise seems discordant. Milton was so great
a musician that there could have been no fault in sound in his
compositions. He looked over my books; said my edition of Shelley
was one which he had corrected for the press, not from a knowledge
of the original MS., but from his internal evidence that so it must
have been; said Poe was a wonderful man; spoke of Tennyson in the
warmest terms. Took up a copy of his own poems published in the
United States, and remarked that it was better than the English
edition, yet had some awful blunders, and wished me to allow him to
correct a copy for me. My head of the 'Drowned Girl' caught his eye
and interested him. I told him that I had thought of Hood's 'Bridge
of Sighs.' He then said that Hood wrote that on his deathbed, and
read it to him before any one else had seen it. Hood was doubtful
whether it was worth publishing. To-morrow Mrs. Browning is to
come; she has been quite ill since she came to Rome, and I have
seen her but once. I derive much comfort from the friendship of
Charlotte Cushman. She has just gone from here. She has frequent
breakfast parties; I have attended but one. Mr. and Mrs. James T.
Fields, Wild, the painter, and myself were the guests. Fields I
like much."

The first works of Mr. Akers were two portrait busts, of Longfellow and of Samuel Appleton. Of his bust of Milton, Hawthorne in the "Marble Faun" has said:--

"In another style, there was the grand, calm head of Milton, not
copied from any one bust or picture, yet more authentic than any
of them, because all known representations of the poet had been
profoundly studied and solved in the artist's mind. The bust over
the tomb in Greyfriar's Church, the original miniatures and
pictures wherever to be found, had mingled each its special truth
in this one work--wherein likewise by long perusal and deep love of
'Paradise Lost,' the 'Comus,' the 'Lycidas,' and 'L'Allegro,' the
sculptor had succeeded even better than he knew in spiritualizing
his marble with the poet's mighty genius. And this was a great
thing to have achieved, such a length of time after the dry bones
and dust of Milton were like those of any other dead man."

Richard Greenough and the painter, Mr. Haseltine, were prominent figures among the early American group of the nineteenth-century artists in Rome. There came Emma Stebbins, who modelled a fine portrait bust of Charlotte Cushman; and Anne Whitney, whose statues of Samuel Adams and of Leif Ericson adorn public grounds in Boston; whose life-size statue of Harriet Martineau is the possession of Wellesley College; and whose "Chaldean Astronomer," "Lotus-Eater," and "Roma"--a figure personifying the Rome of Pio Nono--reveal her power in ideal creation.

The name of Harriet Hosmer stands out in brilliant pre-eminence among those of all women who have followed the plastic art. Her infinite charm of personality seems to impart itself to her work, and she has the gift to make friends as well as to call forms out of clay--the success of friendship being one even more permanently satisfying. In her early life as a girl hardly more than twenty, she sought Rome, living with art as her chaperon. Her versatility, her picturesque individuality, and her imaginative power all combined to win sympathetic recognition. Gibson, whose guidance was particularly well adapted to develop her gifts, received her into his own studio and took a deep interest in her work. It was during the period of her early efforts that Hawthorne was in Rome, and she is graphically depicted in his notebooks in her boyish cap at work in the clay. Gibson was an artist, _con amore_, and Miss Hosmer's joyous abandon to her art captivated his sympathy. "In my art what do I find?" he questioned; "happiness; love which does not depress me; difficulties which I do not fear; resolution which never abates; flights which carry me above the ground; ambition which tramples no one down." Master and pupil were akin in their unwearied devotion to art. Of Gibson, whose absence of mind regarding all the details of life made him almost helpless in travel and affairs, Miss Hosmer used gleefully to say that he "was a god in his studio, but God help him out of it!" This glancing sprite of a girl, frightening her friends by her daring and venturous horseback riding; gravitating by instinct to offer some generous, tender aid to the sick, the destitute, or the helpless; the life and light of gay dinners and of social evenings; working from six in the morning till night in her studio, "with an absence of pretension," says Mrs. Browning, "and simplicity of manners which accord rather with the childish dimples in her rosy cheeks than with her broad forehead and high aims," had the magic gift that merged her visitors and patrons into enthusiastic friends; and Mrs. Browning has chronicled the pretty scene when Lady Marion Alford, the daughter of the Earl of Northumberland, knelt before the girl artist and slipped on her finger a ring--a precious ruby set with diamonds--as a token of her devotion. Reading Miss Hosmer's life still further backward, the reader is transported, as if on some magic carpet, to St. Louis, in the United States, where a noble and lofty man, Hon. Wayman Crow,--a generous friend, a liberal patron of the arts, a man of the most refined tastes and culture, whose great qualities were always used in high service,--first aided Miss Hosmer to the preliminary studies in her art, and whose accomplished and lovely daughters (now Mrs. Lucien Carr of Boston, Mrs. Edwin Cushman of Newport and Rome, and Mrs. Emmons of Leamington, England) were as a trio of sisters to the young artist. And "the flowing conditions of life" bear on this lifelong friendship until a fair young girl, Élise (the daughter of Mrs. Emmons), catches up this sweet tie and as an accomplished and lovely young woman in Roman society, when these "flowing conditions" had come down even into the season of 1906-7, Miss Emmons cherished the fame of Harriet Hosmer and enjoyed the privilege of a constant correspondence with the distinguished artist. So the past links itself again with the present; and who can tell where any story in life begins or ends in the constant evolutionary progress?

Miss Hosmer's work attracted wide attention. Her majestic statue of "Zenobia;" the winsome "Puck;" the impressive statue of "Beatrice Cenci," representing her as she lay in her cell in Castel San Angelo the night before her execution,--these and other works of hers are of an interesting character and will hold their permanent rank in sculpture.

Were all the muses present at the christening of William Wetmore Story--sculptor, musician, poet and painter, jurist and man of letters, and the friend whose social relationships made life a thing of beauty--

"To winds and waterfalls,
And autumn's sunlit festivals,
To music and to music's thoughts
Inextricably bound"?

Mr. Story made his first visit to Italy in 1847; not at that time with any fixed purpose of exchanging his profession of the law for art. He loved literature, and his grace and ease in expression had already manifested his literary talent; he had an inclination toward modelling--it could hardly, at this time, have been called by a stronger name--and curiously enough with him the usual conditions were reversed and he received a commission for a statue of his father, Judge Story, before he had made any definite turning toward the art of sculpture. A young man of versatile gifts and accomplished scholarship, sculpture was to him one among the many attractive forms of art rather than the supreme attraction; and it was the stimulus of the given work that determined him as a sculptor, rather than his determination to be a sculptor that determined the work. Among the goddesses of life Destiny must, perhaps, be allowed a place. At all events, after Mr. Story's initial glance at Italy, he sought Rome again a year later, and this time it was his choice for life, however unrevealed to his eye were the resplendent years that lay before him. He had fallen under the spell of the Magic Land. In a letter to Lowell, Mr. Story had questioned how he should ever endure again "the restraint and bondage of Boston." It was the picturesque Rome of the Popes that he first knew. The years of 1848-49 were those of revolutionary activities in Italy. Pio Nono, one of the most saintly and beloved of the Popes,--whose mortal form now rests in that richly decorated chapel in old San Lorenzo, _fuori le mura_, on the site of the church that Constantine founded on the burial place of St. Lawrence,--made his flight to Gaeta and the Roman republic was established. It was a dramatic scene when Pio Nono returned (April 12, 1850), entering Rome by the Porta San Giovanni. The scene from this gate was then, as now, one of the most impressive in the Eternal City.

It was in this vast Basilica of San Giovanni Laterano that Pio Nono entered that April day, leaving his carriage and walking alone to the altar, where he knelt in devotion. A splendid procession awaited without to accompany the Holy Father to the Papal Palace. The superb state carriages conveyed princes and foreign ambassadors and great nobles. From the Piazza San Giovanni to St. Peter's every house was illuminated, and the populace cheered and waved until the very air vibrated with sound and color. These were the days when the methods of government were a visible spectacle, a drama, making the life in Rome a daily illuminated missal.

The Storys, on their return to Italy, located themselves for a time in Florence, where they met the Brownings, and that lifelong friendship between the poet and the sculptor was initiated. In these happy Florentine days Mr. Story worked in his studio while his wife read to him the life of Keats, then just issued, written by Monckton Milnes, later Lord Houghton. But the "flowing conditions" soon bore them onward to Rome, where they settled themselves in the Via Porta Pinciana, and met the Crawfords, who were domiciled in the Villa Negroni. In these Roman days, too, appeared Mr. Cropsey, of poetic landscape fame, and here, too, was Margaret Fuller. Mazzini was then a leading figure in the Chamber of Deputies,--"the prophet not only of modern Italy, but of the modern world." He found Italy "utilitarian and materialistic, permeated by French ideas, and weakened by her reliance on French initiative. He was filled with hope that Italy might not only achieve her own unity, but might once more accomplish, as she had in the Rome of the Cæsars and the Rome of the Church, the unity of the Western world. 'On my side I believe,' he says, 'that the great problem of the day was a religious problem, to which all other questions were but secondary.'" He was asserting that "we cannot relate ourselves to the Divine, but through collective humanity. It is not by isolated duty (which indeed the conditions of modern life render more and more impossible), nor by contemplation of mere Power as displayed in the material world, that we can develop our nature. It is rather by mingling with the universal life, and by carrying on the evolution of the never-ending work."

The studios of Mr. Crawford in those days were in the Piazza delle Terme, near the Baths of Diocletian. William Page, the painter, was domiciled on the slope of the Quirinal where he painted a portrait of Charlotte Cushman which Mrs. Browning described as "a miracle"; one of Mrs. Crawford; the head of Mrs. Story, which he insisted upon presenting to her husband; and a magnificent portrait of Browning which the artist presented to Mrs. Browning. "Both of us," wrote Robert Browning of this gift, "would have fain escaped being the subjects of such princely generosity; but there was no withstanding his delicacy and noble-mindedness." Mrs. Jameson was much in Rome in the early years of the 1850-60 decade, living in the old port by the Tiber nearly opposite to the new and splendid building of the law courts. Near the Tarpeian Rock Frederika Bremer had perched, in a tiny room of which she took all the frugal care, even to washing the blue cups and plates when she invited the Hawthornes to a tea of a simplicity that suggested, indeed, the utmost degree of "light" housekeeping. Thomas Buchanan Read was one of the hosts and guests of this social group, and it was at a dinner he gave that Hawthorne met Gibson, whose conversational talents were evidently (upon that occasion) chiefly employed in contemning the pre-Raphaelite school of painters and emphasizing the need of sculptors to discover and to follow the principles of the Greeks,--"a fair doctrine, but one which Mr. Gibson fails to practise," observes Hawthorne. The Brownings were variously bestowed in Rome through succeeding winters,--in the Bocca di Leone, in the Via del Tritone and elsewhere. Mrs. Browning, as her "Casa Guida Windows" and many other poems attest, took always the deepest interest in Italian politics. American and English friends come and go, but the little group of residents and the more permanent sojourners, as the Hawthornes and the Brownings, continue their daily variations on life in the social dinners and teas, the excursions and the sight-seeing of the wonderful city.

Only the magician could "call up the vanished past again" and summon into an undeniable materialization those charming figures to come forth out of the shadowy air of the rich, historic past, and stand before us in the full light of contemporary attention. Not alone this group of choice persons, but the environment of their time, the very atmosphere, are demanded of this necromancy. The figure of Adelaide Kemble (Mrs. Sartoris) is one of these, and the tradition still survives of a concert given in the splendid, spacious hall of the Palazzo Colonna where she was the prima donna of the occasion. There were also musicals at the house of Mrs. Sartoris, where the guests met her famous sister, Fanny Kemble. Mrs. Browning was fond of both the sisters, and said of them that their social brilliancy was their least distinction. She found them both "noble and sympathetic," and her "dear Mr. Page" and "Hatty" (Miss Hosmer) "an immense favorite with us both," she said of her husband and herself; these and the Storys made up the special circle for the Brownings in Rome. "The Sartoris house has the best society in Rome," writes Mrs. Browning to Miss Mitford, "and exquisite music, of course. We met Lockhart there and my husband sees a good deal of him.... A little society," she says, "is good for soul and body, and on the Continent it is easy to get a handful of society without paying too dear for it. This is an advantage of Continental life."

Mrs. Browning greatly admired the work of Mr. Page, whose portraits she found "like Titian's." But the tinted statues of Gibson seemed to her inartistic. His famous painted Venus she called "pretty," but only as a wax doll might be, not as a work of genuine art. Then Thackeray and his two daughters came; Miss Anne (now known to the world of literature as Anne Thackeray Ritchie) was a special favorite with Mrs. Browning.

Coming to Rome at one time from Florence in midwinter, the Brownings found that the Storys had taken an apartment for them (in the Via Bocca di Leone), and they arrived to find lighted fires and lamps. Their journey had included a week's visit at Assisi, studying the rich art of Cimabue and Giotto in the church of the great Franciscan monastery. Mrs. Browning visited studios in Rome and found that of Mr. Crawford more interesting to her than Mr. Gibson's, but no artist is "as near" to her, as she herself says, as Mr. Page. The Storys left the Porta Pinciana to live at No. 93 in the Piazza di Spagna, and in the same house with the Brownings, in the Bocca di Leone, Mr. Page had his apartment. To Lowell, Mr. Story wrote of the Brownings:--

"The Brownings and we became great friends in Florence, and, of
course, we could not become friends without liking each other. He,
Emelyn says, is like you. He is of my size, but slighter, with
straight black hair, small eyes, a smooth face, and manner nervous
and rapid. He has great vivacity, but not the least humor; some
sarcasm, considerable critical faculty, and very great frankness
and friendliness of manner and mind. Mrs. Browning will sit buried
up in a large easy-chair listening and talking very quietly and
pleasantly. Very unaffected is she.... I have hundreds of statues
in my head, but they are in the future tense. Powers I knew very
well in Florence. He is a man of great mechanical talent and
natural strength of perception, but with no poetry in his
composition, and I think no creative power.... I have been to hear
Allegri's 'Miserere' in the Sistine Chapel, with the awful and
mighty figures of Michael Angelo looking down from the ceiling; to
hear Guglielmi's 'Miserere' in St. Peter's, while the gloom of
evening was gathering in the lofty aisles and shrouding the
frescoed domes, was a deeply affecting and solemnly beautiful
experience. Never can one forget the plaintive wailing of the
voices that seemed to implore pity and pardon."

It was in 1856 that the Storys located themselves in Palazzo Barberini, which Bernini designed and which was built "out of the quarry of the Coliseum" by Urban VIII. It is one of the wonderful old palaces of Rome,--this mass of Barberini courts, gardens, terraces, and vast apartments, with the interminable winding stairs, where on one landing Thorwaldsen's lion lies before the great doors decorated with the arms of Popes and princes. Here the old Cardinal Barberini lived his stormy life; here are the gallery and the library,--the latter stored with infinite treasures of ancient documents, old maps whose portrayal of the earth bears little resemblance to the present, and famous manuscripts and volumes in old vellum, some fifty thousand in all. In the Barberini gallery are a few noted works,--Raphael's "Fornarina," Guido's "Beatrice Cenci," a "Holy Family" by Andrea del Sarto, and others.

The Via delle Quattro Fontane, on which the Palazzo Barberini stands, might well be known as the street of the wonderful vista. One strolls down it to the Via Sistina and to Piazza Trinità de' Monti at the head of the Spanish steps (the Scala di Spagna), pausing for the loveliness of the view. Across the city rises the opposite height of Monte Mario, and to the left the Janiculum, now crowned with the magnificent equestrian statue of Garibaldi, which is in evidence from almost every part of Rome. As far as the eye can see the Campagna stretches away, infinite as the sea--a very Campagna Mystica. The luminous air, the faint, misty blue of the distance, the deep purple shadows on the hills, make up a landscape of color. At the foot of the Spanish steps the flower venders spread out their wares,--great bunches of the flame-colored roses peculiar to Italy, the fragrant white hyacinths, golden jonquils, baskets of violets, and masses of lilies of the valley.

On many a night of brilliant moonlit glory the artistic sojourners in Rome lingered on the parapet of the Pincian Hill watching the moonlight flood the Eternal City until churches and palaces seemed to swim in a sea of silver. Or in the morning, when the rose-red of dawn was aglow, there seemed to hover over the city that wraith of mist whose secret Claude Lorraine surprises in his landscapes. These dawn visions of mysterious, incredible beauty are a part of the very identity of Rome.

There were mornings when the Hawthornes with Mrs. Jameson or some other friend would drive out to the old San Lorenzo (_fuori le mura_), the church founded by Constantine in 330 on the site where the body of St. Lawrence was buried. At various periods the church was enlarged and finally, as recently as in 1864, Pio Nono had great improvements made under the architect Vespignani. In the piazza in front was placed an immense column of red granite, some sixty feet high, with the statue of St. Lawrence, a standing figure, at the top. It is most impressive. The colonnade at the entrance of the church is decorated with frescoes and contains two immense sarcophagi, whose sides are beautifully sculptured with reliefs. The roof is supported by six Ionic columns. Entering the church one finds an interior of three aisles divided by colossal columns of Oriental granite. In the middle aisle, on both sides the galleries, are fresco paintings illustrating the martyrdom of St. Lawrence and of St. Stephen, one series on the right and the other on the left. One of these paintings, especially, of the life of St. Lawrence, is strangely haunting to the imagination. It represents the youthful, slender figure, nude, save for slight drapery, laid on the gridiron while the fire is being kindled under it and the fagots shovelled in. The physical shrinking of the flesh--of every nerve--from the torture, the spiritual strength and invincible energy of the countenance, are wonderfully depicted. The great aisle was painted by order of Pius IX by Cesare Fracassini; in it are two pulpits of marble. A double staircase of marble conducts to that part of the Basilica of Constantine which by Honorius III was converted into the presbytery. It is decorated at the upper end by twelve columns of violet marble which rise from the level of the primitive basilica beneath. At the end is the ancient pontifical seat, adorned with mosaic and precious marbles. The papal altar is under a canopy in the Byzantine style. The pavement of this presbytery is worthy of particular attention. Descending to the confessional which is under the high altar the tomb of the martyred saints, Lawrence, Stephen, and Justin, is found.

It was the request of Pio Nono that his mortal body should rest here, where it is placed in a simple tomb, according to his own instructions; but the chapel is very rich in decoration which was paid for by money sent from all parts of the world.

The chapel walls are entirely encrusted in mother-of-pearl, gilt bronze, and beautiful marbles. The mosaic paintings are formed of gold and precious stones of fabulous value. This interior is perhaps the richest in the world in its decoration. San Lorenzo is a patriarchal church, and one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome. Near San Lorenzo is the Campo Verano, a cemetery containing many beautiful memorial sculptures.

In those days, half a century ago, the entrance most often used by visitors to Rome was through the Via Flaminia and the Porta del Popolo, opening on the Piazza del Popolo, rather the most picturesque and impressive place in all Rome. On the left is the Pincian Hill (Monte Pincio), with its rich terraces, balustrades, its beautiful porticos filled with statuary, its groves of cypress and ilex trees; a classic vision rising on the sight and enchanting the imagination. On the side opposite the Porta three roads diverge in fan shape--the Via Babuino, the Corso, and the Ripetta, with the "twin churches" side by side; one between the Babuino and the Corso, the other between the Corso and the Ripetta.

The Corso (which was the ancient Flaminian Way) runs straight to the Piazza Venezia at the foot of the Capitoline Hill. This Piazza del Popolo was widened and decorated by Pius VII. It is formed by two semicircles, adorned with fountains and statues, and terminated by four symmetrical edifices. In the semicircles are colossal groups in marble, and a road opposite the Pincio leads to the Ponte Margherita and the Prati di Castello.

The obelisk in the centre of the piazza was brought to Rome from Heliopolis by Cæsar Augustus and originally stood in the Circus Maximus. It was erected here by Pope Sixtus V, and it is nearly a hundred feet in height. It is formed of red granite, and while it has been broken in three places, the hieroglyphics are still legible. This obelisk was first erected in Egypt as a part of the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, in a period preceding that of Rameses II. After the battle of Actium, Augustus transported it to Rome, and it was first placed in the Circus Maximus, but during the reign of Valentinian it fell from its pedestal and lay buried in the earth, until in the sixteenth century Pope Sixtus V had it placed in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo, and consecrated it to the cross. The two inscriptions are on opposite sides. One thus reads:--

"The Emperor Cæsar, son of the divine Cæsar Augustus, Sovereign
Pontiff, twelve times Emperor, eleven times Consul, fourteen times
Tribune, having conquered Egypt, consecrated this gift to the Sun."

The other inscription is as follows:--

"Sixtus V, Sovereign Pontiff, excavated, transported, and restored
this obelisk, sacrilegiously consecrated to the Sun by the great
Augustus, in the great Circus, where it lay in ruins, and dedicated
it to the cross triumphant in the fourth year of his pontificate."

The Church of Santa Maria del Popolo is built into the very wall of Monte Pincio on the site of Nero's tomb. It dates back to 1099, and consists of three naves and several chapels. In the first chapel is a "Nativity" by Pinturicchio, who also painted the lunettes. Another chapel belongs to the Cibo family, and is rich in marbles and adorned with sixteen columns of Sicilian jasper. The "Conception" is by Maratta, the "Martyrdom of St. Lawrence" by Morandi, and the "St. Catherine" by Volterra. The "Visitation" was sculptured by Bernini in 1679. The third chapel is painted by Pinturicchio (1513), and the fourth has an interesting bas-relief of the fifteenth century. The picture of the Virgin, on the high altar, is one of those attributed to St. Luke; the paintings on the vault of the choir are by Pinturicchio. The two marble monuments are, from their perfection of design and execution, reckoned among the best modern works. They are by Cantucci da S. Savino. In the chapel following is an "Assumption" by Annibale Carracci; the side pictures are by Caravaggio. The last chapel but one in the small nave is the Chigi chapel, and is one of the most celebrated in Rome.

Raphael gave the designs for the dome, the paintings of the frieze, and the altar picture. This latter was begun by Del Piombo and finished by Salviati. The statue of Daniel is by Bernini. The front of the altar and the statues of Jonah and Elijah were done by Lorenzetto (1541), from designs by Raphael. Outside this chapel is the monument of Princess Odescalchi Chigi (1771), by Paolo Posi. The stained windows of the choir belong to the fourteenth century, and in the sacristy and the vestibule are monuments also of the fourteenth century and of the fifteenth. Luther resided in the convent attached to this church when he was in Rome.

There is a legend that a large walnut tree grew on the site of Nero's tomb in whose branches innumerable crows had their home, and that they devastated all that part of Rome. An appeal was made to the Virgin, who declared that the crows were demons who kept watch over the ashes of Nero, and ordered the tree to be cut down and burned, the ashes being scattered to the air, and that, on the spot, a church should be built to her honor. This was accomplished, and the crows no more troubled the Eternal City.

The gardens of Lucullus were on the Monte Pincio. The view of the terraced hillside from the Piazza del Popolo is one of the most impressive in Rome.

The Hawthornes left Rome in 1859; and the death of Mrs. Browning in June of 1861 left the little circle of the Roman winters irreparably broken. "Returning to Rome," wrote Story to Charles Eliot Norton, "I have not one single intimate ... no one with whom I can walk any of the higher ranges of art and philosophy." Mr. Story had modelled the busts of both Mr. and Mrs. Browning during their sojourns in Rome; in 1853 Harriet Hosmer had made the cast of the "clasped hands" of the poets, the model having since been cast in bronze; Mr. Page had, as already noted, painted a portrait of Robert Browning; and Mr. Leighton (afterward Sir Frederick) had made a beautiful portrait sketch of Mrs. Browning. In later years all these memorials, with other paintings or plastic sketches of the wedded poets, were grouped in Mr. Barrett Browning's palace in Venice.

At this time Mr. Story had completed his "Cleopatra," which Hawthorne had embalmed in literary mention in "The Marble Faun;" and beside his "Judith," "Sappho," and other lesser works, he had achieved one of his finest successes in the "Libyan Sibyl." Both the "Cleopatra" and the "Sibyl" became famous. Whether they would produce so strong an effect at the present stage of twentieth-century life is a problem, but one that need not press for solution. Mr. Story was singularly fortunate in certain conditions that grouped themselves about his life and combined to establish his fame. These conditions, of course, were largely the outer reflection of inner qualities, as our conditions are apt to be; still, the "lack of favoring gales" not infrequently foredooms some gallant bark to a disastrous course.

"Man is his own star....

* * * * *

Our acts, our angels, are, for good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still,"

it is true; yet has not Edith Thomas embodied something of that overruling destiny that every thoughtful observer must discern in life in these lines?--

"You may blame the wind or no,
But it ever hath been so--
Something bravest of its kind
Leads a frustrate life and blind,
For the lack of favoring gales
Blowing blithe on other sails."

Only occasionally have we

"... the time, and the place,
And the loved one all together."

Mr. Story's nature was eminently sympathetic with the other arts; he was himself almost as much a literary man as he was a sculptor; he was the friend and companion of literary men, and to the fact that art in the middle years of the nineteenth century was far more a literary topic than a matter of critical scrutiny, Mr. Story owed an incalculable degree of his fame. He was an extremely interesting figure with his social grace, his liberal culture, and his versatile gifts. His life was centred in choice and refined associations. If not dowered with lofty and immortal original genius, he had a singular combination of talent, of fastidious taste, and of the intellectual appreciation that enabled him to select interesting ideal subjects to portray in the plastic art. These appealed to the special interest of his literary friends and were widely discussed in the press and periodicals of the day. It is a _bonmot_ of contemporary studio life that Hawthorne rather than Story created the "Cleopatra," and one ingenious spirit suggests that as Mr. Story put nothing of expression or significance into his statues, the beholder could read into them anything he pleased; finding an empty mould, so to speak, into which to pour whatever image or embodiment he might conjure up from the infinite realm of imagination. One of the latest of these contemporary critics declares that "Story declined appreciably, year by year, falling away from his own standard; haunted to the point of obsession by visions of mournful female figures, generally seated, wrapped in gloom. It seems strange," this critic continues, "that so active a mind should dream of nothing but brooding, sinister souls, of bodies bowed in grief, or tense with rage. Never once, apparently, did there come to him a vision of buoyancy and grace; of a beauty that one could love; of good cheer and joy of very living; always these unwholesome creatures born of that belated Byronic romanticism."

This criticism, while it has as little appreciation of Mr. Story's exquisite culture and of the taste and refinement of his art as the general rush of the motor car and telephonic conversational life of the first decade of the twentieth century has of the thoughtful, the poetic, the leisurely atmosphere of Mr. Story's time, is yet not without a keen flashlight of truth. Painting had its reactionary crisis from the pre-Raphaelite ideals and the _intransigeants_ have had their own conflicts in which they survived, or disappeared, according to the degree of artistic vitality within. Sculpture and literature must also meet the series of tests to which the onward progress of life persists in subjecting them, and those who are submerged and perish can only encourage the survivors as did the Greeks, as sung by Theocritus:--

"A shipwrecked sailor, buried on this coast,
Bids you set sail.
Full many a gallant ship, when we were lost,
Weathered the gale."

"As we refine, our checks grow finer," said Emerson. As life becomes more elaborate and ambitious, the critical tests increase. Contemporary fame can be created for the artist by favorable contemporary comment; but it rests with himself, after all; it rests in the abiding significance of his work--or the lack of it--as to whether this fame is perpetuated. That of Mr. Story does not hold within itself all the qualities that insure the appreciation of the present day. It is, as the critic of the hour expresses himself, "too literary,"--too largely a question of classic titles which appealed to the mid-nineteenth-century authors whose judgment of art the twentieth century finds particularly amusing. Henry James has somewhere held up to ridicule the early Beacon Hill Boston for its impassioned devotion to the "attenuated outlines" of Flaxman's art. But the work of Story will survive all transient variations of opinion, even of the present realistic age; for is not true realism, after all, to be found in the eternal ideals of truth, grace, dignity, refinement, significance, and beauty? These qualities have a message to convey; and no one can study with sympathetic appreciation any sculpture of William Wetmore Story without feeling that the work has something to say; that it is not a mere reproduction of some form, but is, rather, an idea impersonated, and therefore it has life, it has significance. The criticism of the immediate hour is not necessarily infallible because it is contemporary. What does William Watson say?

"A deft musician does the breeze become
Whenever an Æolian harp it finds;
Hornpipe and hurdy-gurdy both are dumb
Unto the most musicianly of winds."

It is an irretrievable loss if, in the passion for the _vita nuova_, a generation, or a century, shall substitute for the Æolian harp the mere hornpipe and hurdy-gurdy of the hour. In another of his keenly critical quatrains William Watson embodies this signal truth:--

"His rhymes the poet flings at all men's feet,
And whoso will may trample on his rhymes.
Should Time let die a song that's pure and sweet,
The singer's loss were more than matched by Time's."

Art is progressive, and the present is always the "heir of all the ages" preceding; but it cannot be affirmed that it invariably makes the best use of its rich inheritance.

There are latter-day sculptors who excel in certain excellences that Story lacked; still, it would not be his loss, but our own, if we fail in a due recognition of that in his art which may appeal to the imagination; for, whatever the enthusiasms of other cults may be, there are qualities of beauty, strength, and profound significance in the art of Story that must insure their permanent recognition. Still, it remains true that Mr. Story owes his fame in an incalculable degree to the friendly pens of Hawthorne and others of his immediate circle,--Lowell, Motley, Charles Eliot Norton, Thackeray, Browning,--friends who, according to the latest standards of art criticism, were not unqualified nor absolute judges of art, but who were in sympathy with ideal expression and recognized this as embodied in the statues of Story.

Browning wrote to the London _Times_ an article on Mr. Story's work, in which he conjured up most of the superlative phrases of commendation that the limits of the English language allow to praise his work, none of whose marshalled force was too poor to do him reverence. The versatile gifts of Story's personality drew around him friends whose influence was potent and, indeed, authoritative in their time.

Still, any analysis of these conditions brings the searcher back to the primary truth that without the gifts and grace to attract about him an eminent circle of choice spirits he could not have enjoyed this potent aid and inspiration; and thus, that

"Man is his own star,"

is an assertion that life, as well as poetry, justifies. In the full blaze of this fundamental truth, it is, not unfrequently, the mysterious spiritual tragedy of life that many an one as fine of fibre and with lofty ideals

"Leads a frustrate life and blind,
For the lack of favoring gales
Blowing blithe on other sails."

Mr. Story was himself of too fine an order not to divine this truth. With what unrivalled power and pathos has he expressed it in his poem--one far too little known--the "Io Victis":--

"I sing the song of the Conquered, who fell in the Battle of
Life,--
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed
in the strife;
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding
acclaim
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet
of fame,
But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the
broken in heart,

* * * * *

Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes
burned in ashes away,
From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood
at the dying of day
With the wreck of their life all around them...."

In this poem Mr. Story touched the highest note of his life,--as poet, sculptor, painter, or writer of prose; in no other form of expression has he equalled the sublimity of sentiment in these lines:--

"... I stand on the field of defeat,
In the shadow, with those who are fallen, and wounded, and
dying, and there

* * * * *

Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, 'They only the
victory win
Who have fought the good fight, and have vanquished the
demon that tempts us within;
Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the
world holds on high;
Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight,--if
need be, to die.'"

Such a poem must have its own immortality in lyric literature.

For a period of forty years the home of the Storys in Palazzo Barberini was a noted centre of the most charming social life. Mr. Story's literary work--in his contributions of essays and poems to the _Atlantic Monthly_; in his published works, the "Roba di Roma," "Conversations in a Studio," his collected "Poems," and others--gave him a not transitory rank in literature which rivals, if it does not exceed, his rank in art.