his own country to pursue his work; and of two young
sculptors, Hendrick Christian Anderson and C. Percival Dietsch, time has
not yet developed their powers beyond an experimental stage of brilliant
promise.

[Illustration: ANGEL, CHURCH OF SAN ANDREA DELLE FRATTE, ROME
Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini
_Page 32_]

The Rome of the artists of clay and canvas was also the Rome of the
poets and romancists, of authors in all lines of literary achievement.
How the names of the procession of visitors and sojourners in the
Eternal City, from Milton, Goethe, and Mme. de Stael to Henry James,
Marion Crawford, Richard Bagot, and Grace Ellery Channing (Mrs. Charles
Walter Stetson), gleam from that resplendent panorama of the modern past
of Rome! Like the words in electric fire that flash out of the darkness
in city streets at night, there shine the names of Shelley and of Keats;
of Gladstone, on whom in one memorable summer day, while strolling in
Italian sunshine, there fell a vision of the sacredness and the
significance of life and its infinite responsibility in the fulfilment
of lofty purposes. What charming associations these guests and
sojourners have left behind! Hawthorne, embodying in immortal romance
the spirit of the scenic greatness of the Eternal City; Margaret Fuller,
Marchesa d'Ossoli, allying herself in marriage with the country she
loved, and living in Rome those troubled, mysterious years that were to
close the earthly chapter of her life; Robert and Elizabeth Browning,
the wedded poets, who sang of love and Italy; Harriet Beecher Stowe,
finding on the enchanted Italian shores the material which she wove
with such irresistible attraction into the romance of "Agnes of
Sorrento;" Longfellow, with his poet's vision, transmuting every vista
and impression into some exquisite lyric; Lowell, bringing his
philosophic as well as his poetic insight to penetrate the untold
meaning of Rome; Thomas William Parsons, making the country of Dante
fairly his own; Thackeray, with his brilliant interpretation of the
_comedie humaine_; Emerson, who, oblivious of all the glories of art or
the joys of nature, absorbed himself in writing transcendental letters
to his eccentric, but high-souled aunt, Mary Moody Emerson; Ruskin,
translating Italian art to Italy herself; Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and
his poet wife, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in the first flush of their bridal
happiness, when Mrs. Howe's impassioned l