s and
palaces gilt by the morning sun, I was inspired with a sense of daily
renovated youth, and fresh enthusiasm, and returned joyfully to the
combat, to the invigorating strife with the difficulties of art. Nor did
the worm of envy creep round my heart whenever I saw a beautiful idea
skilfully executed by any of my young rivals, but constantly spurred on
by the talent around me I returned to my studio with fresh resolution."

Again to a friend Gibson writes:--

"I renewed my visits to the Vatican, refreshing my spirits in that
Pantheon of the gods, demigods, and heroes of Hellas.... In the art
of sculpture the Greeks were gods.... In the Vatican we go from
statue to statue, from fragment to fragment, like the bee from
flower to flower."

These five years in which Canova, Thorwaldsen, and Gibson lived and
wrought together--although the youngest of this trio was still in his
student life--form a definite period in the history of modern art in
Rome. The dreams, the enthusiasm, the devotion to ideal beauty which
characterized their work left its impress and its vitality of
influence--a mystic power ready to incarnate itself again through the
facility of expression of the artists yet to come. To the young men
whose steps were turned toward Rome in these early years of the century
just passed, how great was the privilege of coming into close range of
the influence of such artists as these; to study their methods; to hear
the expression of their views on art in familiar meeting and
conversation! These artists were closely in touch with that "lovely and
faithful dream which came with Italian Renaissance in the works of
Pisani, Mino di Fiesole, Donatello, Michael Angelo, and Giovanni da
Bologna--all who caught the spirit of Greek art." Artistic truth was the
keynote of the hour, and it is this truth which is the basis of the
highest conception of life.

"Art's a service,--mark:
A silver key is given to thy clasp
And thou shalt stand unwearied night and day,
And fix it in the hard, slow-turning wards
To open, so that intermediate door
Betwixt the different planes of sensuous form
And form insensuous, that inferior men
May learn to feel on still through these to those,
And bless thy ministration. The world waits for help."

In their true relation art and ethics meet in their ministry to
humanity, for only in their union can they best serve man. All the
nobler