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 Pala