uty cut in the richest materials,
is in danger of forgetting the simplicity of the principles out of which
they all sprung, and that they had their origin from thoughts and laws
in his own breast. He studies the technical rules on these wonderful
remains, but forgets that these works were not always thus constellated;
that they are the contributions of many ages and many countries; that
each came out of the solitary workshop of one artist, who toiled perhaps
in ignorance of the existence of other sculpture, created his work
without other model save life, household life, and the sweet and smart
of personal relations, of beating hearts, and meeting eyes; of poverty
and necessity and hope and fear. These were his inspirations, and these
are the effects he carries home to your heart and mind. In proportion
to his force, the artist will find in his work an outlet for his proper
character. He must not be in any manner pinched or hindered by his
material, but through his necessity of imparting himself the adamant
will be wax in his hands, and will allow an adequate communication of
himself, in his full stature and proportion. He need not cumber himself
with a conventional nature and culture, nor ask what is the mode in
Rome or in Paris, but that house and weather and manner of living which
poverty and the fate of birth have made at once so odious and so dear,
in the gray unpainted wood cabin, on the corner of a New Hampshire farm,
or in the log-hut of the backwoods, or in the narrow lodging where he
has endured the constraints and seeming of a city poverty, will serve
as well as any other condition as the symbol of a thought which pours
itself indifferently through all.

I remember when in my younger days I had heard of the wonders of Italian
painting, I fancied the great pictures would be great strangers; some
surprising combination of color and form; a foreign wonder, barbaric
pearl and gold, like the spontoons and standards of the militia, which
play such pranks in the eyes and imaginations of school-boys. I was to
see and acquire I knew not what. When I came at last to Rome and saw
with eyes the pictures, I found that genius left to novices the gay and
fantastic and ostentatious, and itself pierced directly to the simple
and true; that it was familiar and sincere; that it was the old, eternal
fact I had met already in so many forms,--unto which I lived; that it
was the plain you and me I knew so well,--had left at home in s