art was of trifling
importance to the buyers--it was "done in Rome," and that sufficed as
merit. The Cafe Greco, haunt of the race of artists since Salvator
Rosa, was in its original and charming, if rude, simplicity, and there
came all the artists to take their after-dinner cup. Old John
Gibson, though not the oldest of the habitues, was the chief of our
Anglo-American community; Randolph Rogers, Mosier, Reinhart, Story,
and two or three other sculptors, whose names I have forgotten, and
two or three American landscape painters, of whom Tilton was chief at
the time of my arrival, had the monopoly of American patronage, and
every wealthy American who came conceived it his duty to patronize
American art, while our government had the tradition of always sending
an artist to Rome as consul.

Charlotte Cushman, a famous actress of her day, was the nucleus of a
little clique of women sculptors, Miss Stebbins, Harriet Hosmer,
and one or two others of lesser fame. Accordingly, she made war on
sculptors of the other sex in all the curious ways of womanly malice,
in order to the exclusive reaping by her protegees of the golden
harvest. I had known her years before, when she was still on the stage
and I the dramatic and art critic of the New York "Evening Post," and,
as our relations had then been cordial, it was natural that she should
"take me up" on my arrival. Her hospitality was large--dinners,
musical evenings, etc., and she had a "salon," to all which I was a
welcome guest, and the cordiality lasted until she thought it time to
make use of me. She then proposed to me to undertake the demolition
of the fictitious reputations of the leading American sculptors,
especially Story, Mosier, and Rogers, and, when I replied that I had
then the intention of returning to the occupation of a landscape
painter, and that in that position, as well as in that of consul
and in a manner the protector of all my countrymen, it would be
inconsistent with the position to publish criticisms on my fellow
artists, the thermometer of her regard fell at once, and I had instant
evidence that I was out of her list of friends.

Her coolness was changed to active hostility by another case of
conflicting interests. The recognition of passports issued before
the rebellion having been interdicted by the government, the consuls
received an order to cancel all such as had been issued prior to the
order, and to issue new ones only on the oath of allegiance