e of forms, of the mere letter of the
classic, to a greater extent than the students of any other nation.
Whether or not they have been receptive of the spirit of the antique
remains to be seen.

American painters have been less fortunate. Too often the lessons of the
old masters, and especially those of the earliest, the Puritan Fathers
of Art, have been unheeded; or the rules and practices which served them
temporarily, subject to the phase of the ideal for the time uppermost,
have passed into permanent laws, to be obeyed under all conditions of
Art-utterance.

The United States have had within the last twenty years as many as
thirty sculptors and painters resident in Italy. At the beginning of the
present year ten sculpture studios in Rome and Florence were occupied
by Americans. We will speak of these artists in the order in which they
entered the profession of an art which they have served to develop
in this first period of its history in America. The eldest bears the
honored name of Hiram Powers.

Three parties have been remarkably unjust to this man,--namely, his
friends, his enemies, and himself.

Neither the artist nor his friends need feel solicitude for his fame.
The exact value of his excellence shall be estimated, and the height of
his genius fully recognized, when the right man comes. Other award than
that from an age on a level with his own life can be of small worth to
one who has attained to the true level of Art. Fame must come to him of
that vision which can pierce the external of his work and penetrate to
the presence of his very soul. His action must be traced to its finest
ideal motive,--as chemist-philosophers pursue the steps of analysis
until opaque matter is resolved to pure, ethereal elements. His fame
must be from such vision, and it will approach the universal just in
proportion as his pulse beats in unison with the heart of mankind.
Whatever may be an artist's plans, or those of his friends, in regard to
his valuation by the world, while he is living, ultimately he himself,
divested of all save his own individuality, must stand revealed.

Those who in other departments of action are necessarily governed
somewhat, or it may be entirely, by rules of conduct general in nature
and universal in application, may fail to receive or may escape justice.
They are to a great degree involuntary agents, and subject to the laws
of science, to the operations of which they are obliged to conform.
The