with Nature and character, are the cause of
so much originality and attractiveness in its votaries. The Lives
of Painters abound in the characteristic, the adventurous, and the
romantic. Open Vasari, Walpole, or Cunningham, at random, and one is
sure to light upon something odd, genial, or exciting. One of the most
popular novelists of our day assured me, that, in his opinion, the
richest unworked vein for his craft, available in these days of
civilized uniformity, is artist-life at Rome, to one thoroughly
cognizant of its humors and aspirations, its interiors and vagrancies,
its self-denials and its resources. I have sometimes imagined what a
story the old white dog who so long frequented the Lepri and the Caffe
Greco, and attached himself so capriciously to the brother artists of
his deceased master, could have told, if blest with memory and language.
He had tasted the freedom and the zest of artist-life in Rome, and
scorned to follow trader or king. He preferred the odor of canvas and
oil to that of conservatories, and had more frolic and dainty morsels at
an _al fresco_ of the painters, in the Campagna, than the kitchen of an
Italian prince could furnish. His very name betokened good cheer, and
was pronounced after the manner of the pert waiters who complacently
enunciate a few words of English. _Bif-steck_ was a privileged dog; and
though occasionally made the subject of a practical joke, taught absurd
tricks, sent on fools' errands, and his white coat painted like a zebra,
these were but casual troubles; he was a sensible dog to despise them,
when he could enjoy such quaint companionship, behold such experiments
in color and drawing, serve as a model himself, and go on delicious
sketching excursions to Albano and Tivoli, besides inhaling
tobacco-smoke and hearing stale jests and love soliloquies _ad
infinitum_. I am of _Bif-steck's_ opinion. There is no such true,
earnest, humorous, and individual life, in these days of high
civilization, as that of your genuine painter; impoverished as it often
is, baffled in its aspirations, unregarded by the material and the
worldly, it often rears and keeps pure bright, genial natures whose
contact brings back the dreams of youth. It is pleasant, too, to
realize, in a great commercial city, that man "does not live by bread
alone," that fun is better than furniture, and a private resource of
nature more prolific of enjoyment than financial investments. It is rare
comfort, here,