"A deft musician does the breeze become Whenever an AEolian harp it finds; Hornpipe and hurdy-gurdy both are dumb Unto the most musicianly of winds."

It is an irretrievable loss if, in the passion for the vita nuova, a generation, or a century, shall substitute for the AEolian harp the mere hornpipe and hurdy-gurdy of the hour. In another of his keenly critical quatrains William Watson embodies this signal truth:—

"His rhymes the poet flings at all men's feet, And whoso will may trample on his rhymes. Should Time let die a song that's pure and sweet, The singer's loss were more than matched by Time's."

Art is progressive, and the present is always the "heir of all the ages" preceding; but it cannot be affirmed that it invariably makes the best use of its rich inheritance.

There are latter-day sculptors who excel in certain excellences that Story lacked; still, it would not be his loss, but our own, if we fail in a due recognition of that in his art which may appeal to the imagination; for, whatever the enthusiasms of other cults may be, there are qualities of beauty, strength, and profound significance in the art of Story that must insure their permanent recognition. Still, it remains true that Mr. Story owes his fame in an incalculable degree to the friendly pens of Hawthorne and others of his immediate circle,—Lowell, Motley, Charles Eliot Norton, Thackeray, Browning,—friends who, according to the latest standards of art criticism, were not unqualified nor absolute judges of art, but who were in sympathy with ideal expression and recognized this as embodied in the statues of Story.

Browning wrote to the London Times an article on Mr. Story's work, in which he conjured up most of the superlative phrases of commendation that the limits of the English language allow to praise his work, none of whose marshalled force was too poor to do him reverence. The versatile gifts of Story's personality drew around him friends whose influence was potent and, indeed, authoritative in their time.

Still, any analysis of these conditions brings the searcher back to the primary truth that without the gifts and grace to attract about him an eminent circle of choice spirits he could not have enjoyed this potent aid and inspiration; and thus, that

"Man is his own star,"

is an assertion that life, as well as poetry, justifies. In the full blaze of this fundamental truth, it is, not unfrequently, the mysterious spiritual tragedy of life that many an one as fine of fibre and with lofty ideals

"Leads a frustrate life and blind, For the lack of favoring gales Blowing blithe on other sails."

Mr. Story was himself of too fine an order not to divine this truth. With what unrivalled power and pathos has he expressed it in his poem—one far too little known—the "Io Victis":—

"I sing the song of the Conquered, who fell in the Battle of Life,— The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died overwhelmed in the strife; Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the resounding acclaim Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore the chaplet of fame, But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart,

* * * * *

Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose hopes burned in ashes away, From whose hands slipped the prize they had grasped at, who stood at the dying of day With the wreck of their life all around them...."

In this poem Mr. Story touched the highest note of his life,—as poet, sculptor, painter, or writer of prose; in no other form of expression has he equalled the sublimity of sentiment in these lines:—

"... I stand on the field of defeat, In the shadow, with those who are fallen, and wounded, and dying, and there

* * * * *

Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, 'They only the victory win Who have fought the good fight, and have vanquished the demon that tempts us within; Who have held to their faith unseduced by the prize that the world holds on high; Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, fight,—if need be, to die.'"

Such a poem must have its own immortality in lyric literature.

For a period of forty years the home of the Storys in Palazzo Barberini was a noted centre of the most charming social life. Mr. Story's literary work—in his contributions of essays and poems to the Atlantic Monthly; in his published works, the "Roba di Roma," "Conversations in a Studio," his collected "Poems," and others—gave him a not transitory rank in literature which rivals, if it does not exceed, his rank in art.

Meantime other artists were to take up their permanent abode in the Seven-hilled City,—Elihu Vedder in 1866; Franklin Simmons two years later; Waldo and Julian Story, the two sons of William Wetmore Story, though claiming Rome as their home, are American by parentage and ancestry; and Mr. Waldo Story succeeds his father in pursuing the art of sculpture in the beautiful studios in the Via San Martino built by the elder Story. In 1902 Charles Walter Stetson, with his gifted wife, known to the contemporary literary world by her maiden name, Grace Ellery Channing, set up their household gods and lighted their altar fires in the city by the Tiber, ready, it may be, to exclaim with Ovid:—

"Four times happy is he, and times without number is happy, Who the city of Rome uninterdicted enjoys."



If art is a corner of the universe seen through a temperament, the temperament of Mr. Vedder must offer an enthralling study, for it seems to be a lens whose power of refraction defies prophecy because it deals with the incalculable forces. His art concerns itself little with the aesthetic, but is chiefly the art of the intellect and the imagination. All manner of symbols and analogies; the laws of the universe that prevail beyond the stars; the celestial figures; the undreamed significance in prophecy or in destiny; omens, signs, and wonders; the world forces, advancing stealthily in the shadows of a dusky twilight; the Fates, under brilliant skies, gathering in the stars; oracles and supernatural coincidences that lurk in undreamed-of days; the Pleiades dancing in a light that never was on sea or land; unknown Shapes that meet outside space and time and question each other's identity; the dead that come forth from their graves and glide, silent and spectral, through a crowd, unseen by any one; the prayer of the celestial powers poured forth in the utter solitude of the vast desert,—it is these that are the realm of Vedder's art, and what has the normal world of portrait and landscape to do with such art as this? Can it only be relegated to a class, an order, of its own, and considered as being—Vedderesque? It seems to stand alone and unparalleled. In his work lies the transfiguration of all mystery. Vedder never paints nature, in the sense of landscapes, and yet one often feels that he has the key to the very creation of nature; that he has supped with gods and surprised the secrets of the stars. Do the winds whisper to him?—

"The Muse can knit What is past, what is done, With the web that's just begun."

How can he find the design to phrase his thought—this painter of ideas?

"Can blaze be done in cochineal, Or noon in mazarin?"

Whatever the Roman environment may have done for Allston, Page, and Story, there is no question but that to Vedder it has been as his soul's native air. For him the sirens sing again on the coast; the sorceress works her spell; the Cumaean Sibyl again flies, wraithlike, over the plain, clasping her rejected leaves of destiny which Tarquin in his blindness has refused to buy. The Rome that lies buried under the ages rises for Vedder. His art cannot be catalogued under any known division of portrait, landscape, marine, or genre, but it is simply—the art of Vedder. It stands alone and absolutely unrivalled. The pictorial creations of Vedder are as wholly without precedent or comparison as if they were the sole pictorial treasures of the world. The visitor may care for them, or not care, according to his own ability to comprehend and to recognize the inscrutable genius there manifested; but in either case he will find nowhere else, in either ancient or contemporary art, any parallel to these works.

One could well fancy that to any interrogation of his conceptions the artist might reply:—

"I am seeker of the stone, Living gem of Solomon. But what is land, or what is wave, To me, who only jewels crave?

* * * * *

I'm all-knowing, yet unknowing; Stand not, pause not in my going."

In the rich, weird realm of Omar Khayyam's Persian poem, the Rubaiyat, Mr. Vedder found the opportunity of his life for translating its thought into strange, mystic symbolism. Never were artist and poet so blended in one as in Vedder's wonderful illustrations for this poem. It has nothing in common with what we ordinarily call an illustrated work. It is a great treasure of art for all the ages. It is a very fount of inspiration for painter and poet. An exquisite sonnet suggested by "The Angel of the Darker Cup" is the following by Louise Chandler Moulton:—

"She bends her lovely head to taste thy draught, O thou stern Angel of the Darker Cup! With thee to-night in the dim shades to sup, Where all they be who from that cup have quaffed. She had been glad in her own loveliness, and laughed At Life's strong enemies who lie in wait; Had kept with golden youth her queenly state, All unafraid of Sorrow's threat'ning shaft.

"Then human Grief found out her human heart, And she was fain to go where pain is dumb; So Thou wert welcome, Angel dread to see, And she fares onward with thee, willingly, To dwell where no man loves, no lovers part,— Thus Grief that is, makes welcome Death to come."

The sonnet, the stanza, and the pictorial interpretation all form one beautiful trio in poetic and graphic art.

Writing of Mr. Vedder, Mr. W. C. Brownell speaks of the personal force in a picture and says that with Vedder this personal force is imagination,—"the imagination of a man whose natural expression is pictorial, but who is a man as well as a painter; who has lived as well as painted, who has speculated, pondered, and felt much.... It is this," he continues, "that places Vedder in the front rank of the imaginative painters of the day." Of Mr. Vedder's painting called "The Enemy Sowing Tares," Mr. Brownell writes:—

"... Here you note a dozen phases of significance. The theme is unconventional; the man has become the archenemy; the night is weird and awe-inspiring; the tares represent the foe of the church—money; they are sown at the foot of the cross—the symbol of the church.... Mr. Vedder has not passed his life in Rome for nothing. His attitude is in harmony with the spirit of the Sistine and the Stanze."

One of the interesting and mystical works of Vedder is "The Soul between Doubt and Faith,"—three heads, that of the Soul hooded and draped, looking before her with eyes that seem to discern things not seen by mortals; the sinister face of Doubt at the left, the serene, inspiring countenance of Faith at the right. It is a magical picture to have before one with its profoundly significant message. The works of Mr. Vedder will grow more priceless as the years pass by. They are pictures for the ages.

In Mr. Ezekiel, another American artist whose almost lifelong home has been in Rome, is a sculptor whose touch and technique have won recognition. In a recumbent figure of Christ is seen one of the best examples of his art. It is pervaded by the classic influences in which he has lived. The studios of Mr. Ezekiel, in the ruins of the old Baths of Caracalla, are very picturesque and his salon, with its music, its wealth of books including many rare and beautiful copies, and its old pictures and bric-a-brac, is one of the fascinating interiors of the Eternal City.

The visitor who is privileged to see the Story studios in the Via San Martino finds Mr. Waldo Story occupying these spacious rooms where the flash of a fountain in the court, a view of the garden, green-walled by vines, with flowers and shrubs and broken statues, make the place alluring to dreamer and poet. In these rooms may be seen many of the elder Story's finest statues in cast or marble, the "Libyan Sibyl," "Nemesis," "Sappho," the "Christ," "Into the Silent Land," and others, with many portrait busts, among which are those of Browning, Shelley, Keats, Theodore Parker, Mrs. Browning, Marchesa Peruzzi de Medici (Edith Story), John Lothrop Motley, one of Story's nearer friends, and Lord Houghton.

In the work of Mr. Waldo Story one admirable portrait bust is of Cecil Rhodes. A decorative work, a fountain for the Rothschild country estate in England, is charmingly designed as a Galatea (in bronze), standing in a marble shell that is drawn by Nereids and attended by Cupids. The happy blending of marble and bronze gives to this work a pleasing variety of color. Another decorative design is that of "Nymphs Drinking at the Fountain of Love." These studios are among the most interesting in Rome.

It was in 1868 that Franklin Simmons, then a young artist from Maine, turned to Rome as his artistic Mecca. Since then the Eternal City has always been his home, but his frequent and prolonged sojourns in America have kept him closely in touch with its national life. Mr. Simmons is the idealist who translates his vision into the actuality of the hour and who also exalts this actuality of the hour to the universality of the vision. In the creation of portrait busts and of the statues and monumental memorials of great men he infuses into them the indefinable quality of extended relation which relegates his work to the realm of the universal and, therefore, to the immortality of art, rather than restricting it to the temporal locality. Louis Gorse observes that it is not the absence of faults that constitutes a masterpiece, but that it is flame, it is life, it is emotion, it is sincerity. Under the touch of Mr. Simmons the personal accent speaks; to his creative power flame and life respond, and to no sculptor is the truth so admirably stated by M. Gorse more applicable.

Mr. Simmons has been singularly fortunate in a wide American recognition, having received a liberal share of the more important commissions for great public works of sculpture. The splendid statue, al fresco, of the poet Longfellow for his native city, Portland, was appropriately the work of Mr. Simmons as a native of the same state; the portrait statues of General Grant, Gov. William King, Roger Williams, and Francis H. Pierrepont, all in Statuary Hall in the Capitol in Washington; the portrait busts of Grant, Sheridan, Porter, Hooker, Thomas, and other heroes of the Civil War; the colossal group of the Naval Monument at the head of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington,—are all among the works of Mr. Simmons.

Like all artists who, like the poet, are born and not made, Mr. Simmons gave evidence of his artistic bent in his early childhood. After graduating from Bates College he modelled a bust of its president, and a little later, going to Washington (in the winter of 1865-66), many of the noted men of the time gave him sittings, and in a series of portrait busts his genius impressed itself by its dignity of conception and an unusual power of sympathetic interpretation. He modelled the bust of Grant while he was the General's guest in camp, taking advantage of whatever spare minutes General Grant could give for sittings in the midst of his pressing responsibilities; and it is perhaps due to this unusually intimate intercourse with the great hero, and the rapport, not difficult of establishment, between two men whose natures were akin in a certain noble sincerity and lofty devotion to the purest ideals, that Mr. Simmons owes the power with which he has absolutely interpreted the essential characteristics of General Grant in that immortal portrait statue in the Capitol.

Washington is, indeed, the place to especially study the earlier work of Franklin Simmons. An important one is the Logan memorial,—an equestrian statue which is considered the finest work in sculpture in the capital, and which is the only statue in the United States in which both the group and the pedestal are of bronze. The visitor in Washington who should be ignorant of the relative rank of the great men commemorated by the equestrian memorial monuments of the city might be justified in believing that General Logan was the most important man of his time, if he judged from the relative greatness of his statue. When Congress decided upon this group, Mr. Simmons was requested to prepare a model. This proving eminently acceptable, Mr. Simmons found himself, quite to his own surprise, fairly launched on this arduous work, involving years of intense concentration and labor. For this monumental work was to be not merely that of the brave and gallant military leader,—a single idea embodied, as in those of Generals Scott, Sheridan, Thomas, and others,—but it was to be a permanent interpretation of the soldier-statesman, mounted on his battle-horse; it was to be, in the comprehensive grasp of Mr. Simmons, the vital representation of the complex life and individuality of General Logan and, even more, it must reflect and suggest the complex spirit of his age. In this martial figure was thus embodied a manifold and mysterious relation, as one of the potent leaders and directive powers in an age of tumultuous activities; an age of strife and carnage, whose goal was peace; of adverse conditions and reactions, whose manifest outcome was yet prosperity and national greatness and splendid moral triumph. All these must be suggested in the atmosphere, so to speak, of the artist's work; and no sculptor who was not also an American—not merely by ancestry and activity, but one in mind and heart only; one who was an intense patriot and identified with national ideas—could ever have produced such a work as that of the Logan monument. So unrivalled does it stand, unique among all the equestrian art of this country, that it enchants the art student and lover with its indefinable spell. When this colossal work was cast in bronze, in Rome, the event was considered important. The king and the Royal family visited the studio of Mr. Simmons to see the great group, and so powerfully did its excellence appeal to King Umberto that he knighted Mr. Simmons, making him Cavaliere of the Crown of Italy. Nor was Mr. Simmons the prophet who was not without honor save in his own country, for his alma mater gave him the degree of M.A. in 1867; Colby College honored him with the Master's degree in 1885, and in 1888 Bowdoin bestowed upon this eminent Maine artist the same degree. In 1892 Mr. Simmons married the Baroness von Jeinsen, a brilliant and beautiful woman who, though a lady of foreign title, was an American by birth. An accomplished musician, a critical lover of art, and the most delightful of hostesses and friends, Mrs. Simmons drew around her a remarkable circle of charming people and made their home in the Palazzo Tamagno a notable centre of social life. No woman in the American colony of the Seven-hilled City was ever more beloved; and it was frequently noted by guests at her weekly receptions that Mrs. Simmons was as solicitous for the enjoyment of the most unknown stranger as for those of rank and title who frequented her house. Her grace and loveliness were fully equalled by her graciousness and that charm of personality peculiarly her own. Her death in Rome, on Christmas of 1905, left a vacant place, indeed, in many a home which had been gladdened by her radiant presence. One of the most beautiful works of Mr. Simmons is a portrait of his wife in bas-relief, representing her standing just at the opening of parted curtains, as if she were about to step behind and vanish. It is a very poetic conception. A bust of Mrs. Simmons, also, in his studio, is fairly a speaking likeness of this beautiful and distinguished woman. It is over her grave in the Protestant cemetery that Mr. Simmons has placed one of his noblest ideal statues, "The Angel of the Resurrection,"—a memorial monument that is one of the art features of Rome to the visitor in the Eternal City.



The brilliant and impressive Naval Monument, or Monument of Peace, as it is known in Washington, placed at the foot of Capitol Hill on Pennsylvania Avenue, is eloquent with the power of heroic suggestion that Mr. Simmons has imparted to it. The work breathes that exaltation of final triumph that follows temporary defeat. Those who died that the nation might live, are seen in the perpetual illumination of immortality. Not only has Mr. Simmons here perpetuated the suffering, the sacrifices of the Civil War, but that sublime and eternal truth of victory after defeat, of peace and serene exaltation after conflict, and the triumph of life after death, are all immortally embodied in this group crowned with those impressive and haunting figures, "Grief" and "History," which are considered as among the most classically beautiful and significant in the range of modern sculpture.

In the early winter of 1907 Mr. Simmons was invited by the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Hon. Whitelaw Reid, to send for Dorchester House, London, three busts of distinguished Americans,—those of Alexander Hamilton, Chief Justice Chase, and Hon. James G. Blaine, which Mr. Reid, in visiting the Roman studios of Mr. Simmons, had seen and greatly admired. The Ambassador observed that he "would like a few Americans, as well as so many Roman Emperors," about him.

These portrait busts all reveal an amazing force and mastery of work. The fine sculptural effect of the Hamilton and the wonderful blending of subtle delicacy of touch and vigor of treatment with which the nobility of character is expressed, mark this bust as something exceptional in portrait art. It has a matchless dignity and serene poise. The bust of Chief Justice Chase is a faithful and speaking reproduction of the very presence of its subject, instinct with vitality; and the fire and force and brilliancy of the bust of Hon. James G. Blaine fairly sweeps the visitor off his feet. The modelling is done with an apparent instantaneousness of power that is the highest realization of creative art. It is the magnetic Blaine, the impassioned and eloquent statesman, that rises before the gazer.

Mr. Simmons has long been a commanding figure in plastic art. No American sculptor abroad has, perhaps, received so many important public commissions as have been given to him. He has created nearly a score of memorial groups; he has modelled over one hundred portrait busts and statues. His industry has kept step with his genius. The latest success of Mr. Simmons in the line of monumental art is the statue (in bronze) of Alexander Hamilton, which was unveiled at Paterson, N. J., in May of 1907. The splendidly poised figure, the dignity, the serene strength and yet the intense energy of the expression and of the entire pose are a revelation in the art of the portrait statue.

It is not, however, true that Mr. Simmons has ever resigned himself to the necessity of producing portrait and memorial sculpture exclusively. In the realm of the purely ideal Mr. Simmons finds his most felicitous field for creative work. A bas-relief entitled "The Genius of Progress Leading the Nations," with all its splendid fire and action, the motif being that of the spirits Life and Light beating down and driving out the spirits of darkness and evil; "The Angel of the Resurrection," with its glad, triumphant assertion of the power of the immortal life; the poetry and sacredness of maternity as typified in the "Mother of Moses;" the statues of the "Galatea" and the "Medusa," and other ideal creations, indicate "the vision and the faculty divine" of Mr. Simmons. To a very great degree his art is that which the French describe as the grand manner, and to this is added a spiritual quality, a power of radiating the intellectual purpose, the profounder thought and the aspiration of the subject represented.



One of the most charming of these ideal works is a statue of "Penelope," represented seated in the chair, her rich robe falling in graceful folds, and the little Greek fillet binding her hair. The face bears a meditative expression, into which has entered a hint of pathos and wistfulness in the dawning wonder as to whether, after all, Ulysses will return. The classic beauty of the pose; the exquisite modelling of the bust and arms and hands, every curve and contour so ideally lovely; the distinction of the figure in its noble and refined patrician elegance, are combined to render this work one that well deserves immortality in art, and to rank as a masterpiece in modern sculpture.



Another of his ideal figures, "The Promised Land," is a work of great spiritual exaltation and beauty. An Israelite woman has just arrived at the point when before her vision gleams the "Promised Land"; the face tells its own story of all she has passed through,—the trials, the sadness, the obstacles to be overcome; but now she sees the fulfilment of her hopes and dreams. It is a most interesting creation, and one in which is portrayed the artist's spiritual insight and susceptibility to poetic exaltation. To one visitor to Mr. Simmons's studio this statue suggested the following lines:—

Fair on her sight it gleams,—the Promised Land! The rose of dawn sifts through the azure air, And all her weariness and toil and care Vanish, as if from her some tender hand Lifted the burden, and transformed the hour To this undreamed-of sense of joy and power! The rapture and the ecstasy divine Are deep realities that only wait Their hour to dawn, nor ever rise too late To draw the soul to its immortal shrine.

O Sculptor! thy great gift has shaped this clay, To image the profoundest truth, and stand As witness of the spirit power that may Achieve the vision of the Promised Land!



In a statuette in bronze called "Valley Forge," Mr. Simmons has fairly incarnated the entire spirit of the Revolutionary period in that mysterious way recognized only in its result; all that unparalleled epoch of tragic intensity and sublime triumph lives again in this work. The fidelity to a lofty ideal which essentially characterizes Mr. Simmons is as unswerving as that of Merlin, who followed "The Gleam."

"Great the Master And sweet the Magic When over the valley In early summers, Over the mountain, On human faces, And all around me Moving to melody, Floated the Gleam."

This American sculptor who, in his early youth, sought the artistic atmosphere of Rome as the environment most stimulating to his dawning power, who accepted with unfailing courage the incidental privations of art life in a foreign land more renowned for beauty than for comfort, who

"... never turned his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break,"

has expressed his message in many purely ideal works,—the message that the true artist must always give to the world and that leads humanity to the crowning truth of life, that of the ceaseless progress of the soul in its immortality.

For the brief and significant assertion of the apostle condenses the most profound truth of life when he says:—

"To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."

In these words are imaged the supreme purpose of all the experiences of the life on earth; and to the artist whose works bear this lofty message of the triumph of spirituality, his reward shall appear, not in the praise of men, but in the effect on character that his efforts have aided to exalt; in the train of nobler influences that his work shall perpetually inspire and create.

Mr. Simmons has always found Rome potent in fascination. One may not want to go to St. Peter's every day, but one knows it is there, and there is some inexplicable satisfaction in being where it is possible to easily enter this impressive interior. One may not go near the Forum for a month, or even a season, but the knowledge that one may find it and the wonderful Palatine Hill any hour of any day is a perpetual delight. The Vatican galleries, with their great masterpieces; the Sistine Chapel, the stately, splendid impressiveness of San Giovanni Laterano; the wanderings in Villa Borghese, and the picturesque climbing of the Spanish steps, even all the inconveniences and deprivations, become a part of the story of Rome which the artist absorbs and loves.

The studios of Mr. Simmons in the Via San Nicolo da Tolentino are a centre of artistic resort, and his personal life is one of distinction amid the picturesque beauty and enchantment of the Eternal City.

For many years (until the death of Mrs. Simmons in 1905) the sculptor and his wife had their home in the beautiful Palazzo Tamagno in the Via Agostino Depretis, where one of those spacious apartments of twenty to thirty rooms, only to be found in a Roman palace, was made by them a brilliant centre of social life. Mrs. Simmons was herself a musical artist, with impassioned devotion to music; and her rare personal charm and distinction of presence drew around her a most interesting circle. Her receptions were for many years a noted feature of Roman society. The social life in Rome is very brilliant, interesting, and fascinating. The sight-seeing is a kind of attendant atmosphere,—the perpetual environment offering, but not intruding itself. People come to Rome for reasons quite disconnected with the Golden House of Nero or the latest archaeological discoveries in the Forum. The present, rather than the past, calls to them, and the present, too, is resplendent and alluring.

Of the foreign painters in Rome, Charles Walter Stetson, whose work recalls the glory of the old Italian masters, is especially distinguished for his genius as a colorist. No visitor in Rome can afford to miss the studio of one of the most imaginative of modern artists. A wonderful picture still in process is a genre work with several figures, called "Music." An idyllic scene of a festa amid the ilex trees—with the Italian sky and the golden sunshine pervading a luminous atmosphere, while the joyous abandon of the dancers appeals to all who love Italy—is one of the many beautiful pictorial scenes of Mr. Stetson which enchant the eye and haunt the imagination. Another picture is called "Beggars,"—a name that illy suggests its splendor. There is the facade of a church to which a long flight of steps leads up, a procession of cardinals and friars in their rich robes, while at one side the groups of beggars shrink into the darkness. It is an impressive commentary upon life.

For a long period, through the early and middle years of the nineteenth century, Rome held her place as the world centre of modern artistic activity. Great works of poetic and ideal sculpture elevated the general public taste to a high degree of appreciation. The standards were not ingeniously adjusted to mere spectacular methods whose sole appeal was to the crude fancy of possible patrons. Art held her absolute and inviolate ideals, and the spirit of her votaries might well have been interpreted in Mrs. Browning's words:—

"I, who love my art, Would never wish it lower to suit my stature."

The tone of public appreciation is raised to a high quality only when the artist refuses to sell his soul for a mess of pottage. He may, to be sure, need the pottage, but the price is too great. Rather will he find his attitude expressed in these wonderful lines:—

"I can live At least my soul's life without alms from men. And if it be in heaven instead of earth, Let heaven look to it—I am not afraid."

All art that has within itself true vitality must ever be the leader and the creator of the popular taste; only when it falls into decadence does it become the servile follower.

It is a serious question as to the degree in which the art of to-day keeps faith with the eternal ideals. The great expositions of the past quarter of a century, while they have contributed immeasurably to the popularization of art and to the familiarization of the public with the work of individual painters and sculptors, have yet, in many ways, been a demoralizing influence in their insidious temptation to produce pictures or plastic art calculated to arrest immediate attention, thus putting a premium on the spectacular, the sensational, on that which makes the most immediate and direct appeal to the senses. The work becomes fairly a personal document wrought with perhaps an almost amazing finesse, but utterly failing in power to inspire joyous sensibility to beauty or to impart to the gazer that glow of radiant energy which lofty art invariably communicates to all who respond to its infinite exaltation.

All great art is inspired by religious ideals. Painting and sculpture give to these a presence. Under their creative power are these ideals manifested. To embody them in living form becomes the absolute responsibility of the artist. In Greece all the fortunate conditions to produce great art were curiously combined and pre-eminently supported by the conjunction of events and by the prevailing sentiment of the time. The artist drew his inspiration from the most exalted conception of life embodied in gods rather than in men. Art, too, was an affair of the state. It was the supreme interest and held national importance. The temple was erected to form an inclosure for the statue, rather than that the statue was created as an adornment for the temple. The greatest gifts were consecrated to the service of art, and under these stimulating influences it is little wonder that artistic creation achieved that vital potency which has thrilled all succeeding centuries and has communicated to them something of the divine air of that remote period. With the Renaissance in Italy art culminated in the immortal work of Raphael and Michael Angelo. In the Sistine Chapel, where that sublime grouping of prophets and sibyls speaks of the very miracle of art in their impassioned fire and glow; where the figures, the pose, the draperies are so grandly noble and infused with dignity and presence,—the very atmosphere is vocal with the language of the spirit and the expressions of religious reverence. These marvellous shapes of grandeur and sublime intimations carry the soul into a conscious communion with the divine. In these stupendous works Michael Angelo has given to all the ages the message of the highest exaltation of art. In the technique, in the marvellous dignity of the sentiment, in the depth of the feeling involved, in the grace and power of the composition, these works embody the artistic possibilities of painting.

Are such works as those of Canova and Thorwaldsen no longer created?

Can it be that art is no longer of national importance? In our own country vast appropriations are made for internal improvements of all kinds, while art that kindles and re-enforces life is almost ignored. Our government—the government of the richest country in the world—appropriated $200,000 for a memorial monument to General Grant to be placed in Washington, while Italy—whose resources are so slender in comparison—appropriates seven million dollars—thirty-five times the amount—for her great monument to Victor Emmanuel which is now being erected in Rome to stand near the Capitol and the Palace of the Quirinale. Great art has always been closely associated with great devotion to religious ideals. The artist was the servant of the Lord, and it was his supreme purpose to embody the aspirations of the age and render his works a full and complete symbol of those true realities of life which have their being in the spiritual universe rather than in the changing temporal world of the outer universe. The so-called realism of the day is based on a false interpretation. "The things that are seen are temporal, while the things that are not seen are eternal." True realism is in spiritual qualities, not in physical attributes. True realism is found in such works as Canova's sublime group, where the figures of Religion and of Death forever impress all who stand before this magnificent monument; it is found in Thorwaldsen's "Christ;" in Franklin Simmons's "Angel of the Resurrection,"—in such works as those that have a language for the soul, rather than in a "Saturnalia."

Again, another fatal rock on which art must inevitably make shipwreck is the theory that it is good to perpetuate ugliness, in either painting or in sculpture. The permanent reality of life is beauty. So far as any person or object departs from this enduring reality, so far it is the result of distortion and deformity, and these, being the temporary, the accidental, the deficient, should not be perpetuated in ideal creation. It is an Apollo who embodies the permanent ideal of manhood—not a cripple or a hunchback. Still further: art should not only refuse to embody the defective, which is a mere negative; it should not only give form to the utmost perfection it beholds in nature or in humanity, but beyond this the responsibility is upon the artist to penetrate into loftier realms, to catch the vision not revealed to mortals. The artist is, by virtue of his high calling, a co-worker with God. An English wit has declared that life copies art rather than that art copies life. In this he expresses a truth rather than a merely clever epigram. It is the artist's business to lead, not to follow. Only as he leads does he fulfil his divinely appointed destiny. "I maintain that life is not a form of energy," writes Sir Oliver Lodge; "that it is not included in our present physical categories; that its explanation is still to be sought. And it appears to me to belong to a separate order of existence, which interacts with this material frame of things, and while here exerts guidance and control on the energy which already here exists; for although they alter the quantity of energy no whit, and though they merely utilize available energy like any other machine, live things are able to direct inorganic terrestrial energy along new and special paths, so as to achieve results without which such living agency could not have occurred." Does it for an instant seem that a great scientist's theoretical speculations of the laws of the universe and of organic life have no connection with the province of art? On the contrary. Truly does Balzac exclaim: "Is not God the whole of science, the all of love, the source of poetry?" The artist is he who enters into the divine realm; who discerns the divine creations as the true ideals of humanity, and who interprets to the world the sublime significance of the divine thought. Shall such an artist degrade his power by portraying ugliness—the mere defects of negations and distortions? Shall he degrade life by calling these the realities?



The painter or sculptor who holds that it is as truly art to represent distortion and repulsiveness as it is to represent beauty is as false to his high calling as would be the poet who should insist that doggerel and mere commonplace truisms expressed in rhyme are poetry. Compare, for example, two statues, Cecioni's "La Madre," in which a woman's utter lack of personal attraction is so complete as to make her fairly repulsive to the gazer, and the "Mother of Moses," by Franklin Simmons, in which the mystic beauty, the very ideal of maternity, is embodied. Which of these statues is calculated to uplift and to exalt all who come near? This marvellously beautiful creation of Mr. Simmons shows a woman of exquisite delicacy and loveliness sitting, slightly bending forward, holding her baby to her breast. The modelling of the draped figure with the bare arms and neck revealing the tender curves, the yielding delicacy of the flesh and that inscrutable light upon the beautiful countenance, whose expression suggests that she is looking far into the future of the infant whom she holds in her arms, are a wonderful portrayal of the mystery and the sacredness of motherhood. The one statue degrades maternity; the other ennobles and exalts. The one embodies a pernicious and a false ideal; the other embodies the ideal that must appeal to all that is noble and divine in human life, and it thus ministers to moral progress by its contribution to the elevation of the social tone. For indeed, life follows art. It is art that exerts this powerful influence upon life which it may lead to loftier heights or drag down to the moral abyss. The artist is not merely the portrayer of existing types; he is the inspirer of those ideal types which human life should recognize as its pattern, its model to be followed and ultimately achieved. The world needs ideal and poetic art to minister to the attainment of the true social life and to the full and complete expression of man himself.

Do not the visions of Fra Angelico and Botticelli still inspire the artist of to-day with the absolute realization of all the deep significance of the past?

"Is there never a retroscope mirror, In the realms and corners of space, That can give us a glimpse of the battle, And the soldiers face to face?"

Religion and art are inseparably united. In its true significance religion takes precedence of all else in that its influence is felt in every department and in every direction and expression of man's activity. It is the inexhaustible fountain of that lofty energy which communicates itself to every channel that carries inspiration to life and to art. Religion is the influence that redeems the mere shallow, surface presentation,—the petty trick to capture popularity, and holds art true to its real purpose. The glory of the mediaeval art of Italy owed its greatness to religion. Cimabue and Giotto were directly inspired by that spring of a diviner life given to Italy and later to the world of that "sweet saint," Francis of Assisi. In an age of cruelty and terror he brought the new message that man is dear to God; that the soul is ceaselessly joyful; that man, created in the divine image, is a part of the divine life, and that only when he lives in this response and recognition does he truly live at all. In this restatement of the truth that Jesus came to proclaim, St. Francis opened the way for a revival of art, and opened the gates of that infinite and divine energy which has immortally recorded itself for all ages in the "Divina Comedia" of Dante. The irresistible wave of power which resulted from that liberating of thought, feeling, and emotion by the work of St. Francis expressed itself in the sublimest poem of all the ages, and in that glorious triumph of art that is still the treasure and the source of artistic inspiration.

It is only when the world is lifted out of the limitations of the material by a period of great art that humanity is brought into close and inspiring relation with the living Christ.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.



Men and women make the world, As head and heart make human life.

MRS. BROWNING.

* * * * *

Alas, our memories may retrace Each circumstance of time and place; Season and scene come back again, And outward things unchanged remain; The rest we cannot reinstate, Ourselves we cannot re-create, Nor set our souls to the same key Of the remembered harmony.

LONGFELLOW.



And as, after the lapse of a thousand years, you stand upon that hallowed spot, the yellow Tiber flowing sluggishly beneath you, the ruins of the Eternal City all around you speaking of fallen greatness, the mighty Basilica of St. Peter rising before you like some modern tower of Babel that would monopolize the road to heaven, the eye rests upon the figure of the Archangel sheathing his glittering sword upon the summit of the Castle of St. Angelo, and the heart asks, Why should that be a legend? Why should that be a projection of a morbid and devout imagination? Why should it not have been the clairvoyance of supernatural ecstasy opening the world of spirits? It was no unreality when the angel of God, with his sword drawn in his hand, withstood the prophet Balaam. It was no morbid imagination when the angel of God smote with the edge of the sword the first-born of the land of Egypt. It was no imposture when the shining hosts of the army of the Almighty smote the Assyrians. It was no deception when Gabriel, the King's messenger from the court of heaven, was sent to comfort Daniel by the river Hiddekel; or when he announced to the maiden, whom all generations have called blessed, that she was to be the mother of the Divine Redeemer.... The written Word from first to last is full of the holy angels. It begins with angels, it ends with angels.

THE VENERABLE ARCHDEACON WILBERFORCE, Westminster Abbey.



II

SOCIAL LIFE IN THE ETERNAL CITY

And others came,—Desires and Adorations, Winged Persuasions and Veiled Destinies!

SHELLEY.

In what ethereal dances! By what eternal streams!

POE.

Social life in Rome is no misnomer. From the most stately and beautiful ceremonials of balls at the court of the Quirinale, in ducal palaces, or at the embassies; of dinners whose every detail suggests stage pictures in their magnificence, to the simple afternoon tea, where conversation and music enchant the hours; the morning call en tete-a-tete, and the morning stroll, or the late afternoon drive,—a season in Rome prefigures itself, by the necromancy of retrospective vision, as a resplendent panorama of pictorial scenes. There rise before one those mornings, all gold and azure, of loitering over the stone parapet on Monte Pincio, gazing down on the city in her most alluring mood. The new bridge that is to connect the Pincio with the Villa Borghese is a picturesque feature in its unfinished state; but the vision traverses the deep ravine and revels in the scene of the Borghese grounds carpeted with flowers. Its picturesque slopes under the great trees, with a view of Michael Angelo's dome in the near distance, are the resort of morning strollers, who find that lovely picture of Charles Walter Stetson's—a stretch of landscape under the ilex trees, the scarlet gowns of the divinity students giving vivid accents of color here and there—fairly reproduced in nature before their vision. One should never be in haste as the bewildering beauty of the Roman spring weaves its emerald fantasies on grass and trees, and touches into magical bloom the scarlet poppies that flame over all the meadows, and caress roses and hyacinths and lilies of the valley into delicate bloom and floating fragrance until the Eternal City is no more Rome, but Arcady, instead—one should never be in haste to toss his penny into the Fontane de Trevi. Yet in another way it may work for him an immediate spell that defies all other necromancy. Judiciously thrown in, on the very eve of departure, it is the conjurer that insures his return; but at any time prior to this it may even weave the irresistible enchantment that falls upon him and may prevent his leaving at all. Nor can he summon up the moral courage to regret even the missing of all other engagements, and the failure to keep faith with his plans. For in the May days Rome falls upon him anew, like a revelation, and he is ready to confess that he has never seen her who sees her not in her springtime loveliness. The Italian winter by no means lives up to its reputation. It is not the chill of any one special day that discourages one from any further effort to continue in this vale of tears, but the cold that has, apparently, the chill and dampness and cold of all those two thousand and two hundred and sixty winters that have gone before which concentrate themselves in the atmosphere. One could presumably endure with some degree of courage, if not equanimity, the chill in the air of any one winter; but when all the chill and cold that has ever existed in more than the two thousand winters of the past concentrates itself in the winter, say, of 1906-7, why, patience ceases to be a virtue although one that the sojourner in Rome is particularly called upon to practise if he fares forth to visit churches and galleries in the winter.

Torrents of rain pour down, rivalling the cloud-bursts of Arizona. Virgil's cave of the winds apparently lets loose its sharpest blasts. Tramontana and sirocco alternate, and each is more unendurable than the other.

The encircling mountains are white with snow. The streets are a sea of mud, for they are paved with small stones, and except in the new Villa Ludovisi quarter and along the Via Nazionale and a few other of the newer thoroughfares there are no sidewalks, the foot passengers (in all old Rome) pressing close to the wall to avoid the dangerously near proximity of carts and cabs. This rough pavement makes all driving hard and walking difficult. The Roman lady, indeed, does not walk; and the visitors who cannot forego the joy of daily promenades enter into the feelings of that nation which is said to take its pleasures sadly. But spring works a transformation scene. The air is filled with the most transparent shining haze; the sky lacks little of that intense, melting blue that characterizes the ineffable beauty of the skies in Arizona; and ruins and fragments and strange relics—ghosts of the historic past—are all enshrined in trailing green and riotous blossoms. To drive on the terraced roads of Monte Mario with all Rome and the emerald-green Campagna before one; through the romantic "Lovers' Lane," walled in by roses and myrtle; to enjoy the local life, full of gayety and brilliancy, is to know Rome in her most gracious aspects. One goes for strolls in the old Colonna Gardens, where still remain the ruins of the Temple of the Sun and of the Baths of Constantine. The terraces offer lovely views over the city. The old palace is occupied by the present Prince Colonna, and it is not unfrequently the scene of most elaborate and gorgeous receptions where the traditional Roman splendor is to be found. A series of arched bridges over the narrow street of the Via della Pilotta connect the Gardens with the Colonna Palace in the Piazza San Apostoli. Very fine old sarcophagi are half buried in trailing vines on the slope of the hill, dark with magnificent cypress trees. The Colonna Gardens are a very dream of the past, in their ruins of old temples, their shattered statues, their strange old tablets and inscriptions, and their grand view of the Capitol.

In one's retrospective vision of a Roman season all the inconveniences and discomforts of the winter disappear, leaving only the beauty and the enjoyment to be "developed," as the photographer would say, on the sensitive plate of memory.

No one really knows Rome until he has watched the transcendent loveliness of spring investing every nook and corner of the Eternal City. The picturesque Spanish steps are a very garden of fragrance, the lower steps of the terraced flight being taken possession of by the flower venders who display their wares,—masses of white lilac, flame-colored roses, rose and purple hyacinths and baskets of violets and carnations. Did all this fragrance and beauty send up its incense to Keats as he lay in the house adjoining, with the musical plash of Bernini's fountain under his window? It is pleasant to know that by the appreciation of American and English authors, the movement effectively directed by Robert Underwood Johnson, this house consecrated to a poet's memory has been purchased to be a permanent memorial to Keats and to Shelley. A library of their works will be arranged in it; and portraits, busts, and all mementos that can be collected of these poets will render this memorial one of the beautiful features of Rome.

From the flower venders and the circulating libraries in the Piazza di Spagna that allure one in the morning, from the fascinating glitter of the little Via Condotti which is, in its way, the rue de la Paix of Rome, one leisurely climbs the steps to where the great obelisk looms up in front of the Convent Church of the Trinita di Monti and on, across the Piazza di Trinita, toward the Pincian, one wanders along the brow of the hill surmounted by the low stone parapet. The view is a dream of beauty. Over the valley lies Monte Mario, crowned with the Villa Madama, silhouetted against the blue Roman sky; and the commanding dome of St. Peter's, the splendid new white marble buildings of the Law Courts, the domes of other churches, all make up a picturesque panorama, while on the Janiculum the great equestrian statue of Garibaldi can be descried. Strolling on, one turns into the gardens of the Villa Medici, the French Academy of Art, in which the present director, the great Carolus Duran, is domiciled and in which twenty-four students—of painting, sculpture, music, and architecture—are maintained at the expense of the French government for several years, the twenty four being chosen from those who have given signal proof of their ability. The Villa Medici has, perhaps, a more beautiful site than any other building in Rome. Facing the west, with the Janiculum and Monte Mario forever before it, while below lies the Piazza di Spagna and the Piazza del Popolo, and all the changing splendors of the sunset sky as a perpetual picture gallery, the situation is, indeed, magnificent. It is still conceivable, however, that Monsieur Carolus Duran must have many quarters of an hour when he longs for the brilliancy and the movement and the stimulus of his Paris. The gardens of the Villa Medici are large, but they are laid out with narrow paths bordered with box, forming a wall as impervious as if of stone, and dark and damp by the shade of foliage. These walks are paved with gravel, and are always damp. These formal rectangles and alleys are utterly shut in, so that in any one part one can see only the two dense green walls of box that inclose him and the glimpse of sky overhead,—not precisely a cheering promenade. This is the Italian idea of a garden. Much broken sculpture, weather-stained and defective, is placed all along the way, and the perpetual Roman fountain is always gushing somewhere.



Another phase of the Roman season may rise before one in the stately beauty of any old historic palace, where the hostess, all grace and sweetness, receives her guests in the apartment in which Galileo had been confined when imprisoned in Rome. The approach to this piano nobile was up a flight of easily graded marble stairs, where in frequent niches stood old statues. The large windows in the corridor on the landing were curtained with pale yellow, thus creating a golden light to fall on the old sculptured marbles. One salon was decorated with Flaxman's drawings on the wall, in their classical outlines. From a steep, dark stone stairway, down which one descended (at the imminent risk of a broken neck in the darkness and from the irregular stairs rudely carved in the stone), one emerged on a landing, where a little door opened into the balcony of the chapel, a curious, gloomy place, with tombs and altar and shrine, and some very poor old paintings. One's progress to it recalled the lines from Poe's "Ulalume":—

"By a route, obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only."

Then, sitting in one of the richly decorated salons at afternoon tea in this same old palace one day, while an accomplished harpist was discoursing delicate music from its vibrating chords, flights of birds kept passing a window, making a scene like that of a Wagner opera. The groups present, largely of the Roman nobility, the titled aristocracy, resembling so closely some of the old portraits in the palazzo that it was easy to recognize that they were all one people, descendants of the same race.

Many of the guests looked, indeed, as if they had stepped from out the sumptuously carved frames on the wall. At these pretty festas one meets much of the resident Roman world. The guests assembled seem to be speaking in all the romance languages. There are Russian and Spanish as well as Italian, French, German, and English at these alluring teas. All the salons of the spacious apartments are thrown open, and the men in their picturesque court dress or military costume, and the women and girls in dainty gowns, make up an alluring scene. The salons are richly furnished and abound in works of art, old pictures, inlaid cabinets, carvings, rich vases, busts, and statuettes. The library, with its wealth of books; the music room; the salon for dancing; the supper room, and the quiet rooms where groups gather before the blazing open fires, grateful in these lofty rooms whose temperature suggests the frozen circles of Dante,—all make up a delightful picture. One meets the most varying individualities. A Russian lady of title may confide her conviction that her country is ruined, and that she never desires to return to it. Italy is the country that attracts not only political refugees from other European countries, but many who are out of sympathy with conditions elsewhere and who find the cosmopolitan society and the varied interests of this land of sunshine their most enjoyable environment.

One pleasant feature of a Roman winter is that of the usual course of lectures given by Professor Lanciani. The celebrated archaeologist is a man of special personal charm, and his conversation, as well as his public lectures, is full of interest and value. The lectures are given under the auspices of the Societa Archeologica, and a special subject recently discussed was the celebration to be held in 1911 in Rome. One project for this celebration includes the plan to lay out a carriage road around the Forum and the Palatine, and also around the Baths of Titus and of Caracalla, extending the drive to all those places included between the Appian and the Latin Way, the Villa Celimontana and the Circus Maximus.

Professor Lanciani discussed the artistic history of Rome and the different appearances the city took on in different periods; the regulation plan drawn up by Julius Caesar and accepted and carried out by Augustus, by which one-fifth of the total area of the city was reserved for public parks. In the third century of the empire the city was inclosed by parks and crossed from end to end by delightful portico gardens, where valuable works of art were collected. During the period of the Renaissance there were the famous villas and the Cesarini Park on the slopes of the Esquiline, and after regretting the many unnecessary acts of vandalism committed since 1870 in Rome, Professor Lanciani suggested that a complete reconstruction of the Baths of Caracalla should be made, to serve in 1911 as the Exhibition Building. He believed no artistic difficulties would present themselves, as in the fifteenth century different architects took plaster casts of the decorations of the statues and of every detail of the Baths. The archaeological exhibition would be arranged in the two large halls, another hall would be for concerts, another for lectures, the others for different congresses to be held.

In this way Rome would inaugurate for 1911 the Mediaeval Museum in Castel Sant'Angelo, the mediaeval collections in the Torre degli Anguillara, and the grand archaeological exhibition in the reconstructed Baths of Caracalla.

Italian women are by no means behind the age in their organizations to aid in social progress. The most important one in Italy is that of the leading women of the nobility and aristocracy, called "The Society for Women's Work," which holds annual meetings, over which Lady Aberdeen, the president of the International Council, and the Contessa Spalletti, the president of the National Council of Italy, preside. Many of the prominent women of the Italian nobility are taking active part in the larger outlook for women; and in this movement Margherita, la Regina Madre, leads the way, supported by a large following of the titled nobility.

"Margherita holds the hearts of the people," remarked Cora, Contessa di Brazza Savorgnan, at a brilliant little dinner one night, and no expression could more admirably represent the feeling of the nation toward the Queen Mother.

Queen Elena as the reigning sovereign has, of course, her exclusive royal prerogatives, and she has youth and initiative and precedence; but Margherita is a most attractive woman, with learning and accomplishments galore, and she has an art of conversation that allures and fascinates visiting foreigners of learning and wit, as well as of rank. Roman society is not large numerically, and the same people are constantly meeting and consolidating their many points of contact and interest. Social life in these Italian cities is the supreme occupation of the residents, and one must concede that in proportion as one meets the same people constantly does society gain in dramatic interest. With each person who is in any sense an individual the play of life begins. It gains in dramatic sequence as it proceeds. The Eternal City is a wonderful scenic setting for the human drama.

Local gossip suggests perceptible rivalry between the stately palace of the King and the pink palace on the hill, in which Margherita holds her state with not less ceremony than that observed at the Court of the Quirinale. It is a beautiful thing for a country to have in it a woman of high position, of leisure and of culture, who is so admirably fitted to be the friend of the people as is Margherita. She is a connoisseur in art; she has a most intelligent interest in science; she is a critical lover of literature; she is a wise and judicious and deeply sympathetic leader in all philanthropic work and purposes. One can hardly visit painter or poet or artist in any line, or school, institute, or association, but that he hears of the personal sympathy and encouragement bestowed by this noble and beautiful Italian Queen,—the Regina Madre.

Practically there are, indeed, two courts in Rome; that of the Palazzo Margherita seeming to quite rival that held at the Palazzo Quirinale. The palace of the Queen Mother is an imposing three-story structure of pink-hued marble, with beautiful gardens and terraces, and adjoining it, in the palace grounds, is a marble villa, used for the entertainment of royal guests. This palace has been the residence of Margherita when in Rome since the tragic death of King Umberto, in 1900. It is in the Ludovisi quarter, and stands on the very site of the Gardens of Sallust. The Queen Mother receives noted visitors constantly, and entertains visiting royalties and members of the aristocracy. No great man of science, literature, and art visits Rome without seeking a presentation to the liberal-minded and accomplished Regina Madre, who is one of the most winning and attractive of all the royal women of Europe.

It has become quite a feature in introducing young girls to present them first in private audience to Margherita, and then later to Queen Elena at the Court of the Quirinale. Surely no girl could be given a lovelier idea of womanhood than that embodied in the Dowager Queen. When the poet Carducci died in the early months of 1907, Margherita sent beautiful messages of consolation to his family, and, later, to his home city of Bologna she sent the following letter:—

"I announce that I make a free gift to the city of Bologna of the house where Giosue Carducci passed the last years of his life, and the library he collected there.

"Bologna, that showed such affectionate hospitality for Giosue Carducci for so many years, and surrounded him with so much devotion, will know, I feel sure, how to carefully preserve this remembrance of the greatest poet of modern Italy.

MARGHERITA."

The Syndic replied in a letter hardly less fine in its expression of Bologna's appreciation, and with assurances that the name of the first Queen of Italy will in future be forever associated with Italy's greatest modern poet.

The Regio Palazzo del Quirinale is near the Capitol, in the older part of the city, and only a small part of this is shown to visitors when the King and Queen are in residence. The Sala Regia may be seen, the chapel in which are preserved a large number of the wreaths and the addresses sent from all parts of the civilized world on the occasion of the death of Victor Emmanuel II, and a suite of reception rooms, the throne room with many historic portraits, the Sala des Ambassadeurs, and the audience chamber, containing Thorwaldsen's "Triumphal Procession of Alexander the Great," a gift from Napoleon I. In the small chapel of the Annunciation is an altar piece by Guido Reni.

To artists the Queen Mother is most generously kind. One of the younger Italian sculptors, Turillo Sindoni, Cavaliere of the Crown of Italy, whose latest creation is a very beautiful statue of St. Agnes, has his studios in the Via del Babuino, and to especially favored visitors he sometimes exhibits a beautiful letter that he received from Margherita, who purchased two of his statues. With the letter expressing her warm appreciation of his art was an exquisite gift of jewelled sleeve-links.

Notwithstanding the fascinating lectures of Professor Lanciani and the valuable and interesting work in the Forum that is being accomplished under the efficient directorship of Commendatore Boni, yet all the roads that traditionally lead to Rome do not converge to the palace on the Palatine. Modern Rome is only mildly archaeological, and while it takes occasional recognition of the ancient monuments, and drives to the crypt of old St. Agnes, to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and may manage a descent into the catacomb of St. Calixtus, it is far more actively interested in its dancing and dining and driving. As a scenic background for festivities Rome is a success, and as one comes into social touch with the titled nobility, and the resident life, by birth or adoption, one finds a city of infinite human interest and picturesque possibilities.

Between the "Whites" (the loyal followers of the Palazzo Quirinale and the King) and the "Blacks" (the devoted followers of the Palazzo Vaticano and the Pope) a great gulf is fixed over which no one may cross.

Pope Pius X is wonderfully accessible, considering the great responsibilities and duties he has on him, and his generous goodness, his gracious tact and the beauty of his spirit endear him to all, Catholic or Protestant alike, for every one recognizes in him the Christian gentleman, whose ideals of gentleness and inspiring helpfulness impress themselves on all who are so fortunate as to meet him.

The most impressive ceremonial receptions of the "Blacks" are those given at the Spanish Embassy in the Piazza di Spagna. At the Embassy or in the private palace of any Roman noble which a Cardinal honors by accepting an invitation, he is received according to a most picturesque old Roman custom. At the foot of the stairs two servants bearing lighted torches meet his Eminence, and, making a profound obeisance, escort him to the portals of the grand reception salon and await, in the corridor, his return. On his departure they escort him in the same way down the staircase.

In the College of Cardinals and among the many interesting individualities of the Vatican, the most marked figure is that of the Cardinal Secretary of State, Merry del Val. He occupies the Borgia apartments, which are hung with tapestry and ornamented with the most unique and valuable articles de vertu,—wonderful vases, inlaid cabinets, old tapestries, paintings, statues, busts, and ivories. These Borgia apartments are one of the most interesting features of the Palazzo Vaticano, and may be seen now and then by special permission when the Cardinal secretary is out, or when he may be pleased to retire into his more private salons in the apartment while the others are shown. Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val is an impressive personality, whose life seems strangely determined by destiny. His father was an attache of the Spanish embassy to the Court of St. James when the future Cardinal was born in 1865. In 1904, at the early age of thirty-nine, he was advanced from the soutane violet of the bishop to the mantelletta scarlet of the cardinal, and after the accession of the present Pope, Pius X, he was appointed to the highest office in the Vatican, that of Secretary of State, the Pope paying him the high tribute because of his "devotion to work, his capability and absolute self-negation."

Cardinal Merry del Val has had a wonderful training of experience and circumstances. At the early age of twenty-two he was a member of the papal embassy commissioned to the jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. He was also appointed a member of the embassy from the Vatican to attend the funeral of Emperor William I; and at the jubilee of Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, Cardinal (then Bishop) Merry del Val was the sole and accredited representative of the Holy See, as he was also at the coronation of King Edward. The Spanish Cardinal is the special trusted counsellor of the royal family of Spain.

In Rome, Cardinal Merry del Val is an impressive figure. He is always attended by his gentiluomo, who is gorgeously arrayed in knee breeches, military hat and sword. This gentleman in waiting walks behind him on a promenade, sits in his carriage and stands near him in all religious ceremonies. His equipage is well known in the Eternal City,—a stately black carriage drawn by two massive black horses with luxurious flowing manes.

It is freely prophesied in Rome that the Cardinal secretary is destined to yet exchange the mantelletta scarlet for the zucchetta white, when Pius X shall have gone the way of all his predecessors in the papal chair. He is the Cardinal especially favored by Austria and Spain. Although the conflict with France was at first ascribed to Cardinal Merry del Val, he has of late been completely exonerated from blame, even by the French prelates and clergy.

Cardinal Merry del Val represents the most advanced and progressive thought of the day. He is an enthusiastic admirer of Marconi and the marvels of wireless telegraphy; he is an advocate of telephonic service, electric motors, electric lights, and of phonographs and typewriters for the Vatican service. He is a great linguist, speaking English, French, and German as well as Spanish, which is his native tongue, and Italian, which has become second nature. He is a good Greek scholar and a profound Latin scholar, and he speaks the ancient Latin with the fluency and the force of the modern languages. He is, indeed, a remarkable twentieth-century personality and one who has apparently a very interesting life yet to come in his future.

At the Villa Pamphilia Doria, built by a former Prince Doria, the largest villa in the Roman environs and the finest now remaining, the Cardinal enjoys his game of golf, of which he is very fond. The Doria family rendered the villa magnificent in every respect. Besides the spacious avenues, woods, fountains, a lake, and cascades, are various edifices, among which is one in the form of a triumphal arch, decorated with ancient statues; the casino of the villa in which are preserved some ancient marbles and several pictures; the beautiful circular chapel, adorned with eight columns of marble and other stately ornaments. There is a monument erected by the present Prince Doria to the memory of the French soldiers who were killed there during the siege of 1849. From the terrace of the palace there is a magnificent view of the environs of Rome, as far as the sea. In consequence of excavations, some columbaria, sepulchres, inscriptions, and other relics have been found, which have attracted much attention from archaeologists.

It is near these grounds that the "Arcadians" still hold their al fresco meetings. The society dates back to 1690, and the first custos (whose duty was to open and close the meetings) was Crescimbeni. The "Arcadians" organized themselves to protest against the degeneracy of Italian poetry that marked the seventeenth century. To keep their meetings a secret from the populace the "Arcadians" held their meetings in an open garden on the slope below San Pietro in Montorio,—a terrace still known as "Bosco Parrasio degli Arcadi."

One of the enchanting views in Rome is from the Piazza San Giovanni. One looks far away past the Coliseum in its ruined grandeur and the casa where Lucrezia Borgia lived, and in the near distance is the colossal pile of San Giovanni di Laterano, its beautiful and impressive facade crowned with the statues of the apostles silhouetted against the western sky. In the piazza formed by the church, the museums, and the Baptistery of San Giovanni and the Scala Santa is one of the most remarkable obelisks in Rome, ninety-nine feet in height, formed of red granite and carved with hieroglyphics. This shaft is placed on a pedestal which makes it in all some 115 feet in height. It was placed in 1568 by Sixtus V. The museums of the San Giovanni are the "Museo Sacro" and the "Museo Profano,"—the latter founded by Pope Gregory XVI, and very rich in sculptures and mosaics. The "Museo Sacro" was founded by Pio Nono, and is rich in the antiquities of the Christian era. Within San Giovanni the visitor finds himself in a vast interior divided by columns of verd-antique into three aisles, each of which is as wide as, and far longer than, the interior of an ordinary church. Statues fill the niches, and the chapels and confessionals are all beautifully decorated. The Corsini Chapel is the richest and was executed by order of Clement XII, in honor of St. Andrew Corsini, who is represented in a rich mosaic painting copied from Guido. Two sculptured figures, "Innocence" and "Penitence," stand before the altar, and above is a relief depicting St. Andrew protecting the Florentine army at the battle of Anghiari.

The tomb of Pope Clement XII (who himself belonged to the Corsini family and who was an uncle of Cardinal Corsini) is in a niche between two columns of porphyry, and there is a bronze statue of the Pope. On the opposite side is a statue of Cardinal Corsini, and in the crypt below are tombs of the Corsini family. On the altar—always lighted—is a "Pieta" by Bernini, of which the face of the Christ is very beautiful.

Near the centre of the Basilica is a rich tabernacle of precious stones, defined by four columns of verde antico, and it is said that the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul are preserved here. The table upon which Christ celebrated the Last Supper is placed here, above the altar of the Holy Sacrament, a sacred relic that thrills the visitors. In one chapel is a curious and grotesque group of sculpture,—a skeleton holding up a medallion portrait, while an angel with outstretched wings hovers over it.

San Giovanni has the reputation of being absolutely the coldest church in all Rome, which—it is needless to remark—means a great deal, for they all in winter have the temperature of the arctic regions. In all these great churches there is never any heat; no apparatus for heating has ever been introduced, and the twentieth century finds them just as cold as they were in the centuries of a thousand years ago. This colossal Basilica is considered the most important church in the world, as it is the cathedral of the Pontiff. It was founded in the third century by Constantine, destroyed by fire in 1308, and rebuilt by Pope Clement V, and every succeeding Pope has added to it. The facade is of travertine, with four gigantic columns and six pilasters, and the cornice is decorated with colossal figures of Jesus and a number of the saints. There are five balconies, the middle one being always used for papal benedictions. In the portico is the colossal statue of Constantine the Great. Within the columns are of verde antico; the ceiling was designed by Michael Angelo; the interior is very rich in sculpture, and there are some fine paintings and the chapels are most beautiful, one of them containing a tabernacle comprised wholly of precious stones. Above the altar of the Holy Sacrament the table upon which Christ celebrated the Last Supper with the disciples is preserved. It is wonderful to look upon this most sacred and significant relic.

It is in this church that the tomb of Leo XIII has been constructed by the eminent Italian sculptor, Tadolini, opposite the tomb of Innocent III. The work was completed in the spring of 1907, the design being a life-size portrait statue of the Pope with two figures, one on either side, representing the church and the workman-pilgrim, forming part of the group. This is one of the most memorable monuments of all Rome, and the tomb of the great Leo XIII will form a new shrine for Christian pilgrimage.

Included in the group of structures that form the great Basilica of San Giovanni is the Scala Santa, which offers a strange picture whenever one approaches it. These twenty-eight marble steps that belonged to Pilate's house in Jerusalem are said to have been once trodden by Jesus and may be ascended only on one's knees. At no hour of the day can one visit the Scala Santa without finding the most motley and incongruous throng thus ascending, pausing on each step for meditation and prayer. These stairs were transported from Jerusalem to Rome under the auspices of St. Helena, the Empress, about 326 A.D., and in 1589 they were placed by Pope Sixtus V in this portico built for them with a chapel at the top of the stairs called the "Sancta Sanctorum," formerly the private chapel of the Popes. In this sanctuary is preserved a wonderful portrait of the Saviour, painted on wood, which is said to have been partly the work of St. Luke but finished by unseen hands. The legend runs that St. Luke prepared to undertake the work by three days' fasting and prayer, and that, having drawn it in outline, the painting was done by angelic ministry, the colors being filled in by invisible hands. In ancient times—the custom being abolished by Pius V in 1566—this picture was borne through Rome on the Feast of the Assumption and the bearer halted with it in the Forum, when the "Kyrie Eleison" would be chanted by hundreds of voices.

Myth and legend invest every turn and footfall of the Eternal City, and there are few that are not founded on what the church has always called supernatural manifestations, but which the new age is learning to recognize as occurrences under natural law.

The story of Luther's ascent of the Scala Santa is thus told:—

"Brother Martin Luther went to accomplish the ascent of the Scala Santa—the Holy Staircase—which once, they say, formed part of Pilate's house. He slowly mounted step after step of the hard stone, worn into hollows by the knees of penitents and pilgrims. Patiently he crept halfway up the staircase, when he suddenly stood erect, lifted his face heavenward, and in another moment turned and walked slowly down again.

"He said that as he was toiling up a voice as if from heaven spoke to him and said, 'The just shall live by faith.' He awoke as if from a nightmare, restored to himself. He dared not creep up another step; but rising from his knees he stood upright like a man suddenly loosed from bonds and fetters, and with the firm step of a free man he descended the staircase and walked from the place."

The entire legendary as well as sacred history is almost made up of instances of the interpenetration of the two worlds; the response of those in the spiritual world to the needs of those in the natural world. Pope Paschal recorded that he fell asleep in his chair at St. Peter's (somewhere about 8.20 A.M.) with a prayer on his lips that he might find the burial place of St. Cecilia, and in his dream she appeared to him and showed him the spot where her body lay, in the catacombs of Calixtus. The next day he went to the spot and found all as had been revealed to him. The miraculous preservation of St. Agnes is familiar to all students of legendary art. Throughout all Rome, shrine and niche and sculpture, picture, monument, arch and column, speak perpetually of some interposition of unseen forces with events and circumstances in this part of life. The Eternal City in its rich and poetic symbolism is one great object lesson of the interblending of the two worlds, the natural and the spiritual. The first stage regarding all this marvellous panorama was entire and unquestioning acceptance; the succeeding stage was doubt, disbelief; the third, into which we are now entering, is that of an enlightened understanding and a growing knowledge and grasp of the laws under which these special interpositions and interventions occur.

For that "according to thy faith be it unto thee," is as true now in the twentieth century as it was in the first. The one central truth that is the very foundation of all religious philosophy is the continuity of life and the persistence of intercourse and communion, spirit to spirit, across the gulf we call death. The evidences of this truth have been always in the world. The earliest records of the Bible are replete with them. The gospels of the New Testament record an unbroken succession of occurrences and of testimony to this interpenetration of life in the Unseen with that in the Seen. Secular history is full of its narrations of instances of clairvoyance, clairaudience, and of communications in a variety of ways; and the sacred and legendary art of Rome, largely founded on story and myth and legend, when seen in the light of latter-day science is judged anew, and the literal truth of much that has before been considered purely legendary is revealed and realized. One reads new meanings into Rome when testing it by this consciousness. It is a city of spiritual symbolism. It is a great object lesson extending over all the centuries. Making due allowance for the distortion and exaggeration of ages of testimony, there yet remains a residuum indisputable. The Past and the Present both teem with record and incident and experience proving that life is twofold, even now and here; that all the motives and acts of the life which we see are variously incited, modified, strengthened, or annulled by those in the realm of the Unseen.



The intelligent recognition of this truth changes the entire conduct of life. It entirely alters the point of view. It extends the horizon line infinitely. Instead of conceiving of life as a whole, as comprised between the cradle and the grave, it will be regarded in its larger and truer scope as a series of experiences and achievements, infinite in length and in their possibilities and unbroken by the change we call death. This will impart to humanity a new motor spring in that greater hope which puts man in a working mood, which makes him believe in the value of that which he undertakes, which encourages him to press on amid all difficulties and against all obstacles. Increasing hope, all activity is proportionately increased. It was an event of incalculable importance to the progress of humanity when the swift communication by cable was established between America and Europe. It is one of infinitely greater importance to establish the truth and enlarge the possibility of direct communication with the world of higher forces and larger attainment and scope than our own. This communication exists and has always existed, but it has been regarded as myth and legend and phenomenon rather than as a fact of nature whose laws were to be ascertained and understood. It must be made clear as an absolute scientific demonstration that the change of form by the process we call death does not put an end to intelligent and rational intercourse, but that, indeed, instead of setting up a barrier, it removes barriers and renders mutual comprehension far clearer and more direct than before. This realization alters the entire perspective of life, and is the new Glad Tidings of great joy.