All allow him the highest degree of skill in execution, but some deny that he has shown equal ability in his conceptions.  “He is confessedly,” said one of them to me, who, however, had not seen his Greek slave, “the greatest sculptor of busts in the world—­equal, in fact, to any that the world ever saw; the finest heads of antiquity are not of a higher order than his.”  He then went on to express his regret that Powers had not confined his labors to a department in which he was so pre-eminent.  I have heard that Powers, who possesses great mechanical skill, has devised several methods of his own for giving precision and perfection to the execution of his works.  It may be that my unlearned eyes are dazzled by this perfection, but really I can not imagine any thing more beautiful of its kind than his statue of the Greek slave.

Gray is at this moment in Florence, though he is soon coming to Rome.  He has made some copies from Titian, one of which I saw.  It was a Madonna and child, in which the original painting was rendered with all the fidelity of a mirror.  So indisputably was it a Titian, and so free from the stiffness of a copy, that, as I looked at it, I fully sympathized with the satisfaction expressed by the artist at having attained the method of giving with ease the peculiarity of coloring which belongs to Titian’s pictures.

An American landscape painter of high merit is G. L. Brown, now residing at Florence.  He possesses great knowledge of detail, which he knows how to keep in its place, subduing it, and rendering it subservient to the general effect.  I saw in his studio two or three pictures, in which I admired his skill in copying the various forms of foliage and other objects, nor was I less pleased to see that he was not content with this sort of merit, but, in going back from the foreground, had the art of passing into that appearance of an infinity of forms and outlines which the eye meets with in nature.  I could not help regretting that one who copied nature so well, should not prefer to represent her as she appears in our own fresh and glorious land, instead of living in Italy and painting Italian landscapes.

To refer again to foreign artists—­before I left Florence I visited the annual exhibition which had been opened in the Academy of the Fine Arts.  There were one or two landscapes reminding me somewhat of Cole’s manner, but greatly inferior, and one or two good portraits, and two or three indifferent historical pictures.  The rest appeared to me decidedly bad; wretched landscapes; portraits, some of which were absolutely hideous, stiff, ill-colored, and full of grimace.