Here at Rome, we have an American sculptor of great ability, Henry K. Brown, who is just beginning to be talked about.  He is executing a statue of Ruth gleaning in the field of Boaz, of which the model has been ready for some months, and is also modelling a figure of Rebecca at the Well.  When I first saw his Ruth I was greatly struck with it, but after visiting the studios of Wyatt and Gibson, and observing their sleek imitations of Grecian art, their learned and faultless statues, nymphs or goddesses or gods of the Greek mythology, it was with infinite pleasure that my eyes rested again on the figure and face of Ruth, perhaps not inferior in perfection of form, but certainly informed with a deep human feeling which I found not in their elaborate works.  The artist has chosen the moment in which Ruth is addressed by Boaz as she stands among the gleaners.  He quoted to me the lines of Keats, on the song of the nightingale—­

  “Perchance the self-same song that found a path
  To the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home,
  She stood in tears amid the alien’s corn.”

She is not in tears, but her aspect is that of one who listens in sadness; her eyes are cast down, and her thoughts are of the home of her youth, in the land of Moab.  Over her left arm hangs a handful of ears of wheat, which she has gathered from the ground, and her right rests on the drapery about her bosom.  Nothing can be more graceful than her attitude or more expressive of melancholy sweetness and modesty than her physiognomy.  One of the copies which the artist was executing—­there were two of them—­is designed for a gentleman in Albany.  Brown will shortly, or I am greatly mistaken, achieve a high reputation among the sculptors of the time.

Rosseter, an American painter, who has passed six years in Italy, is engaged on a large picture, the subject of which is taken from the same portion of Scripture history, and which is intended for the gallery of an American gentleman.  It represents Naomi with her two daughters-in-law, when “Orpah kissed her, but Ruth clave unto her.”  The principal figures are those of the Hebrew matron and Ruth, who have made their simple preparations for their journey to the land of Israel, while Orpah is turning sorrowfully away to join a caravan of her country people.  This group is well composed, and there is a fine effect of the rays of the rising sun on the mountains and rocks of Moab.

At the studio of Lang, a Philadelphia artist, I saw two agreeable pictures, one of which represents a young woman whom her attendants and companions are arraying for her bridal.  As a companion piece to this, but not yet finished, he had upon the easel a picture of a beautiful girl, decked for espousals of a different kind, about to take the veil, and kneeling in the midst of a crowd of friends and priests, while one of them is cutting off her glossy and flowing hair.  Both pictures are designed for a Boston gentleman, but a duplicate of the first has already been painted for the King of Wirtemberg.