But that which lifts the true artist above externals, the externals of his own individual being, crushes the false, to whom the marble and the paint are in themselves the ultimate.

This train of thought has been suggested by the fact of the dominion which classic Art has acquired over sculptors, and by the influence of the sixteenth and seventeenth century schools upon painters.  It is due, however, to our sculptors in Italy that credit should be given them for having resisted the influence 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 private fact of the man is hidden by the public general truth.  If, however, the energies of the individual overtop the science, enabling him to assert himself above the summit of its history, then is he accessible to all generations, and can in no wise avoid or forfeit his just fame.