It is particularly gratifying to see men that might amass far more money and attain more temporary power in other things, despise those lower lures, too powerful in our country, and aim only at excellence in the expression of thought.  Among these I may mention Story and Mozier.  Story has made in Florence the model for a statue of his father.  This I have not seen, but two statuettes that he modelled here from the “Fisher” of Goethe pleased me extremely.  The languid, meditative reverie of the boy, the morbid tenderness of his nature, is most happily expressed in the first, as is the fascinated surrender to the siren murmur of tire flood in the second.  He has taken the moment

  “Half drew she him; half sank he in,” &c.

I hope some one will give him an order to make them in marble.  Mozier seemed to have an immediate success.  The fidelity and spirit of his portrait-busts could be appreciated by every one; for an ideal head of Pocahontas, too, he had at once orders for many copies.  It was not an Indian head, but, in the union of sweetness and strength with a princelike, childlike dignity, very happily expressive of his idea of her character.  I think he has modelled a Rebecca at the Well, but this I did not see.

These have already a firm hold on the affections of our people; every American who comes to Italy visits their studios, and speaks of them with pride, as indeed they well may, in comparing them with artists of other nations.  It will not be long before you see Greenough’s group; it is in spirit a pendant to Cooper’s novels.  I confess I wish he had availed himself of the opportunity to immortalize the real noble Indian in marble.  This is only the man of the woods,—­no Metamora, no Uncas.  But the group should be very instructive to our people.

You seem as crazy about Powers’s Greek Slave as the Florentines were about Cimabue’s Madonnas, in which we still see the spark of genius, but not fanned to its full flame.  If your enthusiasm be as genuine as that of the lively Florentines, we will not quarrel with it; but I am afraid a great part is drawing-room rapture and newspaper echo.  Genuine enthusiasm, however crude the state of mind from which it springs, always elevates, always educates; but in the same proportion talking and writing for effect stultifies and debases.  I shall not judge the adorers of the Greek Slave, but only observe, that they have not kept in reserve any higher admiration for works even now extant, which are, in comparison with that statue, what that statue is compared with any weeping marble on a common monument.

I consider the Slave as a form of simple and sweet beauty, but that neither as an ideal expression nor a specimen of plastic power is it transcendent.  Powers stands far higher in his busts than in any ideal statue.  His conception of what is individual in character is clear and just, his power of execution almost unrivalled; but he has had a lifetime of discipline for the bust, while his studies on the human body are comparatively limited; nor is his treatment of it free and masterly.  To me, his conception of subject is not striking:  I do not consider him rich in artistic thought.