Very shortly after our arrival in Florence and the renewal of our friendship with Powers--I think not more than a year--there arrived in Florence, bringing a letter of introduction to my mother, an English gentleman of fortune, Mr. Grant. He was a noted lover and patron of art, and my mother proposed to him a visit to the Studio Powers. The sculptor had then just completed his first imaginative work, the "Greek Slave," which numerous _replicas_ have since made so well known on both sides of the Atlantic. This work had greatly excited my mother's admiration, and it was that he might have an opportunity of seeing the "Greek Slave" that my mother was desirous of taking Mr. Grant to the sculptor's studio. But it was not altogether easy to induce Mr. Grant to accept the proposal. "If there is anything very good, that is the very reason why I must not go there. Lead me not into temptation! I have been spending all my money, and more than I meant to spend, on sculpture in Rome. Don't show me any more statues, for I cannot buy any more." But this confession of fearing temptation was calculated to produce a stronger determination to expose him to it. Mr. Grant was persuaded to visit the studio in the Via Romana: he was as much charmed with the beauty of the conception of the statue as with the conscientious perfection of its execution, and he became the purchaser of it. And it speedily acquired a reputation which led to the execution of as many, I think, as four or five replicas at the request of other lovers of art; and the sculptor's reputation was made.