Such aid may be, and is, derived from the influences of Italy. Of those agencies which have a direct influence upon the action of the artist, which serve to assist him in manifesting his idea and fulfilling his purpose, mention will be made in connection with the works which have been produced in Italian studios. They have less importance than that great element related to the innermost of the artist's life,--to that power of which we have spoken, making Art-action necessary. It is not, however, exclusively antique Art which exercises this power of elevation. Ancient Art may be a better term; as all great Art bears a like relation to the student. In Florence the mediaeval influences predominate. Rome exercises _its_ power through the medium of the antique. There is much Christian Art in Rome. Yet its effect is insignificant, compared with that of the vast collection of Greek sculptures to be found within its walls. Instinctively, as the vague yearnings and prophecies of youth lift him in whom they quicken away from youth's ordinary purposes and associations, his thought turns to that far city where are gathered the achievements of those who were indeed the gods of Hellas. To be there, and to demand from those eloquent lips the secret of the golden age, is his dream and aim, and there shall be solved the problem of his life. But antique Art, waiting so patiently twenty centuries to afford aid to the artist, waits also to sit in judgment upon his worth and acts. Woe to him who cannot pass the ordeal of its power, and explain the enigma of its speech! Nothing can be more pitiful and sad than the condition of one who, having been subjected to the influence of ancient Art, has not had the ability to recognize or the earnestness of purpose essential to the apprehension of the truths which it has for his soul instead of his hands. But if, through truthfulness of aim, and a sense of the divine nature of the errand to which he seems appointed, he reach the law of Art, then henceforth its pursuit becomes the sign of life; if the impulse bear him no farther than rules, then all he produces goes forth as a proclamation of death. There is no middle path. Art is high or low: high, if it be the profoundest life of an earnest man, uttering itself in the _real_, even though it be awkwardly, and in violation of all accepted methods of expression; low, if it be not such utterance, even though consummate in obedience to the finest rules of all Art-science. There can be no other way. The life is in the man, and not in the stone; and no affectation of vitality can atone for the absence of that soul which should have been breathed into existence from his own divine life.