Rome was in those days the Lotophagitis of our century, whose population lived in an artificial peace, a sort of dreamland--artists who, whether German, French, English, Americans, or Russians, were more or less imbued with the feeling of the old art, and who found their _clientéle_ in people who believed, as I have heard some say, that _any_ picture painted in Rome was better than any picture painted elsewhere! There was, therefore, a continual exportation of copies, good and bad, of the old masters and a few landscapes for the remembering of localities, but the quality of the art was of trifling importance to the buyers--it was "done in Rome," and that sufficed as merit. The Café Greco, haunt of the race of artists since Salvator Rosa, was in its original and charming, if rude, simplicity, and there came all the artists to take their after-dinner cup. Old John Gibson, though not the oldest of the habitués, was the chief of our Anglo-American community; Randolph Rogers, Mosier, Reinhart, Story, and two or three other sculptors, whose names I have forgotten, and two or three American landscape painters, of whom Tilton was chief at the time of my arrival, had the monopoly of American patronage, and every wealthy American who came conceived it his duty to patronize American art, while our government had the tradition of always sending an artist to Rome as consul. Charlotte Cushman, a famous actress of her day, was the nucleus of a little clique of women sculptors, Miss Stebbins, Harriet Hosmer, and one or two others of lesser fame. Accordingly, she made war on sculptors of the other sex in all the curious ways of womanly malice, in order to the exclusive reaping by her protégées of the golden harvest. I had known her years before, when she was still on the stage and I the dramatic and art critic of the New York "Evening Post," and, as our relations had then been cordial, it was natural that she should "take me up" on my arrival. Her hospitality was large--dinners, musical evenings, etc., and she had a "salon," to all which I was a welcome guest, and the cordiality lasted until she thought it time to make use of me. She then proposed to me to undertake the demolition of the fictitious reputations of the leading American sculptors, especially Story, Mosier, and Rogers, and, when I replied that I had then the intention of returning to the occupation of a landscape painter, and that in that position, as well as in that of consul and in a manner the protector of all my countrymen, it would be inconsistent with the position to publish criticisms on my fellow artists, the thermometer of her regard fell at once, and I had instant evidence that I was out of her list of friends.