You made my life a burden-you took away from me all that I cared for in this world, but I pity you in this hour when your sin has found you out, and I forgive you. I will pray for you to the God whose love is infinite-whose compassion is boundless. Your soul is not lost. You shall not die without hope." "You forgive me? You are sure? You can ask mercy for me of God? He will hear your prayer-yours, whom I have injured. I will hope-O God, is it not too late?" "The promise fails not, even at the eleventh hour," Miss Letitia murmured, with a solemn sweetness in her voice. al should be over. So she waited four days longer, and then, when all reason for delay was at an end, she took the packet from her desk, and was going to dispatch it to Nelson Guthrie. As she stood with it in her hand a doubt suggested itself for the first time. Should she send it? Had she a right to clear herself in his eyes at the risk of recalling so many old memories? He had loved her once well and truly. Should she revive the spell, if that were possible-make him discontented with the present-stir his heart with vain longings? Would it be just to his wife-the wife to whom in this whole matter no blame could attach-whose sufficient misfor Just then a strong, firm step sounded in the tune it was that the man who married her had, yard, and the sick woman started eagerly. at best, no fond freshness of first love to give her? "It is the deacon," she said; "he is coming, and we shall have but a moment more. Go to that desk in the corner-the key is in it. You will see, in the little drawer at the right, the packet directed to Nelson Guthrie., Take it away and read it. It will make all the particulars clear. When I am dead send it to him, and then he will understand us both." Trembling in every limb Miss Letitia did her bidding, and went back to the bedside with the packet in her hand. "Yes, that is it; and there is the Deacon's step on the threshold. He loves me-surely it can not be wrong to give him the consolation of believing me worthy of it. Once more, before you leave me, oh let me hear you say that you forgive me!" "Fully and freely, as I hope myself to be forgiven," Miss Letitia answered, solemnly; and then, moved by a divine impulse of tenderness and pity, she bent over and pressed her lips to the feverish brow. Going out, she met Deacon Parmelee in the room beyond, wearing a face on which anxiety and watching were graving stern lines. She went into the gathering twilight. The sad wind was wailing still-the leaves rustled, the crickets chirped mournfully; but a star was rising already in the cast, while yet the crimson autumn sunset burned above the western hills. "We have seen his star in the east," she murmured. "There is hope in the heavens." Let Miss Letitia was just, to the heart's core; and she was, besides, self-forgetful and resolute. What mattered it, she thought, whether or not he understood her now? Let him go on. whatever domestic happiness time had fostered at his hearth-stone still grow. When the end came would be time enough for her to stand before him justified. So her mind was made up. She wrote him a few lines, explaining simply how the confession came into her hands, and the motives which deterred her from sending it to him at once. Then, in her turn, she folded and sealed the packet, and directed it on the outside: "To be given, unopened, into the hands of Nelson Guthrie, after the death of Letitia Mason." That was all. Last week she had believed her lover of other days recreant to all truth and loyalty. Over the grave where his memory lay buried she had dared to drop no tear-plant no blossom. Now she knew that the wrong had not been on his part; and the thought that he had not given her up voluntarily was balm to her self-respect. So she took up her old life again, with something less than the old burden to carry. Slowly Years came and passed noiselessly. silver threads grew into the brown, shining hair, and the delicate, youthful color faded a little. She scarcely realized how time went on until her fortieth birth-day found her. Then That night she read all the long confession, she began to feel how many the lonely years . and understood on just what rocks the hope of had been. Twenty-two years ago that day the her life had stranded and gone down helplessly. note had come from Nelson Guthrie which gave After all, there was a certain sweetness in the her back her troth-plight, and since then she had knowledge that the man she loved had been never experienced one flutter of womanly vanity neither false nor fickle, but only, like herself, or anticipation. Life, to all selfish intents, endwronged and deceived. She could never be ed with her that spring day, she thought. Since any thing more to him in this life; but it was then, as more than one whom she had comfortsomething to be sure that he had once loved ed could have borne witness, she had been doher. When the life going out in that house ing the Master's work. She felt a little sad on across the fields was ended, she would send him this day of all days in the year. Memory was the packet, and then-reinstated in his esteem-busy, and the path before her, leading on to old she could bear to go on alone through the rest age, perhaps, stretched out bare and bleak. of her pilgrimage. It was in the middle of the long forenoon The next morning news came that the Dea- that a wagon stopped at the gate, and a man con's wife was dead. She thought it would not be seemly to send off the dead woman's confession until the funer whom she recognized as the near neighbor of the Guthries-who lived at the other end of the town- dismounted and came up toward the house. A subtle, prophetic instinct told | have shared it with you. But God knew best by what path to lead us both home. Margaret has been a true, good wife. Letty, will you care for her and comfort her when I am gone? You are stronger than she, and she will be quite alone." her his errand before she met him at the door. Her old lover had sent for her was dying, probably. “Mr. Guthrie is sick,” the man began, abruptly, "and they say he has not long to live. He took a bad cold about ten days ago, and inflammation of the lungs set in, and they've given up all hopes of him. He says you were an old friend, and he wants to see you if you are willing to go." "I will be ready in five minutes," she answered, with apparent calmness, but she turned back into the house, her heart throbbing strangely. Now, after all these years, her time had come-now she had a right to justify herself in his dying eyes. She took the packet she had kept so long, put on her bonnet, and went out. They rode in utter silence over the three miles of dusty road which lay between her little cottage and Nelson Guthrie's house. She noticed, as one in a dream, how blue the sky was, and heard the spring birds sing, and the full brooks murmur. At last she was there. It was pitiful to see how so brief an illness had shattered the forces of that strong man's life. Pale almost as he would be when they should put his grave-clothes on he was now, his face worn and wan, his heavy black beard making it look yet more ghastly. His wife had met Miss Letitia at the door with a whispered welcome, and as if by previous arrangement led her into the sick man's room, and left her there. "I wanted to look yet once more in this world upon your face," he said, faintly, his eyes kindling a little as he saw her at his bedside. "I wanted to forgive you.' "If she will let me I will be her friend-I will take her as your legacy." "Call her, please, and wait for her in another room. I must make her understand how near was the tie between us." She went out and sent his wife in. Was it all over, she thought, and over so calmly? Standing on the threshold of the grave, how quietly he had received the tidings which had stirred her own soul seven years ago to its depths. But he understood her now-he knew that she had been true. For the rest, death calms the wildest pulses. After a while Margaret came out. She had been weeping evidently, but she came up to Letitia and kissed her. "He has told me all," she said, "and I know" that you, not I, ought to have been his wife. But he loves me a good deal, I think; and he has been very kind to me, and made me happy. It is almost over now. Will you stay till the last? He wishes it." "Till the last" was not long. The third day the summons came which called home the tired soul to forget all sorrows, all failures, all disappointments in the blessedness which is infinite. And by his bedside the two women who had loved him watched and wept, while his lips grew cold, and his proud, passionate, true heart stopped beating. Miss Letitia had learned to suffer quietly by the discipline of long, sad years. The wound. "You never had any thing to forgive," she in her heart was. deep, but it bled inwardly. answered, quietly. "Never! Letty!" Outwardly she was calm, and supported Margaret by her steady, undemonstrative courage. When the funeral was over Margaret clung still to the friend in whom she seemed to find rest and strength. They scarcely knew on which "Never. For seven years I have had in my possession Grace Anderson's confession-the confession of the wrong-doing which separated us. I did not mean that you should see it un-side the proposal that they should live together til I was dead. But your time has come first, and you must not die until you know the truth, and have forgiven Grace." He put out his hand with an eager gesture. "Read it, Letty!" he cried. "Read every word of it. I think my soul could almost linger at the gates of death to hear such tidings." She read it plainly and clearly, every word. When she was through she waited for him to speak. "Did you forgive her, Letty-you, with your lonely woman's heart, your solitary life?" "I forgave her-I prayed for her-I believe God heard me." Her voice came clear but very low. "Then I, too, forgive her. Letty, I loved you in those days-we belonged to each other. It would have made my life a different thing to originated; but it was carried out before midsummer, and they were both settled in the little cottage where Miss Letitia had lived alone so long. And then time went on again, and the grass grew green on Nelson Guthrie's grave; and his widow's passionate grief subsided into gentle regret and tender memory. Regret so gentle that its shadow failed to affright a new wooer; and Mistress Margaret, fair and sweet still at a little past forty, went out of Miss Letitia's cottage into another home. And again Letitia was all alone. Alone, but never lonely; for now she dreams that when Margaret shall go, resting on her later love, to the country peopled by shades, she herself, true through all, will have the right to stand proudly at Nelson Guthrie's side. AMERICAN STUDIOS IN ROME tion of the representative American traveler in AND FLORENCE. ces Who solemnly us over the fire, in the delicious abandon of a wellbeloved pastor's Sunday evening, he broke forth in laudation of some well-put point of his morning homily. "That may all be very true, my dear, but hadn't you better let somebody else praise you?" was the conjugal counterblast to this flourish of Pharisaism. "Somebody else?' No indeed!" quoth the trumpeter; "the poor coots don't know how to put it on in the right place." Doubtless the artists whose ill-fortune opened their studios during the last winter to my crude criticism may class me under like ornithological condemnation with the sermon-critics of my progenitor. But during my residence in Italy I was so impressed by the fact of the neglect by American tourists of the studios of their countrymen and women that I determined, at my first opportunity, to pipe a little against this ignorance and indifference before three or four deserving doors in Rome and Florence. If you will not dance I shall at least have relieved my spirit. It is a lamentable truism that the representative American traveler prefers an indifferent bust or picture by an Italian or English artist to the best which his compatriots can achieve. two individuals in Rome whom it was desirable to see-" first the Pope, then Mrs. Dr. G." Now, it happened that to the latter little epitome of all charity and hospitality we are indebted for much of that which makes us still cry with Shakspeare, "Was't not a happy star Led us to Rome-" and being there, to Numero tredici via Condotti! It was her generous ire which spurred our supineness around the circle of American artists in the Eternal City, and even in remote Florence. The pity is that this should be a notable instance of esprit de corps and de esprit de pays— that every American resident of position abroad should not feel a fraternal interest in the success of American artists around him, and make of himself a conscience for the admonition of thoughtless tourists from their native land, with hearts or purses to be touched. I understand that Mr. Jarves has pronounced William Story to be unappreciated in America. However true this may be in regard to untraveled connoisseurs, I think the representative American traveler is least likely to neglect this among all American studios in Rome. Does not Murray indorse Mr. Story's handiwork as Going forth from the artistic atmosphere of "much noticed" at the great London Exposian average American circle, strong in the faith tion of 1862? This Anglican baptism is surely that Squire Jonathan's portrait in oils, and his almost equivalent to British birth. Moreover, it boarding-school daughter's monochromatics and is quite safe to give loose rein to one's adjeccrayons are the ne plus ultra of art, he enters tives and notes of admiration in the presence of his first European gallery to depart a sadder, the Soul, the Sappho, and the Sybil, and all the but scarcely a wiser man. "Ichabod" is more because there are sure to be among the thenceforth written not only upon daughter carriages which wait on the Saturday receptions Mary's thrilling sea-fights and gay beauties in in the Via di San Nicolo di Tolentino an Italian pastel, but upon all American art. His self-coronet or two, and some well-quartered British conceit in its sloughing leaves no atom of con- escutcheon. fidence in aught which his land can produce. Yet his converse admiration of foreign art must necessarily be indiscriminating, since he retains the complacent belief that no jackanapes with his technical jargon can teach him what to admire. Not he! He hasn't called Ruskin a madman and Jarves a fool, in snubbing Mary's raptures, to go to them or any other critic for instruction. Accordingly he stocks his gallery, as he would disdain to do his shop, with foreign wares, of whose origin, intent, and worth he is utterly ignorant, only making sure that no "Yankee trash" is included. He carries home in triumph a blear-eyed Bcatrice Cenci, a leering Madonna della Sedia exccuted by a Roman sign-painter, a medallion portrait of himself chipped out in the putty-relievo of a third-rate English artist, and a family-group cannily altered for the occasion from a Niobe and her Children, which had long cumbered the appartemento of some Italian sharper. Our own escape from the sin and condemna We had the privilege of entering the innermost studio, and seeing the sculptor, mouldingstick in hand. Even in its immaturity and in soulless plaster we saw in the Medea a grander statue than those apt fingers had previously created. The artist is said to have followed Ristori like her shadow, and has appropriated the great tragedienne's inspiration as a spiritual body for his own. It was a sad pleasure to see also in this inner sanctum that which is pronounced by Mr. Browning, and her brother Mr. Barrett, the best of all the many essays to render the drooping head and pathetic face of Elizabeth Browning. This bust was chiseled from the artist's memory of the poet (with whose personal friendship he was privileged), and its creation was trammeled by no lying portraits or superficial photographs as a model. But why do we linger here where my pipe is absurdly superfluous? Were all America besides silent in his praise, Mr. Story might well rest content with Hawthorne's crowning. Miss Hosmer also is too well known in America by means of her peripatetic Zenobia, and her stationary Statesman, together with fascinating traditions still rife about Boston Common and the Piazza di Spagna in regard to youthful escapades and maturer deeds of prowess, to be overlooked by the representative American traveler. She, too, has the prestige of British patronage through her master Gibson, whose characteristic dictum, "Yes, yes, true art should be descriptive!" engraved in stone, is appropriately the legend of her studio. We approached this celebrity with inward trepidation, on one of her weekly reception-days. Unlike Mr. Story, she does all her visitors the honor of receiving them in person, and it was pleasant to find a bright, piquant woman instead of the Amazon, bustling with weapons offensive, which our fancy had conjured from the shadowy realm of gossip. Her style of conversation is rather crisp than brusk, and she enters cordially into her guest's admiration of her work. With kindly patience she told over and again in our hearing to successive visitors the story of her brazen door, which, with its twelve bassirelievi representing the hours of night, is to shut in the treasures of an English nobleman's artgallery. But little Puck, rollicking little elf, won our hearts most of all among Miss Hosmer's marbles; and this not alone because the millennial state, wherein a little child shall lead all captive, has already begun with us, so that every thing fair, dimpled, and infantile attracts Puck seemed to us altogether the most spontaneous of the artist's works. A captive queen she never saw even in her dreams, but a mischievous morsel of humanity or fairy hood is native to a woman's fancy. us. Mr. Rogers, who shares with Rheinhart the honor of completing the doors of the national capitol from the design of the lamented Crawford, had just executed a colossal statue of a Union soldier, gun in hand, for Cincinnati. In spite of the amusing account of the sitting with which the artist entertained us, we could but regret that the model of the statue had been a brave Celt, who, however, seemed from the story to have been prouder of the distinction of being "brother to him as married owld Boker's daughter" (the hero of a New York parlor and coach-house romance of several years ago) than of any personal perfections or valor. Still there he stands, grim and war-worn, but unflinching, and invincible. An English lady chanced to enter this studio, and being told that in this statue she might see a brave of the United States army, remarked eagerly, "Ah, yes. It is Stonewall Jackson, I suppose;" he being the only hero among his cousins of whose exploits John Bull permits his unsophisticated family to read. "No, Madam, on the contrary," replied the loyal sculptor, with distinct enunciation, "this is the man that shot him!" Any successful artist must accumulate vast stores of ana from the lips of garrulous visitors. Another Briton, wandering superciliously through the same studio, paused before a bust of Cicero. "Such wonderful concentration as all your American faces have!" said he. "Now I should know that to be a countryman of yours had I chanced to see it in a Japanese artist's studio. Ah, there is no mistaking the American type!" The blushing sculptor courteously allowed the citizenship of the novel Yankee to pass unchallenged, and the undaunted physiognomist passed on to further criticism. One day Mr. Rogers was exhibiting his pretty Nydia to a deaf spectator.. "What did you say her name was?" "You don't say! Why she looks quite intelligent for an idiot!" We had the pleasure of seeing in clay Mr. Rogers's conception of Isaac kneeling upon the Altar of Sacrifice. The face of the young martyr is marked by exquisite beauty of expression. One could judge of the popularity it was destined to obtain by the fact that two copies in marble had already been bespoken, although the model was by no means complete. The frequent duplication throughout the studio of companion statuettes representing an Indian HunterBoy and Fisher-Girl recalled comically to our memory the nursery ditty which dwells upon John Brown's proprietorship in "one little, two little, three little Indians," and so on through the digits. At Mr. Mozier's we found the celebrated Wept of Wish-ton- Wish, sculptured at the moment when memory is struggling with time for the recollection of the cradle-hymn her Christian mother used to sing. We saw also, in clay, the dawning of his ideal of Il Penseroso. But in the colossal group of the Return of the Prodi→ gal I thought I saw, what I understand is not universally admitted, a wonderful rendering of the blessed old idyl. It may be, for aught I know, anatomically incorrect, or like somebody's statue in this thing, or somebody's else in that; but to me there was great pathos in the utter repose of the son as he lays his sinful, sorrowful head on the old man's heart, having let go at once all his old life and old self. It seemed to me that such a sermon in stone set up in a church-chancel, or by the wayside, might touch some obdurate heart to whom the pulpit had been voiceless. In the studio of a young American woman, whose genius with no adventitious aids has already won her an enviable position, we found in clay a lofty embodiment of the poet-artist's ideal of Jeremiah the Prophet. A well-known Boston clergyman visiting this studio the day before ourselves, exclaimed as soon as the moist napkin was removed from this superb medallion: "Ah, one of the old prophets has risen from the dead!" "Which of the prophets is he?" asked the artist; "you being a divine are supposed to know them all." "Jeremiah, of course. Who could doubt it?" Who, indeed, who felt the majestic sorrow of that face, the eloquent grieving of heavenly wis- The sculptor of this superb medallion is Miss Margaret Foley. She has worked her way bravely up to fame and success, winning peculiar honors from Italian and English critics as well as her own countrymen. She has been forced to confine herself too closely to portrait medallions to allow the freest development of her genius. It is an epoch to her when she dare take a free breath and evoke from the marble a kingly head like that of the Prophet of Lamentation. And yet her portraits are true creations of art. Ye who think that while sculpture in the round is a wonderful art, all that is required for the production of a bas-relief is a flat surface of sufficient thickness to allow chippings ad libitum, go to the Villa Albani and study the Lotuscrowned Antinous; or, what is next, compare Miss Foley's medallions with those which pass unchallenged from the studio of many a distinguished sculptor. But I forget an oracle recently uttered: bassirelievi are not statuary! It remained for an astute sitter at the New York Customs to discover that a case of medallion portraits and ideal heads, sent to America by Miss Foley in execution of various commissions, did not come under the Act for the protection of American artists in foreign countries, and were therefore subject to a duty of 50 per cent. in gold! And all this when a case of mere stone-mason's pedestals passed the same Custom-house free. Various appeals were made by indignantly sympathetic artists and friends against the absurd decision of this Art-Dogberry, but several months later we heard that the case was still in durance vile; the purchasers of the sculpture being naturally unwilling to pay the unrighteous tax, and the artist threatened with the return of her handiwork unless she herself discharged it. In the benign face of Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, Miss Foley found an irresistible temptation, and with one or two sittings from the good missionary she created in clay at once a perfect portrait and an admirable ideal of St. John the Beloved. This was immediately appropriated (with other of her marbles) by Mr. William Aspinwall, to whose generous and yet discriminating patronage American artists abroad and art-lovers at home are so deeply indebted. We heard a sculptor say of him, "He is the only visitor to my studio who doesn't make me tremble by touching my tools: he knows what to do with them." Adding, with amusing commiseration: "It is such a pity he hadn't been poor, he would have made a true artist!" In Miss Foley's studio there was also still in clay fine bust of the son of the sculptor Crawford, as also various medallions in different stages of progress. A small bust of Theodore Parker, who gave her frequent sittings while in Rome, and with whose face in its vigor she had been most familiar, is far more satisfactory than the Socrates of Mr. Story, or any other attempted likeness of that most brave and intolerant philanthropist. His old congregation should order a colossal copy of this authentic bust for their Assembly Room. During a brief visit to her native land the past season Miss Foley modeled several admirable medallions, among them fine profiles of Mr. Longfellow, Charles Sumner, and Julia Ward Howe. This artist has also long been distinguished for her superiority as an artist in Cameos. No American tarrying in Rome should fail to visit the appartemento of the Freemans. Here Mr. Freeman plies his accurate, conscientious brush, devoting as many hours to the perfecting of a few threads of drapery as would many artists to the execution of an entire picture. Here Mrs. Freeman wields the chisel skillfully, and here their niece paints charming cabinet pictures and copies successfully. Living in a beautiful apartment, far up, like Hilda in her tower, we found Miss Church, a young Vermonter, if I mistake not. One of Claude Lorraine's luscious landscapes, copied in the Louvre, was just receiving her finishing touch, it having been purchased by Mr. Le Grand Lockwood, whose wealth has blessed many a deserving artist and many a distressed countryman abroad. Three little pictures pleased us best in this studio. Two views (standing and sitting) of an obstreperous little Roman with an irresistibly jolly face. This little imp of a model regards the confinement incident to his vocation with disgust, and is therefore always accompanied by his father, whom he mercilessly snubs. "What time is it, old father ?" and a half, my gentle little son." "No, old father, you lie-it is long after mezzo giorno!" Then turning his weariness toward his picturesque costume, he cries, stormily, "Look here, old father! I must have new clothes! Why don't you dress me like the little Francesi on the Pincio! I shall buy clothes for myself hereafter." "Ten The third picture is the portrait of an equally irresponsible little chiccory-girl, who is attired in all the pretty absurdity of a Roman peasant's costume, with the heavy folds of the panno on her graceful little head. This little mother of Gracchi in prospectu declines to favor the artist with a sitting of her august presence without a head of her favorite vegetable with which to beguile the hour, meditatively devouring the tough mass of vegetation. Accordingly, there she stands in the picture, chiccory in hand, and is a bewitching little figure for one's drawing-room. Our visit to the pleasant home of the cheery sisters, the Misses Williams, brought upon us |