arcade of the Uffizi, and came out upon the Arno. What course we took I
hardly remember, but we roamed slowly about for an hour, my companion
delivering by snatches a sort of moon-touched aesthetic lecture. I
listened in puzzled fascination, and wondered who the deuce he was. He
confessed with a melancholy but all-respectful head-shake to his American
origin.

"We are the disinherited of Art!" he cried. "We are condemned to be
superficial! We are excluded from the magic circle. The soil of
American perception is a poor little barren artificial deposit. Yes! we
are wedded to imperfection. An American, to excel, has just ten times as
much to learn as a European. We lack the deeper sense. We have neither
taste, nor tact, nor power. How should we have them? Our crude and
garish climate, our silent past, our deafening present, the constant
pressure about us of unlovely circumstance, are as void of all that
nourishes and prompts and inspires the artist, as my sad heart is void of
bitterness in saying so! We poor aspirants must live in perpetual
exile."

"You seem fairly at home in exile," I answered, "and Florence seems to me
a very pretty Siberia. But do you know my own thought? Nothing is so
idle as to talk about our want of a nutritive soil, of opportunity, of
inspiration, and all the rest of it. The worthy part is to do something
fine! There is no law in our glorious Constitution against that. Invent,
create, achieve! No matter if you have to study fifty times as much as
one of these! What else are you an artist for? Be you our Moses," I
added, laughing, and laying my hand on his shoulder, "and lead us out of
the house of bondage!"

"Golden words--golden words, young man!" he cried, with a tender smile.