is a general impression, that the artist lives very cheaply in Italy.  This is a mistake.  Italy, compared with America, is not so very cheap, except for those who have iron constitutions to endure bad food, eaten in bad air, damp and dirty lodgings.  The expenses, even in Florence, of a simple but clean and wholesome life, are little less than in New York.  The great difference is for people that are rich.  An Englishman of rank and fortune does not need the same amount of luxury as at home, to be on a footing with the nobles of Italy.  The Broadway merchant would find his display of mahogany and carpets thrown away in a country where a higher kind of ornament is the only one available.  But poor people, who can, at any rate, buy only the necessaries of life, will find them in the Italian cities, where all sellers live by cheating foreigners, very little cheaper than in America.

The patrons of Art in America, ignorant of these facts, and not knowing the great expenses which attend the study of Art and the production of its wonders, are often guilty of most undesigned cruelty, and do things which it would grieve their hearts to have done, if they only knew the facts.  They have read essays on the uses of adversity in developing genius, and they are not sufficiently afraid to administer a dose of adversity beyond what the forces of the patient can bear.  Laudanum in drops is useful as a medicine, but a cupful kills downright.

Beside this romantic idea about letting artists suffer to develop their genius, the American Maecenas is not sufficiently aware of the expenses attendant on producing the work he wants.  He does not consider that the painter, the sculptor, must be paid for the time he spends in designing and moulding, no less than in painting and carving; that he must have his bread and sleeping-house, his workhouse or studio, his marbles and colors,—­the sculptor his workmen; so that if the price be paid he asks, a modest and delicate man very commonly receives no guerdon for his thought,—­the real essence of the work,—­except the luxury of seeing it embodied, which he could not otherwise have afforded, The American Maecenas often pushes the price down, not from want of generosity, but from a habit of making what are called good bargains,—­i.e. bargains for one’s own advantage at the expense of a poorer brother.  Those who call these good do not believe that

                  “Mankind is one,
  And beats with one great heart.”

They have not read the life of Jesus Christ.

Then the American Maecenas sometimes, after ordering a work, has been known to change his mind when the statue is already modelled.  It is the American who does these things, because an American, who either from taste or vanity buys a picture, is often quite uneducated as to the arts, and cannot understand why a little picture or figure costs so much money.  The Englishman or Frenchman, of a suitable position to seek these adornments for his house, usually understands better than the visitor of Powers who, on hearing the price of the Proserpine, wonderingly asked, “Isn’t statuary riz lately?” Queen Victoria of England, and her Albert, it is said, use their royal privilege to get works of art at a price below their value; but their subjects would be ashamed to do so.