hrough its beauty. In the galleries before the
old masters, or listening to the music in the Sistine Chapel, he lost
himself altogether. There was nothing pagan in these feelings, as they
were not based upon sybaritism or sensual enjoyment. Father Calvi
loved art with the pure, serene feeling as maybe a Da Fiesole, a
Cimabue, or Giotto loved it. And he loved in all humility, as he
himself had no gifts that way. I could not say which of the fine arts
he loved best, but I believe he leaned mostly towards harmony, which
responded to the harmony of his own mind.

Whenever I think of Father Calvi, I am reminded at the same time of
the old man that stands beside Raphael's Saint Cecilia listening
intently to the music of the spheres.

Between my father and the priest sprang up a friendship which lasted
unto the latter's death. It was he who confirmed my father in his
archaeologic researches, especially about Rome. There was another
bond between these two,--their love for me. Both considered me as an
exceptionally gifted child, and of a God knows what promising future.
It strikes me at times that I formed for them a kind of harmony,--a
rounding of and completion to the world in which they lived; and they
loved me with the same absorbing passion with which they loved Rome
and its antiquities. Such an atmosphere, such surroundings, could not
fail to impress my mind. I was brought up in an original way. With
my tutor,--sometimes with my father,--I visited galleries, museums,
villas, ruins, catacombs, and the environs of Rome. Father Calvi was
equally sensitive to the beauties of nature and to those of art, and
taught me at an early age to understand poetic melancholy. The Roman
Campagna, the harmony of the arch-line on the sky of the arches in the
ruined aqueducts, the fine tracery of the pines,--I understood all
this before I could read or had mastered the first rudiments of
arithmetic. I was able to set English tourists right to whom the names
of Carracci and Caravaggio caused confusion. I learned Latin early and
without effort, from being familiar with the Italian language. I
gave my opinion about Italian and foreign masters,--which, however
unsophisticated, made both my father and my tutor look at each other
in astonishment. I did not like Ribera,--there was too great a
contrast of color in his pictures, and he frightened me a little; but
I liked Carlo Dolce. In short, my tutor, my father, and his friends
considered me a ver