per
gave him a free letter-of-credit on his banker in Paris, and added: "I
had occasion to use it more than once, and my drafts were always
cheerfully accepted. Since then I have paid him, though he never would
have asked for the money; nobody but he and I ever knew of the
transaction." A Boston man writes of his visit to the Florence studio of
Greenough: "My eye fell upon a bust which awakened sea and forest
pictures,--the spars of an elegant craft, the lofty figure of a hunter,
the dignified bearing of a mysterious pilot." It was the bust of
Fenimore Cooper. Of the sculptor it was noted that "he always referred
with emotion to the gleam of sunshine which encouraged him at this
crisis, in the friendship of our late renowned novelist, Cooper."

[Illustration: BUST OF JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.]

In the Pitti one day they passed before Raphael's _Madonna del Trono_,
and the sculptor pointed out to his companion the fine drawing in the
two little angel figures of the foreground, in the act of singing.
Cooper asked if the subject would not lend itself to sculpture;
afterwards one of his daughters copied the figures, and the result of
the mutual interest in the design was an order from Cooper for a group
which in a few months Greenough executed in marble. It was exhibited in
America under the title of "The Chanting Cherubs." It was Cooper's
"Chanting Cherubs"--the first group of its kind from an American chisel
--that led to Greenough's order for the statue of Washington, and
inspired the pen of Richard Henry Dana to write:

Whence came ye, cherubs? from the moon?
Or from some shining star?
Ye, sure, are sent a blessed boon,
From kinder worlds afar;
For while I look my heart is all delight:
Earth hath no creatures half so pure and bright.

[Illustration: CHANTING CHERUBS.]

Later on Greenough came to them "all booted and bearded beyond
recognition" save in "his walk and his talk."

During Cooper's later American press troubles his close friend,
Greenough, wrote him: "You lose your hold on the American public with
rubbing down their skins with brick-bats." And yet, during Greenough's
dark days, he said: "What is the use of blowing up bladders for
posterity to jump upon for the mere pleasure of hearing them crack?" The
author's keen delight in architecture, sculpture, and painting then gave
him daily pleasure in the churches, palaces, and art-galleries of _Bella
Firenzi_. Familiar from youth w