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but if I should leave Rome before I hear from you I will so arrange matters that the order shall be complied with faithfully.
 
How does the Academy flourish? I hear indirectly of your success, which has rejoiced me very much; your Exhibition I hear well spoken of. Do let me hear from you, and tell me the state of things in regard to the Academy and to its members; tell me its griefs and its joys; and its  projects in relation to the new rooms, and the old Academy. I heard through Capt. Nicolson of the Navy that these were negotiations on foot for a union, on the terms advantageous to both; no one will rejoice more than I shall if an arrangement can be made for the statues and other property of the Amer. Acad. without compromising the principles of our own Academy. Any other plan, for an Academy, than the one we have adopted, (however pure I may have been in America of the truth and excellence of our own system,) is now doubly demonstrated to me to be wrong; The very idea of having an Academy of Arts under the direction of any but Artists strikes all here whether artists or connoisseurs as perfectly absurd; I cannot believe that there are any real friends to the arts interested in the Old Academy who do not by this time see the superiority of the management in our Institution and that it does not depend on one or two individuals, but is dependent for its success on the excellence of the system. My absence I think will not prove to have been any injury to the institutions; I am not unconscious of the active part I took with the other members in forming and defending it; but there were many enemies to the Academy I well knew, who would wish to give an undue importance to my services, and I was glad to have the opportunity occur as it has occurred, of showing them that I was not the sole mover of the machine; they are now I hope convinced that it was the spirit of the body of the artists, which infused such life and vigor into our Academy, and not the efforts of a simple individual. My only