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they are lovely. In the sweet-flowing grace of movement, in the refined beauty of face and form of these angels, all intent upon their celestial harpings, sensuousness never touches the limits of sensuality. They are as pure as a madonna of Fra Angelico's.

The time has not yet come to define the exact place of Augustus St. Gaudens on the roll of the sculptors of our second Renaissance. I have tried to give some notion of his qualities; of his limitations we cannot yet judge. No sculptor can be assigned his definite rank until he has shown what he can do with the

nude, and Mr. St. Gaudens has as yet produced no nude figure except the inevitable Indian which is the "youthful sin" of every American sculptor. He is still a young man with a long life of work before him, and he has by no means said his last word. What we may know now is, that he is an artist of intelligence, learning, and imagination, with a great and distinguished talent, who has done much and from whom we may hope for more.* *When the above article was written Mr. St. Gaudens's Lincoln had not been modeled.—EDITOR.

Kenyon Cox.

sought out and followed out their own desires;
the champion of his country before the world
and the father individually of every fellow-coun-
tryman who appealed to him; a wonderful ora-
tor and a wonderful master of prose expression
and of the poetry which may be woven into it;
a humorist and yet a philosopher saddened by
the ever-present pathos and tragedy of life. His
mind seemed a very synonym for practical good
sense; yet it was the mind of a poet, a prophet
too, and beneath it lay the heart of a child and
the tender instincts of a woman. How, we had
often asked ourselves, can any artist ever show
us such a character? And how can we permit
him to dismember it and accept a single part
as Lincoln ? Yet Mr. St. Gaudens has not dis-
membered it, and has expressed it for us no less
adequately than broadly.

SAINT GAUDENS'S LINCOLN. HE Lincoln monument for Chicago is the most important commemorative work that Mr. St. Gaudens has yet produced and may well remain the most important of his life. There could be no nobler task for an American sculptor than the task of representing the greatest of all Americans; and it so chances that the external as well as the intellectual problems it involved were of peculiar interest and difficulty. To an artist brought up in the belief that only through the representation of purely beautiful forms can a work of sculpture be beautiful as such, Lincoln would, of course, have offered an unsympathetic theme; both in physical structure and in attire he might have seemed almost the embodiment of the sculpturally impossible. But to an artist trained like Mr. St. Gaudens in the gospel of individuality, full of that modern spirit which prizes" character" in a model for portraiture above even beauty itself, no face could have been more inspiring than Lincoln's, while even the difficulties presented by his form and costume could not seem insuperable.

The first question to be decided must have been: Shall the impression to be given base itself primarily upon the man of action or upon the man of affairs? Shall the statue be standing or seated? In the solution of this question we find the most striking originality of the work. The impression given bases itself in equal measThe intellectual problem on the other hand- ure upon the man of action and the man of affairs. the primary task of conceiving the soul and Lincoln is standing, but stands in front of a potency of the man is so clear and full a way chair from which he has just risen. He is before had the people to counsel and direct them, but has as to make adequate expression possible to deal with elements in which force and beauty just turned from that other phase of his activwere equally commingled. A more distinct ity in which he was their executive and their personality than Lincoln's could not be imag- protector. Two ideas are thus expressed in the ined, nor one in which moral purity and power composition, but they are not separately, indeshould be more commensurate with intellec- pendently expressed to the detriment of unity. tual strength. Here it was the complex rich- The artist has blended them to the eye as our ness of his opportunity which made the sculp- own thought blends them when we speak of tor's task as difficult as noble. We may truly say Lincoln. The pose reveals the man of action, that Lincoln was not one great man but many. but represents a man ready for action, not He was a thinker whose profound imaginings really engaged in it; and the chair- clearly dealt with the deepest, subtilest public problems typical of the Chair of State-reveals his title to act no less than his methods of self-preparation. and a practical man of affairs who controlled a myriad daily details of immediate definite bearing; a leader who guided his people through a terrible crisis, yet an executive who carefully

We see, therefore, that completeness of expression has been arrived at through a symbolic, idealistic conception. No given moment

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of Lincoln's life is represented, no special branch of his public usefulness or of his intellectual endowment is emphasized, all are suggested in the symbolic reach of the conception. But the rendering of this conception is realistic in the best sense of the word. The pose is simple, natural, individually characteristic as far removed from the conventionally dramatic or "sculpturesque" as from the baldly commonplace. Neither physical facts nor facts of costume are palliated or adorned. Even the chair is in general outline such a one as Lincoln might very possibly have used. It is idealized only by its massiveness and its unobtrusive decoration, and the figure is idealized only by refinement and breadth and vigor in treatment. What we see are realities, but we see them suffused with poetic thought and typical explanatory meanings, and ennobled though not altered by the subtile touch of art: and the reposeful composition speaks to us with true dramatic intensity. Examine the figure more narrowly and see how rich it is in significance, how it carries out in every line the fundamental ideas which inspired the composition as a whole. This Lincoln, with his firmly planted feet, his erect body, and his squared shoulders, stands as a man accustomed to face the people and sway them at his will, while the slightly drooped head and the quiet, yet not passive hands express the meditativeness, the self-control, the conscientiousness of the philosopher who reflected well before he spoke, of the moralist who realized to the full the responsibilities of utterance. The dignity of the man and his simplicity; his strength, his inflexibility and his tenderness; his goodness and his courage; his intellectual confidence and his humility of soul; the poetic cast of his thought, the homely vigor of his manner, and the underlying sadness of his spirit,- all these may be read in the wonderfully real yet ideal portrait which the sculptor has created. And they are all so expressed, I repeat, as to reveal not only the man himself but the various directions in which he brought his great qualities to bear.

Having said as much as this, it is almost needless to comment upon the technical merits of the work. No such meaning, no such message could have made itself felt through any but the most accomplished hand. When we find for the first time a portrait which really shows us the inner Lincoln we are not surprised to find it the first one which from a purely sculptural point of view has dealt successfully with his outward aspect. This aspect was impressive, imposing, inspiring, attractive by reason of the spirit which shone through it; and, naturally, an artist who failed to reveal that spirit could make little of the rough yet noble husk which sheathed it. The lesson thus taught is a

priceless one. It proves that even the most difficult task of the most "modern" kind is not beyond the power of the sculptor's art to master; but that it can only be mastered when that art signifies intellectual insight and creative force as well as trained perceptions and a skillful hand. Another valuable lesson may be read in the nature of that originality which I have claimed for the design as a whole. Strange as it may seem, no previous monumental composition had furnished a precedent for this. The world had had seated statues and standing statues in plenty; but a figure thus recently risen from its seat is that rarest of things-a true novelty in art. No novelty in art, however, is entitled to admiration simply as such. On the contrary, it is trebly bound to make manifest intrinsic worth. We cannot but criticise it with senses sharpened by the thought: If the idea is good, would not some great artist long ere this have conceived it and expressed it? The exceptional strength of Mr. St. Gaudens's talent shows not so much in the originality of his fundamental idea as in that treatment of it which has made it seem not merely a right idea but the only one adequate to his purpose. This implies, of course, that originality came not because it was sought as such, but naturally, inevitably, as a result of the conscientious effort to express a clear conception in the clearest and completest way.

In conclusion, it is most interesting to note the close ties which connect so original, individual a work as this with other great works of other kinds. The union of idealistic conception and realistic rendering which it reveals is almost always found when modern art is at its very best. But it also shows a union of perfect repose with strong dramatic significance, and this union is characteristic of classic art when at its best. There as here it is secured by the same expedient,― by the choice of a moment which is not the one of most vigorous action but the one in which such action is imminent.

The statue is of bronze, eleven and a half feet in height. The simple pedestal which supports it stands in the center of a platform some sixty feet in breadth by thirty in depth which is raised a few steps above the surface of a slight elevation near the entrance of Lincoln Park. Around three sides of the platform curves a stone seat upon the back of which one reads the name of Lincoln, with the dates of his birth and death, and upon the ends two characteristic citations from his own utterances. In the architectural portion of his work Mr. St. Gaudens was assisted by Mr. Stanford White, and together they have given us a monument which is the most precious the country yet possesses; which is not only our best likeness of Abraham Lincoln, but our finest work of monumental art.

M. G. van Rensselaer.

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1. TURNING THE BIBLE.

TURNING THE BIBLE.

dwelling which had stood in wind and weather long enough to have lost the raw look of newness, and to have its tints so softened that it had become a part of the circumjacent landscape. The phebe-bird, locally known as the pewee, had just finished calling from the top of the large barn, and a belated harvest-fly, or singing locust, as the people call him, was yet filling the warm air with the most summery of all summery notes-notes that seem to be felt as well as heard, pushing one another faster and yet faster Copyright, 1887, by Edward Eggleston. All rights reserved.

HE place of the beginning of this story was a country neighborhood on a shore, if one may call it so, that divided a forest and prairie in Central Illinois. The time was nearly a lifetime ago. An orange-colored sun going down behind the thrifty orchard of young apple-trees on John Albaugh's farm, put into shadow the front of a

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