logical history of these undertakings; no one else could have said to what extent each one of them was isolated from the others as a matter of study, or formed part of a kind of sequence in his mind. But I do not think one would go far wrong in regarding the entire group as the outcome of a broad sympathy for one capital fact in our history, the War, with all that it means to a lover of his country. In other words, just as we think of Raffet as the pictorial interpreter of the Napoleonic régime on its military side, we cannot but recognize in SaintGaudens the representative, in plastic art, of our own tremendous struggle. Was he at the outset conscious of an ambition destined to flower in such a position as this? It is more than doubtful. Yet it is pleasant to think of him as foreordained to carry out these splendid works, and certainly they have, whether taken separately or together, the quality convincing us that no one else could have done them quite so well. It is not simply that each one of the monuments has certain specific artistic merits, lifting it to a high plane. It is rather that in each of his studies of historical subjects, Saint-Gaudens somehow struck the one definitive note, made his Lincoln or his Sherman a type which the generations must revere and which no future statues can invalidate. Monuments to leaders in the great conflict are already excessively

numerous, and some of them are worthy; but none, as it seems to me, has the authority to which Saint-Gaudens attained in all of his.

Though he strengthened his art as the years passed, this virtue of dramatic truth is perceptible as clearly in his earliest as in his latest work. The Farragut, for example, undoubtedly wants the grandeur of the eques trian Sherman, but it remains the best of all our trib utes to the dead admiral. I have heard criticisms of the pose. Ribald remarks have been made about what has been called "the Farragut strut." It is not a strut at all, but simply the natural carriage of a seaman. Indeed, the whole spirit of this monument is delightfully significant of the quarter-deck, a fact which may trouble those who fear realism in art as they fear the plague, but which carries its own recommendation to those conscious of the importance of realistic principles when they are properly handled. They are handled with excellent judg ment in the Farragut. To call it breezy would be to overstate the case, but it is true that Saint-Gaudens produced on this occasion a figure instinct with the energy of a man fronting perils in the open air, amid great winds and under a vast sky. It owes something, by the way, to the pedestal, which is at once charmingly decorative and quite weighty enough to provide a true monu

ADMIRAL FARRAGUT

This was the sculptor's first commission for a statue. He modelled it in Paris, exhibiting it in the Salon there in 1880. It was erected in New York in the following year.