of our artistic conscience. They have shown the layman, long put off with imitation sculpture, what the real thing is, and have thereby led him to be more and more fastidious in his demands. The appeal of the public monument is direct and lasting. You cannot live in the same place with a work like the Lincoln and continue to be content with grossly inferior sculpture. If, by chance, you happen to have a voice in the preparation of some memorial in bronze, you are bound to give your vote for something that at least approximates to the masterpiece you have learned to admire. Nor, in this matter, am I indulging in pleasant theory. Bad sculpture, vulgar sculpture, no doubt persists in getting itself made to this day, but that we have less of it every year the squares of our cities abundantly prove, and that the example of Saint-Gaudens did a great deal to bring about the change is, I think, equally certain. Besides educating the community through his works, he exercised a beneficent influence in ways not generally known. Many more commissions than he could find the time to execute were offered to him or brought to his knowledge. He would give advice as to their treatment and often he would select the sculptor, at once helping a junior to make his way in the world and satisfying the need of the patron or committee, for he had a fine sense of responsibility and never would place a task in the wrong hands. Few realize the amount of time and trouble that he gave to interests not his own, but important to the cause of art. When he made his second journey to Europe, in 1878, he was asked to serve on the jury of the Universal Exposition, and thenceforth, all his life long, he was constantly assuming similar burdens. If the city of Washington ever develops along the magnificent lines laid down in the now famous report of the Park Commission, its beauty will be due in part to the share which Saint-Gaudens had in the framing of that report. He was of a nervous temperament and a man who loved the retirement of his own studio, but he would give freely of his energies whenever they seemed to be needed in a good work. His generosity came out, too, in all the private relations of an artist. No one could have been more helpful than he was to young men of talent. I remember the delight and pride a sculptor of my acquaintance had in a visit SaintGaudens once paid him. My friend had put a fine piece of work to his credit. Saint-Gaudens did not know him, but when he saw it he demanded the stranger's address, jumped into a cab, and, though he was not by any means in good health, made the rather long journey to the young man's door. "I am Mr. Saint-Gaudens," he said, when it was opened, "and I've come down to tell you what I think of the beautiful work you have done." He stayed long enough to give his grateful and bewildered listener such happy stimulus as he had never known before. It was the more encouraging, too, because praise from Saint-Gaudens was long ago recognized as having a special value by those who knew him or knew of him —it was always as wise and suggestive as it was kind. No one could have been more sympathetic than he was in the discussion of work by other men. He was not a voluminous talker, but, like every creative artist of the first rank, when he did talk he spoke to the point. He would remain silent sometimes while others were tearing a question of art to pieces. When, in a quiet way, he made his contribution to the subject, it was apt to carry more weight, to be more illuminating, than anything any one else had said. You felt, too, the play of a singularly just spirit in his conversation. Once, in a long talk in his New Hampshire studio, we got round to certain French painters, to Ingres, a man of genius, and to others like Delaroche, Flandrin, Scheffer, Chassériau, whose names are scarcely more than names to the young artist of today, delivered over as he is, body and soul, to the masters and methods of a later generation. Saint-Gaudens went to the heart of the subject, speaking warmly of |