ot exacting), and the best also of the
several variations of the theme of which, at one time, the sculptor
apparently could not tire, familiarizes Americans with the talent of
Cain. In this association Rouillard, whose horse in the Trocadero
Gardens is an animated and elegant work, ought to be mentioned, but it
is hardly as good as the neighboring elephant of Fremiet as mere animal
representation (the _genre_ exists and has excellences and defects of
its own), while in more purely artistic worth it is quite eclipsed by
its rival. Still if _fauna_ is interesting in and of itself, which no
one who knows Barye's work would controvert, it is still more
interesting when, to put it brutally, something is done with it. In his
ambitious and colossal work at the Trocadero, M. Fremiet does in fact
use his _fauna_ freely as artistic material, though at first sight it is
its zooelogical interest that appears paramount. The same is true of the
elephant near by, in which it seems as if he had designedly attacked the
difficult problem of rendering embodied awkwardness decorative. Still
more conspicuous, of course, is the artistic interest, the fancy, the
humor, the sportive grace of his Luxembourg group of a young satyr
feeding honey to a brace of bear's cubs, because he here concerns
himself more directly with his idea and gives his genius freer play. And
everyone will remember the sensation caused by his impressively
repulsive "Gorilla Carrying off a Woman." But it is when he leaves this
kind of thing entirely, and, wholly forgetful of his studies at the
Jardin des Plantes, devotes himself to purely monumental work, that he
is at his best. And in saying this I do not at all mean to insist on the
superiority of monumental sculpture to the sculpture of _fauna_; it is
superior, and Barye himself cannot make one content with the exclusive
consecration of admirable talent to picturesque anatomy illustrating
distinctly unintellectual passions. M. Fremiet, in ecstasy over his
picturesque anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes, would scout this; but it
is nevertheless true that in such works as the "Age de la pierre,"
which, if it may be called a monumental clock-top, is nevertheless
certainly monumental; his "Louis d'Orleans," in the quadrangle of the
restored Chateau de Pierrefonds; his "Jeanne d'Arc" (the later statue is
not, I think, essentially different from the earlier one); and his
"Torch-bearer" of the Middle Ages, in the new Hotel de Vil