f centuries. To-day I am not sure that
this work of an American sculptor is not, in its own way, equal to
either of them.

There are those who are troubled by the introduction of the symbolical
figures in such works as the "Shaw Memorial" and the Sherman statue;
and, indeed, it was a bold enterprise to place them where they are,
mingling thus in the same work the real and the ideal, the actual and
the allegorical. But the boldness seems to me abundantly justified by
success. In either case the entire work is pitched to the key of these
figures; the treatment of the whole is so elevated by style and so
infused with imagination that there is no shock of unlikeness or
difficulty of transition. And these figures are not merely necessary to
the composition, an essential part of its beauty--they are even more
essential to the expression of the artist's thought. Without that
hovering Angel of Death, the negro troops upon the "Shaw Memorial" might
be going anywhere, to battle or to review. We should have a passing
regiment, nothing more. Without the striding Victory before him, the
impetuous movement of Sherman's horse would have no especial
significance. And these figures are no mere conventional allegories;
they are true creations. To their creator the unseen was as real as the
seen--nay, it was more so. That Shaw was riding to his death at the
command of duty was, the only thing that made Shaw memorable. That
Sherman was marching to a victory the fruits of which should be peace
was the essential thing about Sherman. Death and Duty--Victory and
Peace--in each case the compound ideal found its expression in a figure
entirely original and astonishingly living: a _person_ as truly as Shaw
or Sherman themselves. He could not have left them out. It were
better to give up the work entirely than to do it otherwise than as he
saw it.

[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
Plate 32.--Saint-Gaudens. "Sherman."]

I have described and discussed but a few of the many works of this great
artist, choosing those which seem to me the most significant and the
most important, and in doing so I have keenly felt the inadequacy of
words to express the qualities of an art which exists by forms.
Fortunately, the works themselves are, for the most part, readily
accessible. In the originals, in casts, or in photographs, they may be
studied by every one. Nothing is more difficult than to estimate justly
the greatness of an object that is too near