on of a visitor from the West who had just
completed the first two days of his stay. "Most of the good ones were,"
was the laughing rejoinder of an artist. "At least that is the way it
seems. And nearly all the pedestals for them were made by Stanford
White." In query and response there is a certain amount of justice. It
is Augustus St. Gaudens's benevolent presentment of Peter Cooper that
stands within the little park enclosed by Cooper Square. The name of St.
Gaudens is associated with those of John La Farge, White, MacMonnies,
MacNeil, and Calder in the making of the Washington Arch. To St. Gaudens
belongs the equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman in the Plaza.
And here, in Madison Square, the Farragut statue is his. Unveiled in
1881, executed in Paris when the sculptor was thirty years of age, and
exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1880, the Farragut is, in the opinion of
Miss Henderson, the base upon which St. Gaudens's great reputation
rests. "And while," she writes, "in New York its merits are often
balanced with those of the Sherman equestrian group, at the entrance to
Central Park; the Peter Cooper, in Cooper Square; and the relief of Dr.
Bellows, in the All-Souls' Church--all later works--it has never had to
yield precedence to any, but holds its own by force of its splendid
vigour and youthful plasticity. It has the essential characteristics of
the portrait, but so combined with the attitude of the artist that the
figure stands as much more than a portrait, having in it something more
living, more typical, deeper than the mere outward mould of the man. St.
Gaudens's Farragut has the bearing of a seaman, balanced on his two
legs, in a posture easy, yet strong. He is rough and bluff with the
courage and simplicity of a commander; his eye is accustomed to deal
with horizons, while the features are clean-cut and masterful. The
inscription is happy: 'That the memory of a daring and sagacious
commander and gentle great-souled man, whose life from childhood was
given to his country, but who served her supremely in the war for the
Union, 1861-1865, may be preserved and honored, and that they who come
after him and who will love him so much may see him as he was seen by
friend and foe, his countrymen have set up this monument A.D.
MDCCCLXXXI.'"

There are other statues in the Square besides the noble one
commemorating the deeds of the hero of "Full steam ahead, and damn the
torpedoes!" At the southwest corner the