k so flawless in our eyes, so impeccable. It seems as if of
what he attempts he attains the type itself; everyone must recognize its
justness.

The reader will say at once here that I am cavilling at M. Dubois for
what I praised in Chapu. But let us distinguish. The two artists belong
to wholly different categories. Chapu's inspiration is the antique
spirit. M. Dubois, is, like all academic French sculptors, except Chapu
indeed, absolutely and integrally a romanticist, completely enamoured of
the Renaissance. The two are so distinct as to be contradictory. The
moment M. Dubois gives us the _type_ in a "Florentine Minstrel," to the
exclusion of the personal and the particular, he fails in
imaginativeness and falls back on the conventional. The _type_ of a
"Florentine Minstrel" is infallibly a convention. M. Dubois, not being
occupied directly with the ideal, is bound to carry his subject and its
idiosyncrasies much farther than the observer could have foreseen. To
rest content with expressing gracefully and powerfully the notion common
to all connoisseurs is to fall short of what one justly exacts of the
romantic artist. Indeed, in exchange for this one would accept very
faulty work in this category with resignation. Whatever we may say or
think, however we may admire or approve, in romantic art the quality
that charms, that fascinates, is not adequacy but unexpectedness. In
addition to the understanding, the instinct demands satisfaction. The
virtues of "Charity" and "Faith" and the ideas of "Military Courage" and
"Meditation" could not be more adequately illustrated than by the
figures which guard the solemn dignity of General Lamoriciere's sleep.
There is a certain force, a breadth of view in the general conception,
something in the way in which the sculptor has taken his task, closely
allied to real grandeur. The confident and even careless dependence upon
the unaided value of its motive, making hardly any appeal to the fancy
on the one hand, and seeking no poignant effect on the other, endues the
work with the poise and purity of effortless strength. It conveys to the
mind a clear impression of manliness, of qualities morally refreshing.

But such work educates us so inexorably, teaches us to be so exacting!
After enjoying it to its and our utmost, we demand still something else,
something more moving, more stirring, something more directly appealing
to our impulse and instinct. Even in his free and charming little