made. Falguiere's range has always been a wide one, and everything he
has done has undoubtedly merited a generous portion of the prodigious
encomiums it has invariably obtained. Yet, estimating it in any other
way than by energy, variety, and mass, it is impossible to praise it
highly with precision. It is too plainly the work of an artist who can
do one thing as well as another, and of which cleverness is, after all,
the spiritual standard. Bartholdi, who also should not be forgotten in
any sketch of French sculpture, would, I am sure, have acquitted himself
more satisfactorily than Falguiere did in the colossal groups of the
Trocadero and the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile. To acquit himself
satisfactorily is Bartholdi's specialty. These two groups are the
largest and most important that a sculptor can have to do. The crowning
of the Arc de Triomphe at least was a splendid opportunity. Neither of
them had any distinction of outline, of mass, of relation, or of idea.
Both were conventional to the last degree. That on the Arc had even its
ludicrous details, such as occur only from artistic absent-mindedness in
a work conceived and executed in a fatigued and hackneyed spirit. The
"Saint Vincent de Paul" of the Pantheon, which justly passes for the
sculptor's _chef-d'oeuvre_ is in idea a work of large humanity. M.
Falguiere is behind no one in ability to conceive a subject of this kind
with propriety, and his subject here is inspiring if ever a subject was.
The "Petit Martyr" of the Luxembourg has a real charm, but it too is
content with too little, as one finds out in seeing it often; and it is
in no sense a large work, scarcely larger than the tiresomely popular
"Running Boy" of the same museum, which nevertheless in its day marked
an epoch in modelling. Indeed, so slight is the spiritual hold that M.
Falguiere has on one, that it really seems as if he were at his best in
such a frankly carnal production as his since variously modified "Nymph
Hunting" of the Triennial Exposition of 1883. The idea is nothing or
next to nothing, but the surface _faire_ is superb.

M. Barrias, M. Delaplanche, and M. Le Feuvre have each of them quite as
much spontaneity as M. Falguiere, though the work of neither is as
important in mass and variety. M. Delaplanche is always satisfactory,
and beyond this there is something large about what he does that confers
dignity even in the absence of quick interest. His proportions are
simple, his outline