flowing, and the agreeable ease of his compositions
makes up to a degree for any lack of sympathetic sentiment or impressive
significance: witness his excellent "Maternal Instruction," of the
little park in front of Sainte Clothilde. M. Le Feuvre's qualities are
very nearly the reverse of these: he has a fondness for integrity quite
hostile in his case to simplicity. In his very frank appeal to one's
susceptibility he is a little careless of sculptural considerations,
which he is prone to sacrifice to pictorial ends. The result is a
mannerism that in the end ceases to impress, and even becomes
disagreeable. As nearly as may be in a French sculptor it borders on
sentimentality, and finally the swaying attitudes of his figures become
limp, and the startled-fawn eyes of his maidens and youths appear less
touching than lackadaisical. But his being himself too conscious of it
should not obscure the fact that he has a way of his own. M. Barrias is
an artist of considerably greater powers than either M. Le Feuvre or M.
Delaplanche; but one has a vague perception that his powers are limited,
and that to desire in his case what one so sincerely wishes in the case
of M. Dubois, namely, that he would "let himself go," would be unwise.
Happily, when he is at his best there is no temptation to form such a
wish. The "Premieres Funerailles" is a superb work--"the chef-d'oeuvre
of our modern sculpture," a French critic enthusiastically terms it. It
is hardly that; it has hardly enough spiritual distinction--not quite
enough of either elegance or elevation--to merit such sweeping praise.
But it may be justly termed, I think, the most completely representative
of the masterpieces of that sculpture. Its triumph over the prodigious
difficulties of elaborate composition "in the round"--difficulties to
which M. Barrias succumbed in the "Spartacus" of the Tuileries
Gardens--and its success in subordinating the details of a group to the
end of enforcing a single motive, preserving the while their individual
interest, are complete. Nothing superior in this respect has been done
since John of Bologna's "Rape of the Sabines."

VII

M. Emmanuel Fremiet occupies a place by himself. There have been but two
modern sculptors who have shown an equally pronounced genius for
representing animals--namely, Barye, of course, and Barye's clever but
not great pupil, Cain. The tigress in the Central Park, perhaps the best
bronze there (the competition is n