s rising into great dignity and
refinement of style and intelligence, as in the contemporary sculpture
of the Institute, but in general almost purely decorative or
sentimental, and, so far as natural expression is concerned, confining
itself to psychological rather than physical character.

What is it, for instance, that distinguishes a group like M. Dubois's
"Charity" from the _genre_ sentiment or incident of some German or
Italian "professor?" Qualities of style, of refined taste, of elegance,
of true intelligence. Its artistic interest is purely decorative and
sentimental. Really what its average admirer sees in it is the same
moral appeal that delights the simple admirers of German or Italian
treatment of a similar theme. It is simply infinitely higher bred. Its
character is developed no further. Its significance as form is not
insisted on. The parts are not impressively differentiated, and their
mysterious mutual relations and correspondences are not dwelt on. The
physical character, with its beauties, its salient traits of every kind,
appealing so strongly to the sculptor to whom nature appears plastic as
well as suggestive, is wholly neglected in favor of the psychological
suggestion. And the individual character, the _cachet_ of the whole, the
artistic essence and _ensemble_, that is to say, M. Dubois has, after
the manner of most modern sculpture, conveyed in a language of
convention, which since the time of the Siennese fountain, at all
events, has been classical.

The literary artist does not proceed in this way. He does not content
himself with telling us, for example, that one of his characters is a
good man or a bad man, an able, a selfish, a tall, a blonde, or a stupid
man, as the case may be. He takes every means to express his character,
and to do it, according to M. Taine's definition of a work of art, more
completely than it appears in nature. He recognizes its complexity and
enforces the sense of reality by a thousand expedients of what one may
almost call contrasting masses, derivative movements, and balancing
planes. He distinguishes every possible detail that plays any structural
part, and, in short, instead of giving us the mere symbol of the
Sunday-school books, shows us a concrete organism at once characteristic
and complex. Judged with this strictness, which in literary art is
elementary, how much of the best modern sculpture is abstract, symbolic,
purely typical. What insipid fragments most