give you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is
right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that
indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne the most
mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting.

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff--for
he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal,
his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking
in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France.
Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream
trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the
smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered,
reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion--and
all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite
pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of
Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where
he is.

Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. Louis XVI
did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him;
she is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues
which are not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in
kings. She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit,
the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. None of these qualities
are kingly but the last. Taken together they make a character which
would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had
the ill luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do the right
thing, he always managed to do the wrong one. Moreover, nothing could
get the female saint out of him. He knew, well enough, that in national
emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how
he ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink the man and be
the king--but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female
saint. He was not instant in season, but out of season. He could not be
persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good--he was iron, he was
adamant in his stubbornness then--but as soon as the thing had reached a
point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and
nothing could stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful,
but be