h is the immemorial tradition
of sculpture in relief; and the fact that it _is_ a surface,
representing nothing, is made more clear by the inscription written upon
it--an inscription placed there, consciously or unconsciously, that it
might have that very effect. The composition is magnificent, whether for
its intrinsic beauty of arrangement--its balancing of lines and
spaces--or for its perfect expressiveness. The rhythmic step of marching
men is perfectly rendered, and the guns fill the middle of the panel in
an admirable pattern, without confusion or monotony. The heads are
superb in characterization, strikingly varied and individual, yet each a
strongly marked racial type, unmistakably African in all its forms.

[Illustration: Plate 29.--Saint-Gaudens. "Deacon Chapin."]

These are merits, and merits of a very high order, enough of themselves
to place the work in the front rank of modern sculpture, but they are,
after all, its minor merits. What makes it the great thing it is is the
imaginative power displayed in it--the depth of emotion expressed, and
expressed with perfect simplicity and directness and an entire
absence of parade. The negro troops are marching steadily, soberly,
with high seriousness of purpose, and their white leader rides beside
them, drawn sword in hand, but with no military swagger, courageous, yet
with a hint of melancholy, ready not only to lay down his life but to
face, if need be, an ignominious death for the cause he believes to be
just. And above them, laden with poppy and with laurels, floats the
Death Angel pointing out the way.

[Illustration: Copyright, Curtis & Cameron.
Plate 30.--Saint-Gaudens. "Adams Memorial."]

It is a work which artists may study again and again with growing
admiration and increasing profit, yet it is one that has found its way
straight to the popular heart. It is not always--it is not often--that
the artists and the public are thus at one. When they are it is safe to
assume that the work they equally admire is truly great--that it belongs
to the highest order of noble works of art.

The Sherman group (Pl. 32), though it has been more criticised than the
"Shaw Memorial," seems to me, if possible, an even finer work. The main
objection to it has been that it is not sufficiently "monumental," and,
indeed, it has not the massiveness nor the repose of such a work as
Donatello's "Gattamelata," the greatest of all equestrian statues. It
could not well have these