rotection, the redemption,
of his memory. A modern tomb, in comparison, is a sceptical affair; it
insists too little on the honours. I say this in the face of the fact
that one has only to step across the cathedral of Nantes to stand in the
presence of one of the purest and most touching of modern tombs.
Catholic Brittany has erected in the opposite transept a monument to one
of the most devoted of her sons, General de Lamoriciere, the defender of
the Pope, the vanquished of Castelfidardo. This noble work, from the
hand of Paul Dubois, one of the most interesting of that new generation
of sculptors who have revived in France an art of which our over-dressed
century had begun to despair, has every merit but the absence of a
certain prime feeling. It is the echo of an earlier tune--an echo with a
beautiful cadence. Under a Renaissance canopy of white marble
elaborately worked with arabesques and cherubs, in a relief so low that
it gives the work a certain look of being softened and worn by time,
lies the body of the Breton soldier with a crucifix clasped to his
breast and a shroud thrown over his body. At each of the angles sits a
figure in bronze, the two best of which, representing Charity and
Military Courage, had given me extraordinary pleasure when they were
exhibited (in the clay) in the Salon of 1876. They are admirably cast
and not less admirably conceived: the one a serene, robust young mother,
beautiful in line and attitude; the other a lean and vigilant young man,
in a helmet that overshadows his serious eyes, resting an outstretched
arm, an admirable military member, upon the hilt of a sword. These
figures contain abundant assurance that M. Paul Dubois has been
attentive to Michael Angelo, whom we have all heard called a splendid
example and a bad model. The visor-shadowed face of his warrior is more
or less a reminiscence of the figure on the tomb of Lorenzo de'Medici at
Florence; but it is doubtless none the worse for that. The interest of
the work of Paul Dubois is its peculiar seriousness, a kind of moral
good faith which is not the commonest feature of French art, and which,
united as it is in this case with exceeding knowledge and a remarkable
sense of form, produces an impression of deep refinement. The whole
monument is a proof of exquisitely careful study; but I am not sure that
this impression on the part of the spectator is the happiest possible.
It explains much of the great beauty, and it also expla