been so
since down to our day (Comerre was preferred to Bastien Lepage in
1875) and doubtless it will be so for who knows how many years to
come.

All the phases of that terrific struggle for existence where beast
hunts beast, which have been depicted by Barye's genius, are here.
Here is the "Tiger devouring a Crocodile" (with which Barye made his
first appearance at the _Salon_, in 1831); the "Jaguar devouring a
Hare"; the "Lion devouring a Doe," the "Crocodile devouring an
Antelope," the "Python swallowing a Doe," the "Tiger devouring a
Gazelle," the "Bear on a tree devouring an Owl" and the "Lion
devouring a Boar." What a series of banquets on blood and warm, almost
living flesh is here presented! How cruel these creatures are to each
other, is the thought that first comes to us, but a second, reminds
that it is but their instinct and a necessity of natural law, and
repulsion is lost in astonishment and delight at the marvellous
fidelity with which the sculptor has rendered these links in the great
chain of animal life. Their (as we call it) savage eagerness, their
almost blind rage for their appointed food, the tenacity with which
they clutch and the ravening _anxiety_ (caused by the dread of losing
their prey) with which they tear the flesh of their victims, is
portrayed to the life. We speak of a death-grip, but here is a death
and life grip--death to the victim whose palpitating body furnishes
life to its destroyer. It is the hot-cold-bloodedness of nature, the
disregard for suffering of the tornado, the earthquake and the
avalanche shown in little in the fangs and claws of these wild
creatures. Then there are the battles of the more evenly-matched
animals--not always as a result of the need of sustenance--such are
the tiger transfixed by the elephant; the python's folds crushing the
crocodile; and the bear dragging the bull to earth, or itself, in
turn, overthrown by mastiffs. Then comes those groups into which man
enters--the African horseman surprised by a great serpent whose
formidable folds already enclose his struggling body; the Arabs
killing a lion; and the "Theseus overcoming the Minotaur," wherein the
calmly irresistible hero is about to bury his keen, short sword in the
bull-neck of the gross monster. The success with which Barye has
combined the human and bestial characteristics of the minotaur is most
remarkable and a similar triumph is won in the hippogriff--the winged
horse, with forefeet of cla