is as far as possible removed from the cheap genre effect such a scheme in less skilful hands might easily have had.  Mirabeau’s gesture, in fact his entire presence, is superb, but the marquis is as fine in his way as the tribune in his.  The beholder assists at the climax of a great crisis, unfolded to him in the impartial spirit of true art, quite without partisanship, and though manifestly stimulated by sympathy with the nobler cause, even more acutely conscious of the grandeur of the struggle and the distinction of those on all sides engaged in it, and acquiring from these a kind of elation, of exaltation such as the Frenchman experiences only when he may give expression to his artistic and his patriotic instincts at the same moment.

The distinctly national qualities of this masterpiece, and their harmonious association with the individual characteristics of M. Dalou, his love of nature, his native distinction, his charm, and his power, in themselves bear eminent witness to the vitality of modern French sculpture, in spite of all the influences which tend to petrify it with system and convention.  M. Rodin stands so wholly apart that it would be unsafe perhaps to argue confidently from his impressive works the potentiality of periodical renewal in an art over which the Institute presides with still so little challenge of its title.  But it is different with M. Dalou.  Extraordinary as his talent is, its unquestioned and universal recognition is probably in great measure due to the preparedness of the environment to appreciate extraordinary work of the kind, to the high degree which French popular aesthetic education, in a word, has reached.  And one’s last word about contemporary French sculpture—­even in closing a consideration of the works of such protestants as Rodin and Dalou—­must be a recognition of the immense service of the Institute in education of this kind.  Let some country without an institute, around which what aesthetic feeling the age permits may crystallize, however sharply, give us a Rodin and a Dalou!