of sculpture, though natural standards may everywhere else be in vogue, no one thinks of applying them to so specialized an expression.  Its variation depends therefore more completely on the individual artist himself.  Niccolo Pisano, for example, died when Giotto was two years old, but, at the other end of the historic line of modern art, it has taken years since Delacroix to furnish recognition for Auguste Rodin.  The stronghold of the Institute had been mined many times by revolutionary painters before Dalou took the grand medal of the Salon.

Owing to the relative and in fact polemic position which these two artists occupy, the movement which they represent, and of which as yet they themselves form a chief part, a little obscures their respective personalities, which are nevertheless, in sculpture, by far the most positive and puissant of the present epoch.  M. Rodin’s work, especially, is so novel that one’s first impression in its presence is of its implied criticism of the Institute.  One thinks first of its attitude, its point of view, its end, aim, and means, and of the utter contrast of these with those of the accepted contemporary masters in his art—­of Dubois and Chapu, Mercie and Saint-Marceaux.  One judges generally, and instinctively avoids personal and direct impressions.  The first thought is not, Are the “Saint Jean” and the “Bourgeois de Calais” successful works of art?  But, Can they be successful if the accepted masterpieces of modern sculpture are not to be set down as insipid?  One is a little bewildered.  It is easy to see and to estimate the admirable traits and the shortcomings of M. Dubois’s delightful and impressive reminiscences of the Renaissance, of M. Mercie’s refined and graceful compositions.  They are of their time and place.  They embody, in distinguished manner and in an accentuated degree, the general inspiration.  Their spiritual characteristics are traditional and universal, and technically, without perhaps often passing beyond it, they exhaust cleverness.  You may enjoy or resent their classic and exemplary excellences, as you feel your taste to have suffered from the lack or the superabundance of academic influences; I cannot fancy an American insensitive to their charm.  But it is plain that their perfection is a very different thing from the characteristics of a strenuous artistic personality seeking expression.  If these latter when encountered are seen to be evidently of an extremely high order, contemporary criticism, at all events, should feel at once the wisdom of beginning with the endeavor to appreciate, instead of making the degree of its own familiarity with them the test of their merit.