To their creator the unseen was as real as the
seen--nay, it was more so. That Shaw was riding to his death at the
command of duty was, the only thing that made Shaw memorable. That
Sherman was marching to a victory the fruits of which should be peace
was the essential thing about Sherman. Death and Duty--Victory and
Peace--in each case the compound ideal found its expression in a figure
entirely original and astonishingly living: a _person_ as truly as Shaw
or Sherman themselves. He could not have left them out. It were
better to give up the work entirely than to do it otherwise than as he
saw it.
[Illustration: Copyright, De W.C. Ward.
Plate 32.--Saint-Gaudens. "Sherman."]
I have described and discussed but a few of the many works of this great
artist, choosing those which seem to me the most significant and the
most important, and in doing so I have keenly felt the inadequacy of
words to express the qualities of an art which exists by forms.
Fortunately, the works themselves are, for the most part, readily
accessible. In the originals, in casts, or in photographs, they may be
studied by every one. Nothing is more difficult than to estimate justly
the greatness of an object that is too near to us--it is only as it
recedes into the distance that the mountain visibly overtops its
neighboring hills.
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