In many respects the Academy system is superior to that of the École des Beaux Arts. Such a judge as Mr. Edwin Abbey has even recommended American art students to choose London in preference to Paris on this account. “In Paris,” he says, “all the personality is rubbed out of a student. French methods and technique are hammered into him so unceasingly that he departs a mere reflection of the movement of the latest school. In London there is more catholicity in art matters; originality is strongly encouraged, and the student, particularly at the Royal Academy, is given every chance to develop along individual lines.” This is proved by the fact that almost all the foremost English sculptors have been trained in the Academy schools. In France, men of pronounced originality like Rodin and Dalou become anti-Academic by instinct. In England, some men leave the beaten track which every academic course must follow, more readily than others. But even the most pronounced innovators seem able to benefit from the influence of the Academicians during their studentship. Still the distinction between the sculptors who preserve the academic spirit throughout their careers and those who prefer to rely upon their native individuality does exist. It furnishes a convenient method for dividing the modern English school into two distinct parts. Among the first may be reckoned Thomas Brock and Hamo Thornycroft, while the second, and more important class, is headed by Alfred Gilbert, and includes Onslow Ford, Harry Bates, Frampton and Swan. Thomas Brock was born in 1847. He was a pupil of Foley and, therefore, came sufficiently under the influence of the mid-Victorian school to mark a transition rather than a break from the older traditions. To-day he is pre-eminently the “safe” man in English sculpture—a fact which accounts for his receiving the commission for the Queen Victoria Memorial to be erected in front of Buckingham Palace. But Brock’s “safeness” does not prevent him executing work of real beauty. The “Eve,” in the Tate Gallery, is a work which any school of sculpture would be proud to claim. It shows the Mother of Men as a frail girl. She realizes for the first time what the loss of primal innocence entails and, with bowed head, moves slowly from the garden. The design is one of the most beautiful in English sculpture. The grace of line displayed in the treatment of the abdomen—so beautiful in womanhood—and the pose of the lower limbs are beyond criticism. If the “Eve” has a fault it is that the subject is clearly susceptible of highly dramatic treatment. In Mr. Brock’s statue there is no attempt to express the intensity of passion which a sculptor of the temper of Rodin would have regarded as the one thing worth rendering. [Illustration: THOMAS BROCK EVE Tate Gallery, London] [Illustration: W. HAMO THORNYCROFT THE MOWER Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool]