It will not, however, escape the thoughtful student of this period how natural such self-expatriation was. A stout heart, indeed, was needed to bear up against the dearth of artistic incentive at home. Necessarily the time was devoted mainly to material expansion and building up, especially calling for the heroic qualities of brain and muscle, and accompanied inevitably by a spirit of materialism. It was not until the conscience and soul of the nation had been re-awakened by a great moral question and chastened by the stern discipline of a tremendous struggle that it began to return to the higher enthusiasms of its youth. Hero-worship was reborn--or, rather, took a nobler, more spiritualised form--for a nation will always have its heroes. But now, instead of the hero of the market or the stump, whose service to the public is subordinate to self-aggrandisement, there had sprung up in every State--indeed, from every village and most firesides--heroes of sacrifice. The hero-worship which ensued was bound up with a fuller, deeper sense of national life, eager to express itself. It found vent in the spoken and written word, it sought to free itself in visible, tangible expression. As the birth of the Republic had been identified with the erection of noble buildings, so the rebirth of national conscience and soul found in a revived architecture the means of expressing its national state and civic pride, and in sculpture its worship of heroes. And it is a remarkable coincidence that the beginning of this esthetic demand fitted in with the appearance in America of a band of trained artists, returning from their studies abroad. The Centennial Exhibition opened the eyes of the country to the wonders of foreign art, and here were Americans on the spot trained in those foreign schools. With only a few exceptions all our sculptors of the present generation have acquired their training, either wholly or in part, in Paris; that is to say, in the best school in the world. For France, ever since the Middle Ages, has never been without a succession of great sculptors. When the Gothic spirit had spent itself, that of the late Italian Renaissance was imported; and the art, continually adjusting itself to the changing conditions of national life, has been held in uninterrupted honour to the present time. It is in this branch of the fine arts that the French genius has found its most individual expression. Corresponding with the maintenance of fine traditions is the excellence of the system of teaching. The Institute and the École des Beaux Arts perpetuate a standard, characterised by technical perfection and elegance of style, while the tendency to academic narrowness is offset by the influence of independent sculptors; for there is not a thought-wave in modern art that does not emanate from or finally reach Paris. It is the world’s clearing-house of artistic currency.