At the age of seventeen he had the good fortune to be received into the studio of Saint-Gaudens as an apprentice-pupil, where he worked for some four years, meanwhile attending the life classes at the Academy of Design and the Art Students’ League. Even in those days he developed an extraordinary manual skill, and his drawings also are remembered by his fellow-students as being quite unusually graceful and true. He had, moreover, the privilege of working under the master, at the time of his greatest productivity, when his studio was the resort of the best architects, sculptors and painters; so that he grew up under the most favoured conditions, corresponding in kind to those experienced by apprentices of the fifteenth century in the _bottegas_ of the Florentine masters. Accordingly, when Macmonnies went to Europe, in 1884, his experience and knowledge were far beyond what students of his age usually possess. However, the first visit to Paris was abruptly terminated by the cholera, before which he retreated to Munich, and for some months studied painting. Then followed a tour on foot over the Alps, when a summons from Saint-Gaudens recalled him home. For a year he assisted the master and then returned to Paris, this time entering the École des Beaux Arts and studying under Falguière; with such success that he twice won the Prix d’Atelier, which ranks next to the Prix de Rome and is the highest prize open to foreigners. Then, taking a studio of his own, he executed his first statue, a “Diana,” which gained an Honourable Mention at the Salon. A commission for three angels in bronze for the Church of St. Paul in New York was followed in 1889 and 1890 by orders for the Hale and Stranahan statues, for the latter of which he received a Second Medal at the Salon, the only instance of an American sculptor being thus honoured. After executing two small fountain designs, for which he modelled a “Pan of Rohallion” and a “Faun with Heron,” he found himself confronted with the big problem of the Columbia fountain, the most important sculptural group at the Chicago Exposition. Since then, in addition to many statuettes, medallions, busts and low-relief portraits he has accomplished such notable works as the “Bacchante,” the statue of Sir Harry Vane, the “Shakespeare,” pediments for the Bowery Savings Bank and spandrils for the Washington Arch in New York, a quadriga for the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn and horse groups for the entrance to Prospect Park, a “Victory” for the battle monument at West Point and colossal groups for the Indiana State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial at Indianapolis. The mere enumeration of this incomplete list of works, representing a period that scarcely exceeds ten years, testifies to the artist’s energy and inventiveness. That such an exuberance of output should affect the quality of his work was almost inevitable. The precise way in which it seems to have done so is