Full of vitality also, and of artistic feeling is the “Sir Harry Vane” in the Boston Library. The costume, a beaver with rolled brim and plume, doublet and cloak, and breeches tucked into riding-boots, offered opportunities of picturesqueness of which Macmonnies has taken full advantage. The gesture, too, as the figure stands firmly with one leg advanced, drawing on a glove, is manly and of winning courtliness. Indeed, the elegance may be felt to be in excess; the conception of the personality being scarcely more than that of a fine gentleman engaged in the unimportant occupation of putting on his gloves. The costume also plays a conspicuous share in the statue of “Shakespeare” at Washington. The doublet, trunks and surcoat are stiff with embroidery, most cunningly modelled, and the set of the silk hose upon the strong, shapely legs is admirable. The head, too, is admirably constructed, the bony portions having been copied from the bust in Stratford-on-Avon Church and the features from the Droeshout portrait, commended by Jonson for its fidelity. Thus the external facts have been very conscientiously compiled, and edited with much mastery of craftsmanship; but the soul of the facts, the inspired poet inside them, is scarcely suggested. The statue illustrates again that Macmonnies does not display imagination; that he only approximates to it with a certain charm of imaginativeness, finding fittest expression in subjects of a decorative character, of which the very beautiful central doors of the Library of Congress remain the most successful example. For the larger compositions, while full of exuberant invention and charm of detail, lack unity and dignity of _ensemble_. The best of them was probably the short-lived fountain for the Court of Honour at Chicago. Its central feature, the “Ship of the Republic,” presented a handsome silhouette, whereas the quadriga on the Brooklyn Arch, when viewed from the back, does not. Considering also the necessary haste involved in the preparation of the fountain, it was a fairly maintained composition, reasonably balanced and homogeneous. In spirit, however, it represented the _verve_ and gaiety which the Parisian seeks in exposition sculpture, and scarcely conformed to the graver, more monumental character of the architectural scheme at Chicago; while the naturalistic rendering of a Parisian model to symbolise the Republic, presented a curious and not uninstructive contrast to French’s “Republic” at the other end of the basin.