I urge this point because some of his subsequent works might lead one to suppose that he is lacking in imagination and absorbed exclusively in the exercise of a very accomplished, graceful and refined technique. Thus his statue of “Law” in the rotunda of the Library of Congress at Washington reveals no higher conception than that of a refined young woman in classic draperies, holding a scroll and resting one hand upon a table of the law; a personification entirely superficial and only redeemed from mediocrity by the tactful elegance of the modelling. But, while he was engaged on this, he was pondering another statue which hit his interest closely. The artist in him that could not be aroused to enthusiasm by an abstraction, such as “Law,” awoke to the personal matter of portraying the greatest master of his own craft. His imagination was enlisted, and after much delay--for his conscience was very truly involved in this work and he had an ideal that to his utmost ability he would reach--the “Michelangelo” was completed; a work of sincere imagination; of most arresting and moving appeal. Then followed a commission for an equestrian statue of Lafayette; and, after making the preliminary sketch for it in New York, he returned to Paris to execute it. It was there, too, that he had conceived and executed the “Michelangelo”; but with this “Lafayette” his imagination again failed him. Through lack of interest in the subject, I wonder, or lack of incentive in the environment, or lack of stability in himself? For from this statue which stands in the Place du Carrousel, a gift from the children of America, judged at least from the full-sized model temporarily erected for the ceremony of presentation in 1900, one receives mainly an impression of elegance. An elegance certainly monumental; raised to the dignity of a motive and incorporated into a fine structure of form, yet a little bit pretentious. It is as if the sculptor had no higher purpose than to prove his capability as a stylist. He has certainly succeeded; but the statue is more than a trifle modish.