While it is neither so forceful nor so persuasive as the “Hahnemann,” it yet has a liberal measure of graciousness and dignity and a finely monumental feeling. In these statues and in some others, as in the Gibbon in the Library of Congress and, though perhaps by more apparently contrived means, in the standing statue of Stephen Girard, Niehaus obtains from the composition of the single figure a degree of decorative effect which seems to fail him in treating groups. Thus the pediment of the Appellate Court, New York, while good in detail, is without much unity or harmonious feeling. It is, indeed, in the portrayal of character--as in his fine, straightforward rendering of Farragut, or in those striking busts of Rabbi Gottheil and of Ward, the sculptor, and in the statues already noticed, wherein the pose and drapery, besides contributing to the character, yield an additional suggestion of monumental dignity--that he is at his best. IX OLIN LEVI WARNER In these days when we are trying to raise “artists,” as we do chickens, by a process akin to incubation, we regard it as an anomaly if one emerges to eminence from surroundings which, according to our system, do not seem congenial. And people have expressed surprise that Warner, the child of a New England Methodist minister, brought up in a community which had no artistic inclinations, should have made up his mind to become a sculptor before he had ever seen a statue. But the history of art is full of such surprises; and the thoughts of youth are ever like the wind, “which bloweth where it listeth; thou canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth.” The greater and more beautiful surprise is that the boy had foundation of character on which to nourish the flowers of his imagination, and that when in after years they were matured, it was found that he had kept them so choicely select, that their fragrance was not unlike that of the flowers which in old time bloomed on the hills of Hellas. Something of the old Greek spirit had been revived in this son of Connecticut: intellectual stability, moral balance and spiritual serenity. Presently we shall consider how these qualities became translated into terms of art in his work--into a feeling for form, monumental rather than picturesque, a rhythmical and harmonious reserve, a peculiar sensitiveness to the significance of the essential facts in the design--but at the moment let us note how they affected his early conduct.