[Illustration] XVII _Death Mask of James Monroe_ The masks that Browere made from the subject in full life, must not be confused in any sense with the more common mask made after death. This confusion could not occur with any one who has had an opportunity to observe Browere’s work or to make comparison with the reproductions in this book; but persons not familiar with these portrait busts, and having only some knowledge of masks made after death, or of such life masks as Clark Mills made,--which are thoroughly death-like in their character,--might easily fall into such an error, and, looking upon the latter as repulsive and worthless as portraiture, give no heed to the different character and true value of Browere’s living likenesses. Mr. Laurence Hutton, in his very curious and interesting volume entitled “Portraits in Plaster,” says: “The value of a plaster cast as a portrait of the dead or living face cannot for a moment be questioned. It must of necessity be absolutely true to nature. It cannot flatter; it cannot caricature. It shows the subject as he was, not only as others saw him in the actual flesh, but as he saw himself. And in the case of a death mask particularly, it shows the subject often as he permitted no one but himself to see himself. He does not pose; he does not ‘try to look pleasant.’ In his mask he is seen, as it were, with his mask off.” I do not quote these words, of my accomplished friend Mr. Hutton, simply for the purpose of combating them, but to show how differently two, perfectly sincere, honest delvers after historic truth, can see the same thing. Having made portraiture my study for many years, and thus having in my mind’s eye, indelibly fixed, the faces of legions of public men, I have yet to see a death mask that I could recognize at sight; many I could recall when told whose masks they were, but more yet have, to my vision, no resemblance whatever to the living man. Mr. Story, the eminent American sculptor but recently deceased, recognized how untrustworthy even life masks are as portraits. In speaking of what is claimed to be Houdon’s original mask of Washington, which Mr. Story owned, he wrote: “Indeed, a mask from the living face, though it repeats exactly the true forms of the original, lacks the spirit and expression of the real person.” So true is this, that when Mr. St. Gaudens first saw Clark Mills’s life mask of President Lincoln, he insisted that it was a death mask; for, without “the spirit and expression,” where can the likeness be? As Sir Joshua Reynolds says in one of his Discourses: “In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature.” In photography we have “the exact similitude of every feature,” yet how often are photographs bad likenesses, because they lack “the spirit and expression”!