Thus to mark off by our wars the various chapters of our sculptural history and to develop each chapter in sequence would be in the grand style; perhaps in a grander style than is suited to the dimensions of this sketch. It has therefore seemed better to indicate certain natural divisions of the subject by means of those enterprises of peace, our expositions. The Centennial of 1876, by its cruel comparisons, stirred our sculpture from the lethargy supposed to have overtaken it in the studios of American expatriates in Rome and in Florence. Until 1876, we had been dreaming, stumbling, aspiring; making false moves in plastic art. A few early triumphs shine forth from the prevailing mediocrity; but it must be owned that Cooper, Hawthorne, and Emerson, in the world of letters, have no vigorous contemporaries in the world of sculpture. During the ’eighties, however, a group of really strong and characteristic pieces of American sculpture emerges by slow degrees. Ward had already produced his noble equestrian statue of Thomas. He now placed his bronze Washington in front of the Sub-Treasury in New York, and his Pilgrim in Central Park. In 1881, Saint-Gaudens put out his incomparable Farragut; his Puritan appeared two years after Ward’s Pilgrim. Daniel Chester French, with notable work behind him, came into his own with the exquisite group of Gallaudet and the little deaf-mute; in the early ’nineties he showed his Milmore Memorial, (the Angel of Death and the Sculptor) a work of extraordinary appeal to both artists and laymen.