Perhaps the equestrian hero is Mr. Lukeman’s Circuit Rider, a preacher of the Word, going very reverently and wisely about his Father’s business, or else, this being a great year for bronze circuit riding, he is Mr. Proctor’s studious Circuit Rider, to be set up on the Capitol grounds at Salem, Oregon. Perhaps he is Mr. Bartlett’s Lafayette, coming from a court of distinction, with a message of high national import, so that all the glory of just that must be diplomatically suggested in a large way in his own person, while his horse must show a proud lip, and seem to be of the kind men give kingdoms for. Perhaps he is Ward’s General Thomas, sitting his thoroughbred, the first thoroughbred revealed in true mettle in our sculpture; the General surveys a momentous battlefield, “holding his own,” as Garfield amazedly saw, “with utter defeat on each side of him, and such wild disorder in his rear,” and so winning the name he bore the rest of his life, the Rock of Chickamauga. Or perhaps again the hero is a heroine,--the Maid of Orleans as Miss Hyatt has portrayed her, uplifted by her visions and riding on to glory. In any event, it is quite clear that the equestrian statue is a storied thing. And this is very hard on the solemn critic, who, thirsting for pure abstractions, declares in his mistaken way that art must _not_ tell a story, and who for the moment highbrowbeats everybody into saying message or meaning or content instead of story. Meanwhile, so far apart are the ways of criticism and creation, the maker of equestrian statues continues to spin his romances and epics in bronze. The fact that his fine theme appeals to the people not only gladdens him; it puts him under a still more pressing obligation to show what an artist can do with such a theme, how greatly he can enhance and exalt it. He understands well enough that it is easier to begin such enterprises with gusto than to finish them with glory. Most of our masters of the equestrian form were lovers and knowers of the horse before they were his sculptors; and that, though not imperative for genius, is valuable. VI