4io 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 184. 



acquisition of such skill as invests its possessor with the 

 rank of an artist means patient study and long training, 

 added to original good taste. No business men, as a class, 

 are more alert than American florists to catch new ideas, 

 to adopt new devices in cultivation, in buildings, or in 

 mechanical appliances for saving labor. If to this spirit 

 of enterprise is added a thorough training and a con- 

 scientious devotion to the highest ideals on the sesthetic 

 side of horticulture, the country will have reason to be 

 grateful for the influence exerted by its florists. 



Monuments in Public Places. — II. 



OUR public monuments might, as a .rule, be much 

 more successful but for a common mistake in their 

 first conception. Nine times out of ten a statue is insisted 

 upon, when a bust or an architectural monument, with a 

 fitting inscription and, perhaps, a profile-portrait, would be 

 all-sufficient, and, indeed, distinctly more appropriate. 

 This perpetual demand for full-length figures works in two 

 ways against the sculptor's success. In the first place, the 

 average of physical dignity and beauty in our race is not 

 very high ; many men since Saint Paul have been weak in 

 their bodily presence, though giants in moral and intellect- 

 ual respects ; and since the time of Saint Paul there has 

 been a great change for the worse in masculine costume, 

 judged from the artistic standpoint. The modern portrait- 

 sculptor has fallen upon hard times ; why make his trouble 

 greater by insisting that he shall portray the whole body 

 in cases where not the body but the mind of the subject is 

 the thing we really want to commemorate ? 



In the second place, it is as difficult in cases such as this 

 to evolve an appropriate conception as to execute it beau- 

 tifully when arrived at. Unless a man's physical presence 

 has been prominently associated with his services to the 

 public, how shall it be posed and presented so as to ex- 

 press any clear and dignified idea? The broad rule seems 

 to be that a man of action should be portrayed at full 

 length, standing or mounted, as the case may be, and that 

 for men who have labored rather with the brain alone than 

 with brain and body both, a seated figure is at times de- 

 sirable, while most often a portrait of the head alone will 

 be best. No one would be satisfied with a figure of Sher- 

 man except on horseback ; a bust of Farragut could never 

 have expressed him as Saint Gaudens has done, placing 

 him in a bold attitude on his quarter-deck ; nor could a 

 great orator, whether statesman like Webster or clergyman 

 like Beecher, be fully characterized except upon his feet. 

 But we can fancy a chief-justice, for example, best por- 

 trayed in a sitting posture ; and it might seem as though 

 this were the most natural aspect to choose for Lincoln, 

 did not the Chicago statue prove that a great artist may see 

 deeper than ordinary mortals, and, working more boldly 

 than they might counsel, may treat his theme more clearly 

 and fully. In this monument the chair of state behind the 

 figure explains one phase of Lincoln's responsibilities and 

 services, while the erect, yet reflective, pose of the figure 

 itself declares that the man who filled the chair was like- 

 wise an orator, and was not only the people's executive, 

 but their actual leader in a crisis demanding the most 

 energetic action. 



Thus we see that two things should be considered in the 

 conception of a memorial. We should reflect upon the 

 character of the services rendered by him who is to be its 

 subject and also' upon the bodily presence Providence had 

 bestowed upon him, and then decide whether a statue, a 

 bust or some still less personal kind of monument should 

 be erected. William E. Dodge, for instance, was a good 

 and useful citizen, but a statue in his honor was less appro- 

 priate than would have been a drinking-fountain suitably 

 inscribed. A bust of Holmes or Whittier would be better 

 than a statue ; but Carlyle's more strongly marked per- 

 sonality, more energetic cast of mind, needed to be shown, 

 as they are in the seated statue near his old home in Chel- 

 sea, through a rendering of his tall gaunt form and familiar 



voluminous cloak. An intelligent artist will not find great 

 difficulty in deciding this question of appropriateness in the 

 character of a monument ; but, unfortunately, the artist is 

 often the person who has the least to say in the matter. 



Even in the interests of mere variety we might well wish 

 for a wider difference in the conception of our monuments. 

 But to bring it about in satisfactory ways we must realize 

 that we should depend less exclusively than hitherto upon 

 the sculptor. We should sometimes leave the work entirely 

 in the architect's hands, and should always associate archi- 

 tect and sculptor together. All who have seen the Chicago 

 Lincoln know how vastly the effect of the admirable 

 figure is increased by the striking, yet quiet and dignified, 

 character of the substructure on which it stands ; and a 

 large part of the impressiveness of the Farragut figure in 

 Madison Square depends upon its base, although this, from 

 the purely architectural point of view, is not wholly satis- 

 factory. It seems to us that, in always insisting upon the 

 assistance of an architect, St. Gaudens has rendered a ser- 

 vice to the cause of monumental art scarcely inferior to 

 that performed by his own creations. His example is be- 

 ing more widely followed year by year, but poor or inap- 

 propriate bases are still the rule, and occasionally we see 

 an instance of their total abolition, in curious disregard of 

 that fundamental rule of criticism and common sense which 

 says that a work of art must always be confessed and em- 

 phasized as such. In the Central Park, for instance, Mr. 

 Kemys' fine figure of an American panther crouching for 

 its spring is set, without any pedestal, on the top of a vine- 

 covered rock overhanging the drive-way. We believe that 

 this was done against the sculptor's protest, and certainly 

 no true artist would consent to so puerile and mistaken an 

 effort to pretend that a bronze figure is an actual animal. 

 A worse example of this kind of folly came to our notice 

 recently in the photograph of a statue to some military 

 commander which has been erected at Gettysburg. The 

 figure is standing, field-glass in hand, and is placed on the 

 edge of an abrupt low rocky hill without any base, except 

 the necessary thin plate of bronze beneath the feet. To 

 persons looking from below it may well appear like the 

 figure of a living man. But is this a worthy aim in the 

 placing of a work of art? Could even the best statue in 

 the world fail to seem cheap and trivial thus deprived of 

 proper station and emphasis ? We are still in the very in- 

 fancy of art when we can tolerate blunders so gross and 

 self-apparent. 



Only a Fence-corner. 



THE difficulty of mowing in an angle saves some 

 charming bits for the artist, and the eye of the coun- 

 try stroller is often caught by some such graceful grouping 

 as is shown in the photograph of a fence-corner in Illinois, 

 taken by Mr. D. Burnett, of Olney, in that state, and repro- 

 duced in this number (page 415). 



In the foreground are to be seen the rosy blossoms of 

 Hibiscus lasiocarpus, which grows abundantly in moist 

 portions of the prairies in parts of Illinois and south- 

 ward. It has soft, downy leaves, and blossoms resem- 

 bling those of the Rose Mallow, which grows on the 

 borders of the salt-marshes of New England. Behind the 

 Hibiscus a tall wild Sunflower is leaning up against the 

 fence, while a tangle of Ferns and Golden-rods veils 

 the lower stalks of the flowers. In the foreground are 

 some distinct leaf-forms such as the old masters loved to 

 delineate in their carefully studied pictures, and the outline 

 of the group of plants is free and graceful. 



So prodigal is Nature of her wealth that she clothes the 

 edges of even the dusty highway with beauty, and, given 

 the unmolested corner of a field, this greatest of artists will 

 weave an embroidery of varied color and exquisite design 

 that baffles the hand of man to imitate. Sometimes her 

 tapestry is woven of the delicate fronds of Ferns, and again 

 she dapples her greens with the sky-blue flowers of the 

 Succory, or, perhaps, a clump of Fire-lilies glows amid 

 the long grass, or a Morning-glory festoons the rails, 



