THE MODERN CEMETERY 
38 
“THE ANGEL OF DEATH STAYING THE HAND OF THE ARTIST.” — BY DANIEL E. FRENCH. 
beautiful relief represents sense as well as sensibil- 
ity. The common sense of the world is beginning 
to assert itself and organize itself into the system- 
atized thought of science, which affirms that no mat- 
ter how mysterious life may be, it cannot be mean- 
ingless. Whatever death may be it is not lawless- 
ness. There is no fiend in all the universe, because 
law is everywhere. * * * There is method, 
meaning, order, development all the way from the 
gold in the mountain crevice to the truth in the 
mind of Socrates aud Emerson. # * * 
all the fields of space there is law, rhythmic, benig- 
nant, divine law. And the man with a microscope 
says, T have peered into the realms of littleness, 
penetrated the chambers of the most attenuated be- 
ings, and there I find beauty; the rose and the rain- 
bow written small.’ Life is there, pulsing upward; 
and the student of human history goes back to low- 
est savage or climbs up Parnassus, and finds, all the 
way from cave-dweller to the maker of libraries, a 
common brotherhood of hope and suffering, 
of joy and pain, of life and death. * # # 
The artist is justified, then, by science, history and 
philosophy, in shaping death as a friend. It is a 
kindly hand that stays the restless, struggling chil- 
dren of men, and not the hand of an enemy. 
“The artist is justified in this picture by the pro- 
foundest voices in literature. The poet as well as 
the sculptor in his highest moments regards death 
as a friend. It comes as an angel. # # # 
Daniel French has but put into plaster our own ex- 
perience, interpreting for us what we could not inter- 
pret for ourselves. This hooded figure has been in- 
deed an angel to us. How it has quickened our 
energies! The thought that T must do the work of 
Him that sent me, for the night cometh wherein no 
man can work,’ has been the inspiration of the 
lordly souls of the race. The thought that our time is 
