Romance in Metal Work 
FIGURE 12 FIGURE I3 
to proclaim in forging those gates to the Apollo 
gallery in the Louvre (fig. g), or in this statue to 
Delacroix (fig. 10) ? When Time, with Art applaud¬ 
ing, holds up Fame to crown the painter with the 
wreath of immortality, who can deny but that the 
sculptor wished to proclaim the unsurpassable 
superiority of France in a golden age? Who can 
fail to see but that the sculptor wished to convey 
in this statue of Danton (fig. ii) that France was the 
Fountain of Liberty, and that his countrymen, even 
the young throbbing with uncontrollable earnestness, 
were eager to translate the doctrine of the freedom 
of brotherhood and glory of race at any cost for the 
glory of ideal ? Or in the statue to La Fontaine 
that he wishes to tell you of the wit of this unsurpas¬ 
sable son of France (fig. 13) ? 
And so I could go on telling you that under all 
great art of the metal worker, whether the thing to 
be done is great or small, there must always be the 
same working of the intellect, the same poetic feeling 
for the ideal in story, the same tenderness for 
material. No better example can be given than 
this by the great modern master in the loving treat¬ 
ment he adopted for the figure of St. Elizabeth of 
Hungary for the tomb of the late Duke of Clarence 
(fig. 12). 
265 
