The Proper Functions of Open-Air Statuary 
courage and with possessing yourself moral 
courage enough to dare proclaim that posi¬ 
tion, at which the whole intellectual world 
would rejoice. You would put a premium 
on a young man’s becoming a hero of Peace 
as well as of savage War, and it would give 
you more prestige than the building of 
fifty sky-scraping hotels or a thousand ugly 
factories. 
Your I. 
dncolti 
m 0 n u m e 
nt is 
a superb 
thing, 
but its 
setting 
is poor. 
You 
should create a 
fine square for 
it, put it 
in the 
center, 
on a 
splendid 
plat- 
for m , 
sur- 
r 0 u n d e 
d by 
balustrades and 
with flowers and 
fountains 
, with 
a magnificence 
worthy of the 
great hero and 
martyr—even if 
it cost a million 
dollars to do 
so. Nothing 
is too costly to 
glorify those 
three great 
men, — not for 
their sakes, but 
for your own; 
for when a city 
sets up a stingy 
monument to a 
great man, it 
only belittles itself. It is impossible for 
me to pass the statue of a noble man 
without mentally taking off my hat and 
silently thanking him for having lived; 
for every great man has helped to make 
life as fine as it has become to-day, and as 
fine as it is bound to become to-morrow. 
We should raise monuments not to the 
great dead but to our vast appreciation of 
the great dead. They need not our monu¬ 
ments, but we and our children need them ; 
and every time we show our appreciation of a 
real great man in a royal manner we ennoble 
our souls, raise ourselves in the scale of true 
civilization and increase our own glory. 
J think you are too intelligent to make it 
needful for me to use more words to convince 
you of the uplifting and stimulating power of 
open-air statuary and of its absolute necessity 
in anv city pretending to be civilized. I 
have now spoken of the four moral functions 
which are really 
proper to open- 
air statuary—to 
delight , to refine , 
to console and 
to stimulate the 
people. (The 
accompanyi ng 
illustrations are 
grouped accord¬ 
ing to these 
heads). Let us 
now see what is 
the effect of the 
setting-up of 
statuary in a city 
from a material 
point of view. 
The first 
effect is, to raise 
the price of real 
estate. Permit 
me to say, with¬ 
out the slightest 
fear of success- 
fid contradic¬ 
tion, that you 
cannot place a 
% 20,000 monu¬ 
ment—if it is 
a good one of 
course— any¬ 
where in your city without raising the 
value of the surrounding real estate, by 
far more than the cost of the structure; 
provided always that the monument is 
properly placed, but above all properly 
kept. This has been proved so often 
that it has become an axiom. 1 have 
not the time to prove it again here. If 
any neighborhood begins to run down 
slightly at the heels, all you have to 
do is to create a small square in its midst 
and put into it a fine statue and you will 
THE MONUMENT OF THE G1R0NDINS, BORDEAUX 
490 
