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we give our readers some fairly typical examples that well illustrate the wide range of life depicted and the admirable manner in which the poet-sculptor has portrayed the originals, making the soul shine forth and accentuating the dominant note struck by his subject on the higher plane of expression. These representative poets, philosophers, thinkers and emancipators are real heroes of civilization whose work in elevating, developing and advancing humanity while increasing the happiness of the race, contrasts strikingly with the work of the heroes of war or destruction who have risen to sinister eminence, but who, owing to their egoism, self-absorption and spiritual blindness, have left behind them blight, ruin, hate and despair.

Here we have a study of Milton, the austere poet of the Protestant Reformation and of the revolt of the people against the despotisms of the Stuarts. As Homer was the blind bard whose tran

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BURNS,

By William Ordway Partridge.

scendent imagination enriched the dawning days of Western civilization, Milton. was the poet of eagle imagination in the gray dawn that heralded the age of freedom and popular rule.

From Milton we turn to Franklin, one of the most speaking works in portraiture that has been produced by an American sculptor. Here we almost imagine the cheerful and simple child of a new world, a new philosophy and a new political order will utter, even while we peer upon the sculptured bust, some of those wonderfully droll sayings that were so pregnant! with homely truth and practical wisdom. One accomplished critic, after seeing this bust observed:

"One cannot regard this head without smiling. Any moment, you feel sure, he may mop his forehead with a bandana and replace his hat; meanwhile you are actively conscious of the teeming brain inside that solid-looking head-a brain that is at work sizzling and fermenting, getting up

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schemes in a manner to circumvent the devil. This inimitable portrait is the work of a hand that knows its own cunning.' Franklin was one of the most complex natures the New World has produced, and yet perhaps the most typically American of all the illustrious citizens of the New World; and this portrait reveals the fact that Mr. Partridge has entered into such intimate rapport with the "Poor Richard" of the printer's world, the marvelous philosophical student and the peerless statesman as to represent the real Franklin in a most realistic manner.

Now let us consider the poets, Burns, Byron and Shelley. Each represents in a fine way the subtle presence of the artistic imagination. Burns, the free-hearted child of the people and lover of justice and singer of the broadening life of the common man, with prophetic vision beheld what the wisest men of his day little dreamed was hastening on the wings of time. Mr. Partridge's study of Burns is

SHELLEY, By William Ordway Partridge.

particularly excellent. One can almost imagine these lips are ready to exclaim: "Then let us pray that come it may

As come it will for a' that-
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth,
May bear the gree, and a' that:
For a' that, and a' that,

It's comin' yet for a' that,
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that!"

In the portrait of Byron it will be observed that Mr. Partridge has chosen to represent the poet on the threshold of early manhood, ere the baleful effects of the Venus-world had left their marks upon his plastic features. In the history of nineteenth-century literary men we know of no fate so melancholy and essentially tragic as Byron's. Gifted with a rich poetic imagination, with a nature as delicate as a finely-strung instrument that responds to the lightest passing zephyr, had he been favored during the formative period of life with an environment of love, sympathy and appreciation, and had he entered manhood happily married to a spiritually strong woman, how rich might have been his gift to civilization and how nobly joyous would have been his full-orbed life; for resident in his heart was so much that was fine, noble and true, and here was so deep a love of justice and freedom, that with his wealth of imagination and wizard power with words, he might have fanned the moral enthusiasm of generations and become a great factor in sweeping millions of lives to a higher plane of being. The potentiality for good and the sensitive delicacy and possibility of becoming clay in the hands of environing conditions, whether good or ill, are all suggested in this portrait of the young Byron, whose life and poetry naturally suggest his contemporary, Shelley.

One has only to examine the portrait bust of this poet to appreciate the presence of that subtle, dreamy, haunting spirit of unrest-hope mingled with doubt, expectation treading on the heels of unsatisfied desire-which marked in so large a way the life of Shelley and which expressed the tremendous struggle of opposing forces

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WALT. WHITMAN,

By William Ordway Partridge,

among the revolutionary youths of his time. Shelley was intensely human, and over his sensitive mind the hopes, aspirations, dreams and longings of the Angel of Light warred with the spirits in revolt on the lower plane, who sought the mastery of men among the revolutionary forces no less than among others of the highestwrought and most sensitive natures of that time. Mr. Partridge has created a noble piece of work in this head, and as we look on the speaking face whose tempestuous life went out so tragically while the day of manhood was yet far from its meridian glory, we call to mind these words, which welled from the depths of the emotional nature of a great soul:

"I will be wise,

And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power, for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check."

F Or perhaps these words from the exquisite poem on "Intellectual Beauty" come to the mind.

"The awful shadow of some unseen Power

Floats, tho' unseen, amongst us,-visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,

It visits with inconstant glance

Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,-
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,-
Like memory of music fled,-

Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

"Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,-where art thou
gone?

Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ?
Ask why the sunlight not forever

Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river,

Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth

Such gloom,-why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?"

In Tennyson, Whitman and Whittier we have a trio of poets who delivered vital messages after Shelley and Byron had ceased to sing. Mr. Partridge's Tennyson is, we think, one of the greatest pieces of portraiture that has been produced by an artist of the New World. In speaking of this work Mr. Robert Burns Wilson in an admirable criticism which appeared a few months ago in The Studio, observed:

"This head of Tennyson, Dr. Van Dyke says, is the best portrait of the poet extant, but aside from its being so fine a piece of portraiture, the head would have its value for the perceiving mind apart from the glamor of 'Locksley Hall," "The Princess' and the 'Idylls of the King.' This is essentially the head of the music-master of any age. The spirit's impatient, patient battle with the eternal drag of material things is written on these features. That Tennyson fought the battle well is known in his long life, his great work. The record of the fight is written in this face."

The sculptor was extremely fortunate in the advantage he enjoyed in preparing Tennyson's bust, as he passed a day with the poet and was thus able to work from life.This bust of Tennyson and those of the other poets, thinkers, philosophers and emancipators that our sculptor has so

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