A Modern Tomb, In Com-
Parison, Is A Sceptical Affair; It Insists Too Little On The
Honors.
I say this in the face of the fact that one has
only to step across the cathedral of Nantes to stand in
the presence of one of the purest and most touching
of modern tombs.
Catholic Brittany has erected in
the opposite transept a monument to one of the most
devoted of her sons, General de Lamoriciere, the de-
fender of the Pope, the vanquished of Castelfidardo.
This noble work, from the hand of Paul Dubois, one
of the most interesting of that new generation of sculp-
tors who have revived in France an art of which our
overdressed century had begun to despair, has every
merit but the absence of a certain prime feeling. It
is the echo of an earlier tune, - an echo with a beauti-
ful cadence. Under a Renaissance canopy of white
marble, elaborately worked with arabesques and che-
rubs, in a relief so low that it gives the work a cer-
tain look of being softened and worn by time, lies the
body of the Breton soldier, with, a crucifix clasped to
his breast and a shroud thrown over his body. At
each of the angles sits a figure in bronze, the two best
of which, representing Charity and Military Courage,
had given me extraordinary pleasure when they were
exhibited (in the clay) in the Salon of 1876. They
are admirably cast, and they have a certain greatness:
the one, a serene, robust young mother, beautiful in
line and attitude; the other, a lean and vigilant young
man, in a helmet that overshadows his serious eyes,
resting an outstretched arm, an admirable military
member, upon the hilt of a sword.
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