N 1898 the school children of the United States subscribed fifty thousand dollars for a monument to Lafayette, and early in the following year the committee having the matter in charge commissioned Mr. Paul Wayland Bartlett to make an equestrian statue, and the French Government, being informed, appointed a commission composed of the architect of the Louvre, M. Georges Redon, the sculptor, M. Eugéne Guillaume, and others. This French commission was well satisfied with the choice of sculptor, and the American commission pointed out to him the advantage of completing his model, if possible, in time for the Universal Exposition which was to be held in 1900. Mr. Bartlett immediately got to work, in New York, and in March, 1899, completed a first sketch, as

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seen on page 310; and on the fourth of July, the same year, he showed it to the architect of the Louvre. The plan was then formed that on Independence Day, the following year, the work should be so far advanced that a model of it could be unveiled with appropriate ceremonies.

Bartlett, realizing that one year was a very short time for so important a work, and that he could do it to better advantage if uninterrupted, rented a huge barn in the little village of Saint Leu, about twenty-five miles from Paris, and thither he betook himself, with a faithful assistant and a fine horse, both competent models when occasion required.

In this retirement from the possible menace of social functions for which, in the general sense, he cares very little, the young sculptor worked comfortably and sanely and well. Fortunately he did not destroy

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inner garden of the Court of the Louvre, originally designed with the intention of using it as the frame for an equestrian statue. In fact, the foundation for a monument of the kind had already been laid, and a statue of Napoleon I completed, when, as it was about to be put in position, the war with Germany was on and French and German citizens were not giving their customary quota of time to acts of self-congratulation.

During the twelve months at St. Leu the work, as evidenced by the sketches and his own photographs taken as it progressed, came on apace, until a full-size plaster model (here shown) was ready, well in time, to put in place. The commissioners were pleased and every one concerned was satisfied, except perhaps the sculptor, who all the time regarded what he had so far done as preliminary to something which, in his mind, should, and which eventually did, follow.

The ceremony of unveiling occurred July 4, 1900. The commissioners and many other distinguished persons were present. Entirely by chance Bartlett found himself seated next to the sculptor, Eugéne Guillaume, and he it was who first congratulated him. The circumstance might be passed as ordinary, but as it was Guillaume who had made the statue of Napoleon I, before referred to as having been intended for the same spot, the courtesy of the old sculptor heartily grasping the hand of the very young American assumes a grace and a significance not to be disregarded.

The Court of the Louvre is, in itself, exquisitely beautiful. And when one stops to consider that it is surrounded on three sides by the matchless architecture of the palace of the Louvre, in whose various buildings are stored choice works of art of multitudinous variety, gathered from all the modern and, so far as possible, ancient

civilizations of the world, the place becomes one of very huge importance. And when we realize that this Court with its fine gardens and entourage is but a part of the

Fifth sketch.

two points, the Arch and the Colonnade, are other palaces and gardens, and fountains and monuments in groups, which without such skilful arrangement would become

merely a bewildering mass of splendor and of riches. But the French people have given proof that they know how to plan schemes of beauty, whether small or large, in a very effective manner, and mention of the Louvre, the Champs Elysées, and the other features of this one may not seem irrelevant. Bear in mind that no other country had been invited to figure conspicuously and permanently in this great civic plan until the American school children made their five-cent contributions for a memorial to Lafayette, and that the French commission having the matter in charge would have accepted no sculptor in whom it did not have entire confidence, to place a statue in the choicest position in France for a monument of the kind.

After and before the unveiling of the first model no one could possibly have understood the situation more clearly than it was understood by Paul Bartlett. He asked no advice and needed no advisers.