de Remusat. The identification of these excellent men with the project
should be a sufficient guarantee of its disinterested character. The
efforts made in this country to raise the money--$250,000--required to
build a suitable pedestal for the statue, are a subject of every day
comment, and the failure to obtain the whole amount is a matter for no
small degree of chagrin.

Who and what is Mr. Bartholdi? He is a native of Colmar, in Alsace, and
comes of a good stock; a pupil of the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, and of Ary
Scheffer, he studied first painting then sculpture, and after a journey
in the East with Gerome, established his atelier in Paris. He served in
the irregular corps of Garibaldi during the war of 1870, and the
following year visited the United States. It is admitted that he is a
man of talent, but that he is not considered a great sculptor in his own
country is equally beyond doubt. He would not be compared, for instance,
with such men as Chapu, Dubois, Falguiere, Clesinger, Mercie, Fremiet,
men who stand in the front rank of their profession. The list of his
works is not long. It includes statues of General Rapp, Vercingetorix,
Vauban, Champollion, Lafayette and Rouget de l'Isle; ideal groups
entitled "Genius in the Grasp of Misery," and "the Malediction of
Alsace;" busts of Messrs. Erckmann and Chatrain; single figures called
"Le Vigneron," "Genie Funebre" and "Peace;" and a monument to Martin
Schoengauer in the form of a fountain for the courtyard of the Colmar
Museum. There may be a few others. Last, but by no means least, there is
the great Lion of Belfort, his best work. This is about 91 by 52 feet in
dimensions, and is carved from a block of reddish Vosges stone. It is
intended to commemorate the defence of Belfort against the German army
in 1870, an episode of heroic interest. The immense animal is
represented as wounded but still capable of fighting, half lying, half
standing, with an expression of rage and mighty defiance. It is not too