know what a grizzly bear is, but are more fearless and independent, and
therefore often more correct in their artistic opinion than the somewhat
sophisticated critics of the East, there is some cause for hoping that
this thing may be brought to pass.

Beside the grizzly stands the mountain sheep, or cimmaron, the most
difficult to capture of all four-footed animals, whose gigantic curved
horns are the best trophy of skill and enterprise that a hunter can bring
home with him. The sculptor has here caught him in one of his most
characteristic attitudes--just alighted from some dizzy leap on the
headlong slope of a rocky mountainside. On such a spot nothing but the
cimmaron could retain its footing; yet there he stands, firm and secure as
the rock itself, his fore feet planted close together, the fore legs rigid
and straight as the shaft of a lance, while the hind legs pose easily in
attendance upon them. "The cimmaron always strikes plumb-centre, and he
never makes a mistake," is Mr. Kemeys's laconic comment; and we can
recognize the truth of the observation in this image. Perfectly at home
and comfortable on its almost impossible perch, the cimmaron curves its
great neck and turns its head upward, gazing aloft toward the height
whence it has descended. "It's the golden eagle he hears," says the
sculptor; "they give him warning of danger." It is a magnificent animal, a
model of tireless vigor in all its parts; a creature made to hurl itself
head-foremost down appalling gulfs of space, and poise itself at the
bottom as jauntily as if gravitation were but a bugbear of timid
imaginations. I find myself unconsciously speaking about these plaster
models as if they were the living animals which they represent; but the
more one studies Mr. Kemeys's works, the more instinct with redundant and
breathing life do they appear.

It would be impossible even to catalogue the contents of this studio, the