Adams, Adeline: The spirit of American sculpture (New York: Nat. Sculpture Soc., 1923)

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THE SPIRIT OF
mountains on which many a French
poet and artist opened infant eyes.
Perhaps Celtic glamor was all that
made his vision of man somewhat dif-
ferent from that of many of his com-
rades at the petite ecole,—just different
enough to give his later work a chance
at immortality, while the images they
shaped had to go back dumb to the
clay-pit again. It is a great gift, the
Celtic eye, though making small boast
of seeing things steadily and seeing
them whole; ah, nothing so prosaic as
that! Celtic melancholy and Celtic
mirth raise up a kind of shimmering
rainbow-dust through which an image
is seen in glorious parts; and Celtic
exasperation loves stir more than stead-
iness. But the plodders need the seers;
and ever since the time of Crawford
and his Past and Present of the Repub-
lic, our sculpture has been graced and
enlivened by many a Mac and O;
never more so than to-day. The Wren
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