“LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD.”
The New York World has done wondrously well to raise $30,000 by a popular subscription for the setting up of the Bartholdi statue in New York harbor. Our readers know that this colossal statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World” is a present from the French people, but that there has been no provision made for the cost of setting up the great work of French art. Various attempts to raise the necessary $100,000 have yielded but small results, and when the World took hold of the matter the failure had become a very disagreeable joke for the press. Other newspapers have engaged in public enterprises. The New York Herald sent a ship into the Arctic Ocean in search of the Pole. The New York Tribune maintains by the subscriptions of its readers a “Fresh-Air Fund” which gives thousands of children an outing in the country during the hot months. The enterprise of the World is, if possible, more praiseworthy, and its success in rescuing a lost cause is as honorable as it is unexpected. The subscriptions have been made by people of all conditions and fortunes, by boys and girls, by merchants, artists and laborers. A popular interest in the subject has been created, a great deal of information imparted, many mistakes corrected, and a popular support secured for a work of art. The work is in the line of large and healthy philanthropy, and the World deserves unstinted credit. Let us all hope that it will carry the cause through to entire success.
We are, as a nation, still poor in public statuary. We have some good pieces and not a few failures. Perhaps many persons have feared that the Bartholdi statue is another monstrosity. Let them take courage; the World has presented excellent evidence that the work is equal to its mission. The French people are to have a small edition of it set up in Paris, and eminent French critics are unsparing in their praise of it. Of course we can not be too confident of the effect of a statue higher than Trinity steeple or the pillars of the East River bridge, set up so as to face the sea and meet the eyes of the world entering the harbor of New York. On that point there is excellent artistic judgment in favor of the success of the audacious conception of the artist. We may now regard the plan as certain to be carried out at no distant day, and if it succeeds it will be one of the wonders of the world. A statue rising to the height of three hundred and seventeen feet above the waves—the familiar figure of Liberty confronting the world in our chief American city—will be a unique and impressive piece of art, if it be not an utter failure. The if is not a large doubt; only the small doubt which attends the most perfect human work which is as yet untried. The World’s popular subscription had passed $35,000 when these lines were sent to press, on the 28th of April.