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Page 28 text:
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Wh moitU statuette And lie rode — that grand Virginian, Last of all the Cavaliers. THOSE who enter the library of the Virginia Military Institute can scarcely fail to be struck by what may be termed its central point of interest — the equestrian statuette of General Lee. Such is the effect produced by this fine creation in bronze that the beholder feels more inclined to characterize it as Statue than Statuette, not only because its dimensions rather forbid the idea of something in miniature, but because it has a personality so spirited, so vraisemblant, that it lifts it out of the little into the great. In short, it is Robert E. Eee as those who knew him saw him. Apart from this value of its likeness it is a work of art. And the artist? — Frederick Volck, of Nurem- berg, Bavaria. He was employed in the Confederate Bureau of Naval Ord- nance and Hydrograph} , while Captain John M. Brooke, the designer of the plan applied to the conversion of the famous Merrimac (or Virginia), was in charge. Being a man of high tone and great delicacy of feeling, he and the eminent Brooke became fast friends. He made a bust of Captain Brooke and also of Jefferson Davis. That of Captain Brooke is supposed to have been destroyed when the Federal troops occupied Richmond. The fate of the President ' s, of which a photograph is here reproduced, is not known. The following note points to the fact that there had been some arrange- ment on foot for the erection of a statue of General Eee : EiCHMOjJD, Augu:it 2d, 1864. Dear Captain : At Volck ' s request I enclose you a photograph of his design of the statue. Y. is anx- ious to have a free criticism, and I will be under obligations to 3-ou if you will let me have yours in writing at a very earl} ' day, as I want to communicate with him as soon as I hear from you. Yours truly, ' CommamUr Brooke, C. S. Navyr S. BASSETT FRENCH. But the close of the war and the breaking up of the Confederacy prevented his receiving the expected order for a statue of heroic size, to his great dis- couragement and disappointment, for he had spent everything he had in making and working up his models. He did not live to enter the competition for the statue afterwards raised in Richmond by the Southern people to the Last of all the Cavaliers, and so this perfected design — perfected by means of sittings and a life mask secured to him through the kind offices of Captain Brooke, and by actual measurements of Old Traveller — dignifies the Institute library today, placed there because of Volck ' s regard for the Insti- tute ' s Professor of Physics. R. A. M. rr.
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