Would schoolchildren today be interested in supporting such a thing, I wonder?The Marquis de Lafayette, a young noble in the army of the French king, was hardly more than a boy when he heard that the British colonies in North America would not stand the foolish rule of the king and Parliament of England any longer. Boy as he was, he had followed the troubles between the colonies and England, and saw at once that if the people in the New World of America would only fight for the right to manage their own affairs, the people in other lands, like his own country, might take courage and force their rulers to let them govern themselves.
So over he came, against the will of the French king, in a ship he fitted out with his own money—a slender, boyish-looking young man still in his teens; and well he fought for our ancestors. When he arrived they did not know much about war, and were slowly learning how to manage armies and feed large bodies of men and lead soldiers into battle. They had few cannons and guns, and little powder, and Lafayette brought them some in his ship. And through his example, and through his arguments in Paris during a brief visit home, he brought it at last to the point that French fleets and well-drilled French regiments were sent across the Atlantic. After the war, when he went back, Congress and the people and General Washington thanked him, and the children came out of school to see him pass, and hurrahed for him. Then he went to France, and his wounds and the high rank he won in America made him the idol of the people. What he told them about America made them feel that they too ought to have something to say in the government of the land, and a little later they decided that if the king and the nobles would not let them help to govern they must rule the land for themselves. Still later they decided to have a republic once and for all, a republic like ours, with a president elected from time to time, instead of a king who ruled whether he was fit to rule or not.
Lafayette came again to this country when he was old. Great rejoicings met him everywhere. Congress granted him a large sum of money and much land. The children were drawn up at the entrance to the towns where he passed in his coach, waving branches and scattering flowers, while bands of prettily dressed young girls sang songs of welcome. This pleased Lafayette more than anything else. He knew that the men of his own age, who had been his comrades in the war to free the colonies, liked him and were glad he came; but he had not imagined how the children had been taught to love him. He saw then that he would never be forgotten in the great land of North America, which was destined to contain more people than all Europe can support. He knew then that from generation to generation the children would learn in school and at the fireside what he had done.
So it has turned out that the children of the present day have not forgotten the boy Lafayette, who followed his own warm heart and came to the rescue of the poor colonists.
A statue of Lafayette on horseback is a proof what good memories they have.
Here is a picture of the great statue of Lafayette in bronze, sealed astride of a bronze horse. It stands in the courtyard of the finest of all the old buildings in Paris, the Louvre, near the bank of the river Seine, not far from the famous old Gothic church of Notre Dame.
The Louvre is covered with sculpture, and in its halls and galleries, where the courtiers of the kings of France used to assemble, there are wonderful old paintings and statues. It has many courts, but the courtyard where this statue of Lafayette is placed is the largest of all. In the middle is a little park, with trees, bushes, and flowers. The statue that recalls Lafayette rises on its pedestal among the leaves.
What has it to do, perhaps you ask, with the children of the United States? Everything. Some years ago they gave the money for it. The school-children put the money together little by little; and when school after school added its gift to the fund, the sum grew until all that was needed was ready.
The sculptor chosen was Wayland Bartlett, an American living in France. His model was accepted by the officials in Paris who have charge of public monuments and can accept or refuse to take a statue according as they think it worthy to be placed in Paris, or not good enough. When they first heard of the Children's Monument to Lafayette, the Parisians were very much pleased, and so, when the model was accepted and it was asked where the monument should stand, the officials gave it one of the best places in the city, where all foreigners and many Parisians are sure to come, because through this courtyard, the square of the Carrousel, or merry-go-round, nearly everybody passes in order to reach the entrance to the art treasures of the Louvre. As Lafayette nearly eighty years ago had been touched by the welcome he got from the children of America, so the Parisians also were touched by the gift of the children to their city in memory of one of their famous citizens.
The Place du Carrousel inside the Louvre has on the side toward the gardens of the Tuileries nothing but a beautiful arch with pink marble columns in front and bronze figures on top; then come the gardens where the palace used to stand in which the Emperor Louis Napoleon lived, and then the fountains and gate and long vista of the street called the Champs-Êlysées, until far in the distance, on higher ground, one sees another and bigger arch of triumph against the sky. So it is that the bronze statue of Lafayette, seated on the horse on the tall pedestal among the trees in the courtyard of the Louvre, seems to be signaling with the hilt of his sword to some one up that long vista, past the little arch, far up yonder by the big arch a mile away.
What did the sculptor mean by putting the sword in Lafayette's hand with the hilt upward, the point downward? The sword with point on high means war, because one strikes with the point of the sword; but when the hilt is uppermost it means peace. Perhaps the sculptor meant to say that Lafayette, although a soldier from the age of thirteen, and once in command of all the armies of France, was always on the side of justice and order and peace. He did what he could to quiet the angry passions of his fellow-countrymen and save the king and queen from death, and when Napoleon grew great, he voted against giving him unlimited power, foreseeing that he would wreck France. Lafayette always hoped that the French would imitate the Americans and be content with having thrown off the yoke of their oppressors. But the conditions in France were very different from the state of affairs in America. What was possible in a new and thinly peopled land like ours was not possible in Europe at that time. It took nearly a century before France was able to found a republic like ours, for there were too many enemies within the country and about it. In New York there is on Union Square a statue of Lafayette, modeled by a Frenchman, which shows him as he was when he first came over, full of ardor and hope. The statue in Paris is Lafayette at a later age, when he was trying to keep the French within bounds and was appealing in vain to reason. Both are good statues. Each is fitted for the city where it stands. We like to think of him as the generous youth who left wife, great position, and wealth behind him to devote himself to the cause of a little struggling nation that only asked to work out its own destiny.
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