human
Tiger devouring a Crocodile (with which Barye made his first appearance at the _Salon_, in 1831); the
gpt
Jaguar devouring a Hare ; the
human
Lion devouring a Doe, the
gpt
Crocodile devouring an Antelope, the
human
Python swallowing a Doe, the
gpt
Tiger devouring a Gazelle, the
human
Bear on a tree devouring an Owl and the
gpt
Lion devouring a Boar. What a series of banquets on blood and warm, almost living flesh is here presented! How cruel these creatures are to each other, is the thought that first comes to us, but a second, reminds that it is but their instinct and a necessity of natural law, and repulsion is lost in astonishment and delight at the marvellous fidelity with which the sculptor has rendered these links in the great chain of animal life. Their (as we call it) savage eagerness, their almost blind rage for their appointed food, the tenacity with which they clutch and the ravening _anxiety_ (caused by the dread of losing their prey) with which they tear the flesh of their victims, is portrayed to the life. We speak of a death-grip, but here is a death and life grip--death to the victim whose palpitating body furnishes life to its destroyer. It is the hot-cold-bloodedness of nature, the disregard for suffering of the tornado, the earthquake and the avalanche shown in little in the fangs and claws of these wild creatures. Then there are the battles of the more evenly-matched animals--not always as a result of the need of sustenance--such are the tiger transfixed by the elephant; the python's folds crushing the crocodile; and the bear dragging the bull to earth, or itself, in turn, overthrown by mastiffs. Then comes those groups into which man enters--the African horseman surprised by a great serpent whose formidable folds already enclose his struggling body; the Arabs killing a lion; and the
human
Theseus overcoming the Minotaur, wherein the calmly irresistible hero is about to bury his keen, short sword in the bull-neck of the gross monster. The success with which Barye has combined the human and bestial characteristics of the minotaur is most remarkable and a similar triumph is won in the hippogriff--the winged horse, with forefeet of claws and beaked nose, which leaps so swiftly over the coiled-shape of the dolphin-serpent, which serves for his pedestal--bearing upon his back the charming, nude figure of Angelica held in the mail-clad arms of Ariosto's hero. To this category _seems_ to belong the
gpt
Ape riding a Gnu,
human
has all the