Statue of Liberty of War; since 1933 it has been maintained by the National Park Service. Public access to the balcony around the torch has been barred for safety since 1916. According to the National Park Service, the idea for the Statue of Liberty was first proposed by Édouard René de Laboulaye, president of the French Anti-Slavery Society and a prominent and important political thinker of his time. The project is traced to a mid-1865 conversation between de Laboulaye, a staunch abolitionist, and Frédéric Bartholdi, a sculptor. In after-dinner conversation at his home near Versailles, Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in
The Statue of Hermes woman. In 1820, Jefferys Taylor wrote a sprightly version for children in which the sculptor assures Mercury that his statue merely serves as a make-weight when a set of the gods is bought. Illustrations of the tale, starting from the miniature in the Greek Medici Manuscript of about 1470, invariably feature the god pointing out his statue to the sculptor. An English copper engraving by David Jones for the specially commissioned "Seven Fables of Aesop" (1928) shows an up-to-date sculptor at work on the statue. The Australian linocut by John Ryrie is more sly in its updating. The god wears