Chapter 26　Daniel Chester French

The Great Sphinx is the biggest statue in the world. However, the biggest marble statue in the world is in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.The Lincoln Memorial is a beautiful marble building built by the United States in memory of President Lincoln.The statue inside is a huge figure of Abraham Lincoln.It is made up of twenty large pieces of marble so carefully carved and fitted together that the statue seems to be all one piece.

Now just because a statue is big doesn't mean that it is beautiful. A little piece of sculpture as big as your hand may be much more beautiful than a statue that is as big as a house.But this huge marble statue is considered by many to be beautiful.It is great in other ways than just size.

The Lincoln statue is the only statue in the building. Do you remember another great shrine with a single statue inside?The inner walls of the Memorial are decorated with huge paintings, but the whole building seems to be made just to hold this one statue.Lincoln is seated in a chair that looks like a throne.He sits facing the door so that you stand before him when you enter.

The whole memorial is so impressive yet so simple that you feel as if the spirit of Lincoln himself were in the building. The sculptor of this wonderful statue of Abraham Lincoln was Daniel Chester French.