Remember, today is Memorial Day. That's what it's for, remembering. The holiday's gone blurry. Now it's mostly fun (ballgames, barbecues, a day off work), but it used to be for focused recollections of the dead.

Not the dead in general, the dead in sharp particular. Half a million soldiers had died in the Civil War. When the rites were first observed in 1866, there were plenty to recall.

Each spring at the end of May, their graves were strewn with flowers. This was deeply serious business. The fallen mustn't be forgotten. That seriousness bred art. That art would shape the country's look, and Washington's especially. Vast amounts of money and artistry would be expended on its making. The beauty of the art would illumine its high purpose — to immortalize remembrance. Strewn flowers weren't enough.

Washington is filled with them. If you want to get Memorial Day, look around at the memorials. They put generals on pedestals, and dead presidents above them. The statues aren't just portraits; they're personified ideals. They say: The past approves of us.

They represent an art movement, now dead. For a long time, their architects and artists, their stone-carvers and bronze-founders got better and better. For a long time, their elevated style got nobler and nobler. Then, suddenly, it died. We know the date exactly. Memorial sculpture's greatness left Washington on May 30, Memorial Day, 1922.

That Memorial Day was when they dedicated the Lincoln Memorial. In it is his statue, a colossal marble. Of Washington's great personified sculptural memorials, the Lincoln is the greatest — and the last.

It's Memorial Day. Take a moment. Stand up. Think of what the nation has lost.