The various stages through
which recent efforts to promote sculptured memorials in London have
passed suggest the mock turtle's definition in _Alice in Wonderland_
of the four branches of arithmetic--Ambition, Distraction,
Uglification, and Derision. Save the old statue of James the Second,
at Whitehall, and the new statue of Oliver Cromwell, which stands at
a disadvantage on its present site beneath Westminster Hall, there is
scarcely a sculptured portrait in the public places of London which is
not
A fixed figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at.
London does not lack statues of men of letters. There are statues of
Burns and John Stuart Mill on the Thames Embankment, of Byron in
Hamilton Place, and of Carlyle on Chelsea Embankment. But all convey
an impression of insignificance, and thereby fail to satisfy the
nation's commemorative instinct.
The taste of the British nation needs rigorous control when it seeks
to pay tribute to benefactors by means of sculptured monuments. During
the last forty years a vast addition has been made throughout Great
Britain--with most depressing effect--to the number of sculptured
memorials in the open air.
Pages:
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323