Krttrn to tilt Cbitnr. THE NATIONAL MAUSOLEUM.
Chancery Lane, 25th July 1851.
Sin—Your notice in last week's number of the erection of a monument in Westminster Abbey to the memory of that valuable public servant and excellent man the lamented Charles Buller, suggests a few remarks upon the subject of National Memorials, which, i if you will kindly concede the space, cannot be communicated to the public n a more attractive form than through the medium of your columns.
The admiration excited by a public monument appears to consist in its artistic excellence, in the happiness of its situation, and thirdly, but in a far inferior degree, in the propriety of the honour conferred. Of the compara- tive unimportance of the last of these qualities, the statue of George the Fourth at Charing Cross may be taken as a recent and painful instance. When the monumental effigy of this profligate, mean, and extravagant monarch was raised in the "nest site in Europe," not a tongue was moved to deprecate this sad degradation of what should be the highest honour that a grateful country can bestow on its faithfulest And noblest citizens. The first of the requisites that I have mentioned is sufficiently obvious,—artistic beauty and elegant taste need neither defence nor praise ; but to the striking want of due attention to propriety of locale I would briefly draw public notice. The immense collection of monuments in Westminster Ab- bey, of all sorts, sizes, and styles, of kings and councillors, warriors and engineers, statesmen and actors, contains materials sufficient for the judicious embellishment of half the public buildings in London ; yet no capital in Europe is so sparingly adorned with memorials of its celebrated men. With the exception of Canning's statue bpposite Westminster Hall, I do not know a single well-placed statue—at least in the open air. Pitt stands in Hanover Square, Nelson at Charing Cross, and George the Third in Cockspur Street, for no other apparent reason than that the ground happened to be vacant; nor is Fox's statue much more fitly placed in Bloomsbury, or Wellington's perched up-stairs at Hyde Park Corner. When Campbell was laid among his tuneful brethren in the Abbey, we felt that to be his proper resting- place ; Poet's Corner, familiar as a household word, can never be dissociated in English minds with Westminster Abbey, hallowed by the graves of Gray, Goldsmith, and Addison, and by the memorials of Shaluipere, Dryden, and Spenser. But what could induce the Dean and Chapter to admit the neat smirking figure of Wilberforce in marble, or the solid earthly mass represent- ing James Watt ? The Wilberforce in the new library of the House of Corn- MODS, and the Watt in -the square opposite to the entrance of the North- western Railway, would have some propriety ; as Sir William Follett might adorn the Court of Queen's Bench, instead of, most inappropriately, ha- ran,guing the departed lawyers and statesmen in the Abbey transepts. As to the last addition to this assembly, if there is one place more suitable than another for Charles Buller's monumental bust, it is in the entrance to the Houses of Parliament ; where, full in the view of Colonial legislators and officials, his noble countenance may raise their hopes and elevate their en- deavours in the establishment of future nations in Australia and America. Westminster Hall, with its long walls bare of ornament, offers a magnificent receptacle for monuments, which, like the masses of marble raised to the Pitts, to Lord Mansfield, and Lord Camden, are both inappropriate and out of the public view ; but ranged along the sides of this splendid hall, the emi- nent lawyers near the Courts of Law and Equity, and the great statesmen opposite to them, would form splendid features in the noblest room in Europe. Nor would their removal detract from the beauty of the Abbey, but restore it to its pristine grandeur of repose ; the resting-place of great men, but not the Walhalla of British glory. The transition from the spirited lifelike effigies, in their habits as they lived, in the great hall of justice, to the more solemn dignity of such monuments as those of Chaucer and of the Duke de Montpcnsier in the neighbouring cathedral, would afford a beautiful medi- tative retreat to the living senators of St. Stephen's, would restore to the Abbey its proper character, and introduce to the general public some memo- rials of its faithful servants now almost concealed from view.
PROL'T VIGO.
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