The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1873-10-18 00:00:00

FUNERAL OF SIR EITIN LAIOSEER.

Sir Elwin Landseer was buried In St. Parrs
Cs4llWinoi, 011 Saturday, with lees pomp than that of
many • private funeral, but amid a manifestation of
popular sympathy which has not often been equalled
in our time. As early as nine o'clock an immense
crowd had collected in front of the residence of the
illustrious deceased, 5; o. 1, St John's-wood road;
and when, something more than an hour later, the
hearse, drawn by four horses. entered the grounds,
the spectators, silent and sorrowful, could not have
numbered fewer than 5,000. The body, which was
enclosed in a shell, had been placed in a lead coffin, over
which there was a covering of polished old English
oak, welled, with massive silver handles and etude.
A sliver plate bore the unostentatious inscription,
"Elwin Isandseer. Born 7th March, 1802. Died
let October, 1873." Above the inscription was a very
handsomely worked wreath In silver, and under
it a torch emblematic of life. The coffin having been
placed in the hearse, the velvet valence of
which on either side bore the monogram of the
deceased worked In silver grey, three mourn.
leg coaches drew up to tile door, into the first
of which entered the venerable brother of the
deceased, Mr. Thomas Landseer ; his goo, Mr.
Charles Landeeer •, his daughter, Mien Lendseer, and
his lister, Mrs. Mackenzie. The second carriage was
occupied by Mr. Edwin, Mackenzie Mr. Landrieu.
hlnekenzie, and Mr. John Webb; whilst Dr. Humby,
Mr. Hills, Mr. Arnold White, and Mr. John Pye
occupied the third carriage. There were several
private carriages as well, amongst which were one of
hie Royal Highness the Prince of Wale. and that of
the Baroness Burdett Coutte, while several bore upon
their panels the crests of noblemen.
The procession started at half-past tea o'clock, and
along the whole route from St. John's-wood to St.
Paul's, the pathways were lined, and the roadways too,
while the windows and balconies of clubs, private houses,
and hotels were filled, with thousands upon thousands
of spectators. The funeral was private—nominally so
—blames the State or the Academy did not bear the
expense. But no each announcement zonld stifle the
expression of national sympathy. Of many houses the
blinds were drawn down an I numerous shop' were
closed even en a busy day like Saturday. By all
claim heartfelt tribute was mild to the memory of
that gifted minter who had by his genius given to the
world so many hours of pure delight for all sorts of
people, and whose works had won for him, even in
early youth, a splendid reputation which innumerable
triumphs in later life have made Imperishable.
It was twenty minutes past twelve as the procession
reached the summit of Ludgate-MU. The western
portion of the churchyard is at present cumbered with
timbers and stonework and other workmen's litter,
coneequent on the alterations making in the approaches
to the cathedral, and so blocked up is the space round
the statue of Queen Anne that it was only possible to
allow the hearse, the carriages containing the mourners,
and the two Royal carriages to drive directly up to the
chief portico. The mourning coaches containing the
Royal Academicians passed to the south, and halted
at • side gateway. Thence the Academical body
posed to the portico and ranged themselves in
a double line on the steps, while the coffin, its bearers,
and the mourners entered the cathedral. The Right
Rev. Bishop Claughton led the service; of other clergy
there were present the Minor Canons Webber, Milenan,
Povith, Calvert, and Simpson; Dr. Stainer and Mr.
Cooper presiding at the organ, and Mr. Walker conduct-
ing the choir. Inexpressibly solemn was the effect pro-
dined on those in the choir, as the distant wailing sound
of Croft's and Purcell's Burial Chants became audible
—the coffin and bearers creeping slowly eastward along
the nave, the mtumead notes, at first fitful and vague
as of musk heard in -a dream, deepening and loudening
Into the full well of the sublime orisons I am the
Resurrection and the Life ;" "I know that my Re-
deemer liveth ;" and "We brought nothing into this
world." The whole congregation standing up, the
ministering priest and clergy, and the choristers, pre-
ceding the corpse, entered the choir. The choristers
and canons then filed off to their appointed places
beneath tl e organ ; Behop Claughton proceeding
to the reeding desk. The coffin now approached, •
sumptuous casket, indeed, of polished wood with
massive studs and enrichments of burnished silver,
and, on • plate of dead eilver on the lid the
painter's name and the years of his life. Over this was
thrown • handsome pall of velvet, surmounted by a
huge mom of rare exotics, and a number of floral
wreaths, the gifts of Royal sympathy and of private
love. The pall-bearers, five In number, were the
senior members of the RA/al A reelemy, Metter@ Thomas
Webster, Cope, Rtchard Redgrave, John B. gems
Herbert, and Marshall. Sir Francis Grant.
P.R.A., headed the academic body, which, ftrty-
three in number, comprised the vast majority of
the members and the associates of the art oli-
garchy of Burlington Howie. The mourners were
conducted to seats on either side of the grave the two
ladies of Sir Edwin's family, closely veiled, and Mr.
Thomas Lainiseer being on the north-east side of the
altar. Then the burial service was continued and com-
pleted, Bishop) Claughton proceeding to the grnve to
read the final homilies and collects, and Handel's
magnificent anthem, "His body is buried in peace,
but his name !teeth for evermore," concluding the ser-
vice. The Dead March in "Saul" was played while,
the ceremony being at an end, the congregatd
passed slowly out of the cathedral. A number
of persons, however, furnished with special invitations,
were permitted to descend into the crypt where the
real grave had been dug, close to the tombs of the long
line of departed artiste over whose ashes seems to
watch the tutelary genius I,f Christopher Wren (re
marks the Daily Telegraph, and thud continues), "For
he too, who 'lived more than ninety years, not for
himself, but for his country,' sleeps in the crypt. Two
hundred and fifty years ago did they bury likewise in
St. Paul's the most famous painter of his age; Lut his
rooting-piece, like that of his neighbour, old John of
Gaunt, 'time-honoured Lancaster,' was utterly swept
away in the Great Fire, and there is no tradi-
tion to tell us of the precise spot in the great old fans
where he was laid. Yet, remembering that which
Gainaborough whispered, in happy hope, on his death.
bed, 'We are all going to heaven, and Vandyck is of
the company,' it is pleasant to fancy that the dust of
the great Fleming may perchance be mingled with
that of the great Englishman, and that the grave of
Sir Edwin Landseer, which, ere it was domed on
Saturday, was heaped to the brim with fairest flowers,
is not far from the obliterated sepulchre of Sir
Anthony Vandyck.”

THE TIMM. 1111111 MON.

On Sunday morning, although It rained incessantly,
a crowded congregation assembled under the dome of
St. Paul's Cathedral to hear a sermon on the death of
the late Sir Edwin Landers. It was not difficult to
recognise among the crowd of listeners the features of
many eminent artists as well as men of letters, who
had taken this last opportunity of paying a tribute
of respect to the distinguished painter The sermon
was preached by the Rev. J. 11. Hessey, D. D., the
well.knoeni preacher at Gray's-inn, who selected for
his text the 11th verse of the 3rd chapter of Ecolesisatee :
"He hath made everything beautiful in his time."
Be said there were three theories of hum= life—
that it was all labour; that it was all delight; and
that it was all gravity, if not sadness. The first of
these found its utterance in the saying of one who had
now pared away, who said, "I look forward to the
time when England will be one vast workiship ; " the
second found it. utterance in the Epicurism motto.
"Io tux eat and drink, for to morrow we die ; " and
the third was embodied In the seclusion of the anchorite,
and In the Puritan's ignoring of and oontem ming all the
influence of cheerfulness and intelligent recreation
on the sod. Raving shown that they were all over-
statement. involving injurious results, he proceeded
to say that he bad been led at that snometit and in
that Cathedral to that line of remark by thinking
of the touching oeremonial of Sunday, of the
career of the remarkable man whose remains were
then committed to the tomb with honouring ritee,
sod of the effect which his works had produced,
and were likely to produce upon the national mind.
He had closed • life of useful and refined labour, and
therefore • grateful country and &sympathising Church
had paid him the tribute of which those hallowed walls
had been the occur; and none could dispute that Edwin
Lai:Omer waa worthy of the distinction. Where
Reynolds lay. great in the delineation of man, happiest
artist in ;zing and terpetuatiog the noblest and
best expression of mind io his features--where Tamer
lay, happiest artist in fixing the sunbeam as it flitted
over sane gl none landscape or venerable ruin, there
Edwin Laniodier had taken his place. He lies side by
side with them, happiest artist in another part of
creation—the aaimal world—which, like all His
other worlds, the Great Artificer of the Universe had
" made b.antiful in his time" Landster's claims
to personal as well as national regard were many. From
the first moo ent that he felt God had given him •
talent, he determined to cultivate it. Ile made the
meet of rely opportunity that was thrown in his way
—the guidance of his father (himself no mean artist
M so engraver), the lectures of the Academy. the as-
sistance of kindred artists, the instructions of Hayden,
and the very criticiems which his works received—all
these ha turned to account. He wail not spoiled by
Popularity, or induced to reposes on his fame, or to do
his work ha-dily and negligently as many would have
been tempted to do—every accessory of the main sub-
et was elaborated with roanscientlounness and accuracy.
lie was exact and true to nature and to life in small as
well as in great tiling.. Some men, and more especially I
one eminent critic in matters of art with whom
it 1,1111 almost perilous to differ, had blamed him for I
this, and had praised the ideal creations of other artiste, I
as Paul Veroneee, for instance, in preference to his
more accurate repreeentatior. He ventured, however,
to think otherwise, and look upon it as &noble example
of that perseverance which was taught us in the words
of the sacred book 'Whatsoever thine hand findeth
to dis, do It with all thy might." This, therefore, on
Landseer's part was • precept to us of thoroughness,
which, as it nteod goodin matter. indifferent, was,
d'fortiori, applicable to the very highest. In the
next place the subjects of Landseer's painting were
singularly pure and inoffensive. It MO impossible
to mention one against which the most fastidi .us
mind could raise an objecti mi. He was then
thus far within himself • moral painter. His
morelity, however, was not merely subjective, and to
certain degree negative ; it preached, as had been
well said, a gospel of kindness to dumb creatures, and
It showed that limited as were the capacities of that
order of beings, they had traits of character such as
fidelity, memory of gentle treatment, and even a deep
affection for their masters, which ought to call forth
from those masters at least the recollection of his
maxim, "The righteous man regardeth the life of the
beset,' Perhaps it might sometimes urge to think that
the man who illness a brute creature degrades himself
below the level of the bouts' and perhaps even it may,
If not from love, at least from fear, lead them to imae
gine what Bishop Butler conceived to be not impassible,
the Immortality of brutes; or, at any rate, that their
suffering it the bands of cruel men were not unreganied
by the Almighty, He could well conceive an infinenoe
exerefeed by the pathos of the picture of the " Mighlaad
Shepherd's Chief Mourner," or the "Highland Dog
Rescuing • Sheep from the Snowdsift," which might
second the efforts of the Society for the Protection of
Aehmelk V. indeed, it bad oat mainly conduced t, the
sotobilainassit of It. Hut beyond this, he had an appree
!YAW._ of dada el ohmmeter In antemla whisk' caused
=be Eismed in his debneatioa of than by his
81mlompseme his delinestion of human oh&
"OW. 11/ NI Iliad dodo by hie marregoon Pea.

And when they remember the old apothegm that •
pishire is • silent poem, and a poem • spealdng picture,
the comparison did not seem so far-fetched. Some men
might argue that than lemons of blindness to =Amide
and forbearance and love among men were indirect,
and therefore unintentional on the part of the artist
To this he would answer that, if Laadseer's moral
lessons were unintentional, how war it that throughout
hie life they were continually followed up by him?
And he would, moreover, ask, if we taught others by
constant good actions in life, without intending or pro-
posing to do so' would our conduct have • less value in
the eight of God? Coleridge, in hls "Ancient
Mariner," had well said—

lie praysth beet who Wroth best
All things both great and small;
Nor the dear liad who toroth us,
He made and loveth all.
Such, without all outrieerey, was Landseer, and he
must thoroughly have appreciated the text of that morn-
ing—"God bath made everything beautiful in hie thne."
But there was another ground of our indebtedness to
this great man : he had done much to set before us
what had been called by no mean philosophical critic
"the duty of delight." tfr. Ruskin had explained
this phrase by saying:—" They tell us often to me-
ditate in the skeet, but they send us not, like Isaac,
to the fields at even; they dwell on the duty of
self-denial, but they exhibit not the duty of delight.
It is not possible for a Christian man to walk across so
much as a rood of the natural earth with • soul un-
agitated and rightly poieed without receiving strength
and hope from some stone, leaf, flower, or sound;
nor without • sense of dew falling upon him out of the
sky." Aud he might have added, it is not possible
for man to contemplate the creations of the human
mind in statuary, in architecture, in painting, with-
out some elevation of thought, some feeling that
would raise him above the slough of common earth,
and the depressing round of daily labour. He
felt bound to admit that until late years neither
the clergy nor the laity had sufficiently regarded
this teaching delight ae a duty. They had been too
much engrossed in setting forth to the labouring classes
and others the duty of labour, of avoiding sinful de-
lights, of sorrowing for sin—all of which, of course,
were indispensable for sinful men—and neglecting al-
together to set before them fitting objects and pursuit,
of true delight; and it was gratifying to find on
every hand efforts to remedy this by the exhibition
both of public and private collections of painting;
not only at curb places as the Crystal Palace and
our great galleries, but in the very lowliest centres
of the toiling manses. In bringing to a oonclusion
an eloquent and practical discourse, the preacher
said, he had left himself but little room to speak of
Lerniveer's private charroter—of his genial tone in
society, his unambitionaness, hie lack of self-making,
and of his attitude to God and his Saviour. Some of
them things were patent to all, some of them were
known only to his intimate friends, and into this last no
stranger might intrude. "What man knoweth the
things of a man save the spirit of man which IN in
him ?"

In the afternoon the Right Rev. Blehop Ohms hton,
In the course of his sermon, alluded in eloquent and
feeling terns to the loos we have sustained in the death
of Landaeer.