The Express.
London, England, 1847-07-20 00:00:00

gine acts._

Tan Wyarr-WEEDarroN.—Men are taking the
scaffolding away, and the Wyatt-Wellington Statue is to re-
main upon Decimos Burton's arch, at Hyde-park corner, for
no other reason that we can see than that the el-the wishes
it, and her Majesty is unwilliog to do anything displeasing
to the feelings of the most illustrious person in her realm.
The statue was conveyed to tie arch on Michaelmas-day, 1846
(Goose-day'), and has now undergone a trial of nine months,
and a condemnation from every competent person in the
kingdom, and yet it must remain because the duke wishes it.
Truly, we carry our admiration of the duke into a kind of
mistaken idolatry when we offend all the principles of taste
and erect a monument of enduring beam to commemorate
the warlike achievements of a great man, on a place totally
unfitted to receive it. While we show a proper appreciation
of the arts of war, we illustrate our utter ignorance In matters
of taste. Not content with spoiling Trafalgar-square, " the
finest site in Europe," with the worst piece of architecture
in the raetropolia, we have now, by placing a statue upon an
arch unsuited to receive it, resolved to disfigure the second
best site in Europe with one of the worst pieces of sculpture'
in the three kingdoms. The absurdity of seeing a bed
statue upon a good pedestal, reminds os of the epigram "On
a company of bad dancers to good music:"
How ill the motion with the music suits!
So Orpheas fiddled, and so danced the brutes.
The duke has undone a portion of the obligations pre-emi-
nently duo to him, by entailing on posterity so great an
eyesore as his own statue, in a position which sets at defiance
all the principle, of taste, as established for 3.000 years.
There is not a three months entered pupil in the Spitalfields
School of Design but gives a shrug of surprise at the
strange combination of sculpture and architecture which
personal feeling and plaintive pertinacity have brought into
so unnatural a union. Does the dake suppose for a single
moment that the statue at any time was anything more than
a mere job got up at Belvoir for the benefit of Mr. Wyatt;
or does he suppose that his personal feelings in the matter
can alter the established principles of taste and convince the
really competent authonties that the statue is suited to the
arch and the arch suited to the statue ? One of our con-
temporaries has called it " The Duke's Folly," and sure
and certain is it to be that as long as the statue remains
where it is, or the arch remains on which the statue stood,
The story will be told that this was the duke's doing, or that
is the arch on which the Duke of Wellington's statue was !
placed to gratify his own feelings and stay the troublesome
pertinacity of his friends. But the matter is settled, at
least for the lifetime of the duke ; and now the neat step
should be to alter the present royal commission of fins
arts, and instead of having the Marquis of Lansdowne,
Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Rogers, the poet, and Mr. Eastlake,
the painter, to decide upon works of art in Westminster-
Hall, we should ask for the Dukes of Wellington and Rut-
land, Sir Frederick Trench, Mr. John Wilson Croker, Mr.
Wakley the coroner, and Mr. Matthew Cotes Wyatt.
Truly, art is under very little obligation I. the conqueror of
Napoleon ; it was the duke who decided on accepting Mr.
litaltou's column for the Nelson monument in 'Trafalgar-
square, and aow we have this last outrage upon art, an un-
sightly spectacle of the great duke before his own door.
A. W. W.