The Sun.
London, England, 1861-01-17 00:00:00

MR. NOBLE'S BUST OF CROMWELL.

" Should Cromwell have a statue ?" That, we remember,
was a question much debated when the effigies of all our
English monarchs, some of whom were nothing more than
kings, and were even something less than men, had to be
catalogued for the proposed muster of marble representa-
tives of the national sovereignty, in the palace or old West-
minster, their proper seat and home. It we then held,
conformably to the legal fiction of an unbroken continuity
of succession to the apostolic prerogatives of royalty, that
the very substantial reign of the Lord Protector, which
produced some of the moat valuable reforms in our statute-
book, and in our judicial administration, should be omitted
for the sake of a ceremonious or pedantic scruple, and his-
torically ignored. Yet it might have been expected that
the Fino Arts Commission, though more courtly than par-
liamentary in their spirit, would at least have made room
for a mighty English statesman, for a member of that
house of Commons which maintained our liberties against
the despotism of an oppressive wearer of the crown, along
with Selden and Hampden, whose images stand guard at
the door of St. Stephen's-hall—along v, ith Somers, Chat-
ham, Burke, and Charles Fox, whose political existence
would not have been possible with counsels and resolu-

tions of the Long Parliament in the century before.
The dilettantism which feebly directed our miserable
attempt to ornament the dwelling-house of British
legislation with artistic shows of the chief events and
chief personages in the annals of our growing glory
did not exactly see it; and Cromwell the patriot soldier,
Cromwell the citizen dictator, has no statue anywhere
in the country which he served—which, perhaps, he
saved. Will the people of Italy raise no statue to their
Garibaldi, when future ages shall have iipened the fruit of
his planting in their soil which he has helped to clear ? Only
by conceiving such an instance of neglect hereafter in refe-
rence to a hero and public benefactor whose virtues are to
us now thus present and familiar can we realise the awk-
ward and invidious dereliction of which we must appear to
remain guilty, until 801120 conspicuous moaument of the
most commanding genius who ruled English policy in the
most critical moment cf our history is somewhere reared.
Somewhere—be it at Westminster, or in the City, or at
llunting(lon, or on Naseby field—where a simple obelisk
is erected to tell bow " the good hand of God towards us,"
on the 14th of June, 1645, destroyed the last chance of
tyranny in our brave and busy land.

There is no statue of Cromwell, nor any worthy picture
of him (except a doubtful one of Vandyke's, in the British
Museum) open to the grateful view of the people in our
places of public resort. The selfish and perfidious king,
who was prevented by Cromwell's decisive energy from
crushing with a force of It;sh and foreign soldiery the
whole Lords and Commons of this realm, sits placidly
mounted upon his steed at Charing-cross, while the last of
the Royal Georges is riding at the opposite corner of the
square ; but ns true a mons-ch, and a truer man than
either of them, has no place in town or country to stand
afoot. By the liberality of a Manchester gentleman, Mr. T.
B. Potter, of Builehill, the Peel Park Museum at Salford is
now, we believe, to be enriched with a fair bust of Cromwell,
the original cast of which, having just seen it in Mr. Noble's
studio, Bruton-street, we are glad to be able to approve. It
is moulded of the size of life. There is the expression of
life in its countenance,and what we seldom get from sculp-
ture, a glance of life in the eyes. It may occur to some
visitors when they first look at the robust features of this
face, that, massive and strong as they are, they do yet wear
a certain aspect of frank, jolly grace and manly tenderness,
which comports not with the vulgar conception of a turbu-
lent and sturdy " barbarian," as Oliver Cromwell has been
termed in the euphonious style of Mr. David Hume. But
recollecting the juster impressions of his character which
Mr. Carlyle and recent biographers (Mr. Langton Sanford,
the last and one of the best) have aided us to form that ob-
jection vanishes, which might perhaps unconsciously arise
from some lingering shade cast upon him in onr imagina-
tion by the Epicurean Tory's aimless epithets of slanders.
For Cromwell was a very full and whole natured man—
one of a genial, hearty, affectionate disposition ; he was not
the hard fanatic, or the coarse, brutal stormer, that his
enemies would have taught posterity to believe. He was
warm in all the loves of domestic and social life, as a son,
husband, and father, as a familiar comrade or intimate
friend. Deliberative, or stern, or vehement, or boisterous
and frolicsome by turns, there was a fascination in his cor-
dial manner which few who met him could withstand. In
the "Memorials" of Bulstrode Whitelocke, and in the tea..
timony of others who shared the great Protector's hours of
relaxation in the temperate cheerfulness of his household,
we have positive evidence of thereal good-nature and kindly
affability of the man, Not like a rude boor or brewer's son,
but like a gentleman of birth and breeding, as good as the
foppish Cavaliers, he delighted in the encouragement and
enjoyment of literary conversation, with Milton or Andrew
Marvell by his side ; ho loved to hear fine music, to inspect
and to reward ingenious artists ; he bought for us the car-
toons of Raphael, and he patronised one of the best of all
miniature painters, Samuel Cooper, who has given us the
true portrait of Cromwell on which a sculptor of our day
has relied as the foundation of his design for this bust.
The reader s of that collection of Cromwell's " Letters and
Speeches" which David Hume pronounced by anticipation
would form, if ever they should come to be printed, "one
of the most nonsensical books that ever existed," will
doubtless remember the engraving which Mr. Carlyle has
chosen to prefix to the first volume ; it is a likeness of
Cromwell bare-headed, in armour, taken from one of
Cooper's miniatures ; but there is another by the same
artist, belonging to Earl do Grey and Ripon, which is to be
preferred. This one gives him also with loose flowing
hair, but clad in plain doublet and bands, with features
perfectly resembling the former, but with an easier,
more relenting, and amiable expression, as though in
tranquil converse with his private friends. It is that of
which Zr, Noble has woolly availed tilmself, misted 1)3, the