The Sun.
London, England, 1845-10-17 00:00:00

filantioass

LONDON, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1845.

" Shall CROXWELL have a statue in the new Houses of
Parliament ?" is a question that seems calculated, notwith-
standing all that has been written on the rubject, still to form
the subject of a " very pretty quarrel." As we happen to
have been the first to direct public attention to the originally
proposed omission of this illustrious warrior and statesman
from the Com missioners' draught list of English Worthies to
be commem orated in the halls of the British Legislature,
we feel ou:rselves scarcely at liberty to exercise the option of
retiring fr ore the discussion on its revival by the appearance
of the " Fourth Report of the Commissioners on Fine Arts."
But, teekras as it would otherwise be to reiterate the grounds
on which we are to contend for what will appear to the
convic'tio•ns of every dispassionate reader of English history a
self-evident proposition, the wailings of the Morning Post
on the delinquencies of the Commissioners cannot fail to
furnish, ample amusement to counterbalance everything that
is wer trisome in the matter. The report itself, too, is a do-
currne nt so replete with inconsistencies, that there can be no
lack of novelty in the treatment of the subject, if we do not
avni I ourselves of some of the more startling passages upon
wld ch we have just fallen.

"Commissions of Taste" and " Commissions of the
to Arts," invariably determine in this country in miserable
rerdorts, or still more worthless constructions in brick and
s'ame. Without a moment's hesitation we must rank the
" Fourth Report," now before us, among the number ot
those periodical extravagances which the British Go-
vernment or Parliament commit, with all pomp argil
circumstance, against the " taste" and the " arts"
they take under their especial patronage. The list of the
members of this Commission involves so incongruous an as-
semblage of names as to prepare us, to some extent, for the
incompatible. resolutions at which they arrive, while affinities
of omnoiseeroship and taste in the Fine Arts approximate
the perceptions of the Duke of Sutberland, the Marquis of
Lansdowne, Lord Francis Egerton, Lord Ashburton,
Gaily Knicht, Mr. Samuel Rogers, and Mr. George Vivian—
all of fteem munificent patrons and acknowle.'ged judges
of art, w ith Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst, or the Earl of Lin-
coln, or -Mr. Thomas Wyse—it would be abundantly pleasant,
did our time allow of such a diversion, to inquire. Mr.
MACAU LAY is too universal a genius not to make it
dangu.ous to question the propriety of adding him to the
list o'l the Commission ; but why Lord MAnoN and the
Earl of SHREWSBURY, a mediocre historian and an unsuccess-
ftd pamphleteer, should be associated, together with Mr.
8.. HAWES, and Sir James GRAHADri In a tribunal of judgment
vrpon matters connected with the Fine Arts we are utterly
lac Able to understand. The Commissioners report that "many
situations fur statues consist of niches only, which, in accord-
s nce with the style of Gothic architecture adopted, are uni-
fFormly narrow, not exceeding two feet in width ; that there
:are also situations where insulated statues might be fitly
placed ; and we conceive that, with a view both to conve-
nient inspection, and the expediency of affording opportu-
nities for displaying the abilities of the artists, the last-named
situations are the most important." They further submit that
sixinsnlated marble statues might be conveniently placed
in S6Stephen's porch, and that six such statues might be
conveniently placed in St. Stephen's Hall ;" and they are
at once prepared to recommend that "statues of Marlborough
and liNTelson be placed in St. Stephen's porch, and
that statues of Selden, Hampden, Lord Falk-
land, Lord Clarendon, Lord Somers, Sir Ro-
bert Walpole, Lord Chatham, Lord Mansfield,
Bur'Xe, Fox, Pitt, and Grattan, be placed in St. Stephen's-
hall." But which is the porch and which the hall of St
Stephen, since Mr. Barry, or Prince Albert's suggestion,
alte red the working plans approved of by the Lords' Com-
mit tees for superintending the building, by the creation of
an enormous excrescence on his orignal design in the shape
of a, new gallery ? At p. 12, we find a foot note that does
but the more bewilder us as to these localities. " The names
of various apartments have been altered and finally (more
last words !') determined, since the date of this memo-
randum. The principal landing place is called the Nor-
mars Porch; the Victoria Gallery is called the Royal
Gallery; the Lobby to the House of Lords is called
the Viotoria Hall." We do not, however, attach much
imoca-tance to this difficulty of ours; for, no doubt, by
the 'close ot the first week of the next session the whole no-
menclature of these portions of the fabric sill be again trans-
fort m md. We hasten, is the first place, to sympathise with our
ted Contemporary. The signatures of the Commis-
sions .rs, he observes, " sufficiently testify not only what is to
be d one, but what is to be left undone." Under both heads
there is matter for deep regret. After all that has " recently
beeei said on the subject . . . public feeling and national
ch u•acter are alike violated by the Commissioners in assign-
log a niche to the statue of Cromwell, the regicide." . .
" And who do our readers suppose is excluded to make room
for this treasonable homicide? There is to be no statue
of . Xing Charles . the First." Now, the over-sensi-
tive attaehment of the Morning Post to all that
pert lilts to royalty, from its crown to its coachman, is here
bets eyed into some inacuracy. We blush to say, that in
M.eraorandum A, at p. 9, sixty-three names, of which they
unanimousll, agreed to report as worthy of these statuary
honours, the name of the mighty Protector does not occur.
Itt Memorandum B, p. 10, a list of fifty-eight names, as to
which the "Committee were not unanimous, but decided by
greater or smaller majorities," the name of Cromwell is to
be found, smuggi ed in, as it were between those of the Marquis
of kontreie 'an General Monk. The Post is, thefefore
premature, at }east, in asserting, " that a niche is assigned

go the great and victorious champion of the rights of the
Euglish Commonwealth and people, agains the unprinciple(l
opprPsions of the ~t..cc.nd of the S7u3-t,. T;•ot

whesefite,asourt'oniemporar'vremarks.''l annually reo ewe
in our remembrance by a solem peni: ential service, appointee
by the Church. But the Post is at any rate coneie-
tent. If it rave with impotent vituperation against the grea,
asserter of English rights and liberties at home, and English
power and influence abroad, it is, as in duty bound, abso-
lutely maudlin over the grave of a smooth-faced but remorse-
less ruffian like Dundee, or the " Royal Lit Claverhouse,"
or a base Court sycophant and spiritual tyrant, like his
" Laud, the Prelate and Martyr ;" and he was a martyr—to
his meditated but unsuccessful treason to the Protestant
Church and the principles of the reformed religion.
But what—leaving our unhappy Contemporary to his
Jeremiads over the honours intendtd for " the rebel
Hampden and the conspirator Russell"—what shall we say
to the seven Commissioners, Lord Mahon, Sir Robert Inglis,
Mr. Macaulay, Mr. Hawes, Mr. Hallam, Mr. Rogers, and
Mr. Wyse? What shall we say to the seven Englishmen
who, being unable to come to an unanimous resolution to
commemorate with honour such a man as Cromwell, are
unanimous in voting statues in this great temple of history
and legislation to so " small a deer" as Richardson, the
novelist, to an annalyst of no higher pretensions than " Vene-
rable Bede," or to a writer so entirely identified with
polemical divinity and " ecclesiastical polity as Hooker,"
whilst the) find no place for David Hume, and provide uo
pedestal for so profound and logical a theologian as Bishop
Butler ? It seems to us that they have done
well in negativing such absurd propositions as erectirg
statues in the nation's palace to players and fiddlers ;
fur, with all our passion for music and our admiration
for dramatic excellence, we should indeed have thought
the sculptured effigies of " Purcell and Garrick," (gravely
proposed, it seems,) in such goodly company misplaced. Mr
Hallam, even, one of the clearest-headed and most instructive
of modern historians, has not escaped the confusion of ideas
which seems to be .contagious among these Commissioners.
There are 18 niches, about the appropriation of which he is
extremely solicitous. He writes thus to Mr. Eastlake :
" But while it would have been easy to recommend for the
18 niches in the House of Lords, the effigies of the Arch-
bishop and some other ecclesiastics, with these 16 Barons,
whom we find recited in the charter," &c. Now, 16
Barons, with an Archbishop (counted only for a single pre-
late) and " some" other ecclesiastics, therefore two or
more, make at the lowest computation, nineteen. Is it Mr.
Hallam's purpose to have two in one niche, like two in a
bed? Let us return, however, to the two lists, A and B.
It being our feeling that from this collection of " British
worthies" all purely controversial writers, however illus-
trious in the army of polemists—and all pensioned patriots,
however eminent for their talent at all times, and their pure
love of country at only certain periods of their career—
should be excluded. We have no objection to Archbishops
Usher and Leighton, Jeremy Taylor, Chillingworth, Barrow,
and John Wesley, remaining on list B. But, in common
fairness, the seven Bishops who so nobly opposed at so muce
personal peril, and under so many circumstances of suffering
and imprisonment the delinquencies of the Sovereign and
the Government, in the reign of James 11., ought to be
commemorated with due honour in a hall of statues that is
adjacent to the House of Peers. We have already avowe,
our own opinion of Charles L Yet we must ask why in
was proposed in list B to give statues to Lord Fe di-
land and Lord Strafford, and yet to omit the unhapp:.
but not badly intentioned monarch—able, arid accomplished,
and even brave Prince as he was—in whose cause both these
nobles perished—the one, gloriously, on the field of battle;
the other, ignominiously, on a scaffold? Why Lord Heath-
field should be promoted tci list A, and Wolfe, Aber-
cromby, Moore, or their illustrious predecessors in the rank
of great English Captains of former centuries, the Talbot
and the Chanclos, be pushed back into the limbs
of list B, surpasses our comprehension; These are
inconsistencies that the public will indignantly resent. What
can have induced the adoption of the Earl of Surrey and
Cowper as amongst the noblest of our poets, to the exclu-
sion of Ben Janson or Dryden, and Pope or Goldsmith, and
Burnsewe cannot at all perceive. For the reason we hay.
alleged, we complain not of the omission of Walpole, or
Burke, and Grattan (both of them pensioned patriots), but
why Cardinal Langton (" clarum et venerabile nomen"), the
munificent founder of English education, Cardinal Wolsey,
or that incorruptible and most able diplomatist, Sir William
Temple, or the true martyr, Lord William Russell, should
find no statues in such a collection, is a portentous inconsist-
ency only to be mated by the ingenious estimate of royal and
military greatness which decrees a statue to his Royal High-
ness Field Marshal Prince Albert, but rejects the claims to a
similar honour for Richard Cceur de Lion, Edward 1., Ed-
ward 111., the Black Prince, Henry V., and William 111. !!