The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-09-12 00:00:00

ADMISSION-ONE SHILLING

MRS. EDMUND MOLYNEUX, carrying out the intentions
of her late husband, has sent £2O, as a donation, to the
Working Men's Protestant Reformation Society.

SYMPATHY.—Sorrow, shared by two persons, becomes
much lighter—like Palmer's candle with two wicks.
71 _ _

An old toper was heard the other day advising a young
man to get married "because then, my boy, you'll have
somebody to pull off your boots when you go home drunk."

GIGANTIC STATUES, AND THEIR EFFECT ON ARCHI-
TECTURE.—The human figure, says Professor Cockerell,
must ever be the modulus and rule by which we estimate
the apparent dimension of every surrounding object.
Whether the image is in the dimension of a giant or of a
doll, it is always the human figure, varying from 5 to 6
feet, and imposes a criterion of dimensions to all that
surrounds it; thus the Egyptian Pharoah, 60 feet in
height (the great man signified by a great figure, seated
in the court of his temple-palace), defeated the work of
the architect, rendering it insignificant in the comparison,
Bulk may be a convenient escape from the labour of ex-
pression and of thought, but it ever betrays decline of
art. The colossus of Nero and that of Domitian, in
Rome, are signal examples of this disregard to the laws
regulating the associated arts in which the Greeks insisted;
and we msut admit it as a bad system of our actual times.
Artists of merit have fallen into this deplorable error.
Thorvralsden has sacrificed the palace at Stutgard to his
ambition in his statue of Schiller • the French sculptor, in
the decoration of the bridge of Louis: XV. with the mar-
shals of France in enormous scale, has fallen into this
abuse, but was quickly so sensible of the disproportion,
that the marshals were removed thence to Versailles,
where, surrounding the vast space called Place d'Armes,
they still dwarf that mighty palace. Nor are our own
sculptors exempt from this vice in nearly every modern
instance, both in interior and exterior statues of our great
men. To the architect this practice is most obnoxious,
and ought to be visited with public reprobation. Cubical
contents offer no apology for want of art. Extra human
dimensions would add nothing to the effect of Charles I.
' at Charing-cross, Queen Anne at St. Paul's, or the best
portrait statues of modern or ancient renown. Whenever
the portrait statues at Olympia exceeded life-size, Pausa- '
nias takes care to mention it. The colossus of Rhodes, or
the bronze colossus of Minerva Promachos, in the Acro-
polis at Athens, were to be estimated on other considera-
tions, namely, as land-marks, calculated to the distant
view of a maritime community, in connection with the
surrounding hills or the ocean ships, and with reference
to the landscape. We may approve also that the Greeks,
in the interior of their temples, should exaggerate rela-
tive dimensions, when the art was employed to do honour
to the immortal gods, as at Olympia and at Athens : the
ivory and gold statues, 34 feet to 45 feet high, occupied
the entire nave of the temple, and the religious purpose
and the homage to the Deity was the accepted apology
for the practice; nor can the effect be doubted, for we are
told that Paulus lEmilius, the Roman conqueror, rode
though he was, so sensibly felt the sublime of the Jupiter
of Phidias, that, for the first time, he burst into a flood of
tears.—The Builder.