72 Sm EDWIN LANDSEER, R.A 



And SO year after year rolled on till 1867, the public all the while left in the dark 

 about the lions, the cry being still "they come," when inquiries were made of those 

 who were supposed to know everything concerning them. At length they actually did 

 come ; in the spring of that year they were all in their assigned places ; and then it was 

 seen and acknowledged that something, at least, had been gained by the long waiting. 

 The animals, perhaps, are not what they might have been; but they are grand in 

 design, finely modelled, and the heads are wonderfully expressive of menace; as 

 also are the attitudes of these monsters, which are not unsuggestive of some gigantic 

 sculptures of P2gypt. Little or no attention seems to have been paid to details ; there 

 is the form of the animal in its grandeur of pose and in combined outline and volume, 

 but scarcely any indication of its natural covering. 



Such is a brief history of the Nelson Column, which from its very commencement 

 proved a most unfortunate affair, and in its completed state is far from being such a 

 memorial of the hero it commemorates as England can point out to the foreigner with 

 the least feeling of pride. To have a column there at all, to dwarf still more the 

 National Gallery, already low enough, was a grand mistake. Nelson surmounting it is 

 simply an absurdity ; the size of the lions and the massiveness of the granite pedestals 

 on which they rest, serve only to attenuate the shaft that rises from the centre. Land- 

 seer's " monarchs of the desert " are noble objects to look upon in themselves, but they 

 are too large to compose with the column, and even if they were surrounded with forms 

 which would give them assistance and support, everything retires from them diminished 

 and broken ; "and in their presence the treasure they are there forgathered to defend 

 looks mean and worthless." 



