August, 1 906 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



115 



freshness, while his little leaden brothers quarrel. Cupids 

 are abroad at Melbourne, and it is impossible to exaggerate 

 the added charm they give to the spacious terraced gardens, 

 playing and fighting against the trim hedges that surround 

 the fish pond. There are four pairs which tell a story. In 

 the headpiece two of them are seen. There is a struggle for 

 a garland, and they pull each other's hair unmercifully, but 

 the fourth group shows them healing their quarrel with 

 kisses. 



It is curious that while there are no Donatellos reproduced 

 in lead, Giovanni de Bologna seems to have been a prime 

 favorite with the lead founders of Piccadilly. As he was a 

 Fleming, from Donai, despite his Italian name, the Dutch- 

 man Van Nost, who copied his figures, would doubtless be 

 drawn to his work as that of a fellow Low Country man. 

 Not only is there this Flying Mercury at Melbourne, but the 

 Rape of the Sabines in lead at Painshill, Surrey (the original 

 is in marble in the Loggia dei Lanzi). The only excuse for 

 a Mercury in lead, apart from its cheapness, is the exquisite 

 patina which lead takes on when it weathers. This is a charm 

 peculiar to leadwork, and it is of a simple graciousness which 

 makes the figures harmonize with the domestic dignity of 

 formal gardens, in a way that stone never does. 



Moreover, stone and terra cotta are very apt to split with 

 the frost. Lead may collapse (the Mercury at Melbourne 

 had a stumbling inebriate pose for years), but it can easily 

 be restored. 



At Melbourne, unhappily, this patina is a thing to be de- 

 sired but not seen, for the statues have been painted con- 

 tinually to their great vulgarizing. 



At Castle Hill, Devonshire, a residence of the Earl of 

 Fortescue, there is a great number of garden ornaments, and 

 among them a bust of quite extraordinary interest. It stands 

 on a stone pillar which slopes down to its base, and against 

 a background of trees is a very incarnation of the woods. 



the fecund Priapus, but he lacks the marked ugliness of 

 Dionysus' son. I incline to Tan. It is a hypnotizing face, 

 libidinous and cynical. It was a fantastic wit that put it in 

 the same garden with the sphinx. She is cold, unamusing, 

 and, one is convinced, little friendly to the bust of Pan, 



The Flying Mercury at Melbourne. Lead Collapses in Time 

 and Produces Distortions, as Shown in this Picture 



Grapes are in his hair, and above his wicked ears there are 

 horns. He may be Pan or Priapus. As Pan his appearance 

 in the wood would scarcely bring panic fear to the wayfarer. 

 He may not be benevolent, but he is not alarming. There is 

 a look of smiling quiet lust on his lips which perhaps suggests 



Male Arcadian Figure 



chastely glad, perhaps, that the artist gave him no goat's feet 

 to set him dancing as statues will of nights, in any wisely- 

 people garden. The sphinx has a wonderful headdress. 

 Even Pan would take no liberties with such severity. She is 

 as stiff as the lead sphinxes at Syon House (the residence of 

 the Duke of Northumberland) are graceful. The sphinx is 

 hardly a garden ornament. She belongs to architecture 

 rather. It is on the piers of the Lace Gateway that we find 

 them at Syon House. Others, rather dull ones, are on the 

 back of the Strand front of Somerset House. 



To return to Castle Hill, one of our illustrations shows a 

 study from the antique in a cymbal player. It is not a very 

 interesting figure, but one of a not uncommon type in the 

 eighteenth century. 



It is an unhappy thing that, with the exception of a Nep- 

 tune of Elizabeth's reign, at Bristol, by the Temple Church, 

 there is no English lead statue of pre-Restoration times. Of 

 Mediaeval lead statues there must have been plenty, but in 

 England they have not survived. While there are some of 

 the seventeenth, they are chiefly of the eighteenth century. 

 Their home is generally the garden, but there are a number 

 that form an integral part of architectural schemes. This is 

 not only in garden architecture, such as gate piers and garden 

 houses, but in decorating the parapets of great houses in the 

 ultra-class'ic manner. 



Giacomo Leoni, an architect imported by Lord Burlington 

 (and employed probably as the "ghost" of that ingenious 

 nobleman) showed some forty statues on the elevations of 

 the palace he designed for Thomas Scawent, at Carshalton 

 Park, near London, but fortunately never built. It is evident 

 that one of the figures was to have been the Borghese Gladi- 

 ator. The entrance gates and a little bridge are the only 

 features of this pretentious scheme that ever took shape. As 

 the two statues on the stone piers that flank the gates are of 

 lead, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the other forty 



