Szr Edward Landseer’s Lions. 381 
with each and all of which every artist is acquainted, do 
not outrival on the score of sculptural beauty, the lions of 
Trafalgar Square. Critics have spoken of them in most 
eulogistic terms, and we must follow in their train. They 
are majestic and life-like ; the strength displayed in repose 
is truly wonderful to contemplate. The eye, which to re- 
present upon a dead surface is one of the greatest trials a 
sculptor has to undertake, is by no means easy of accom- 
_plishment, is, in fact, the difficulty of all others the sculptor 
has to encounter; and most successfully has Sir Edwin 
accomplished this. _ 
It may be a matter of regret that painters are not always 
sculptors, and that their treatment are oftimes different, 
and the chisel and the crayon are wielded with a different 
aim. We have rare examples in Da Vinci and Michel 
Angelo who were not merely painters, but the most perfect 
and finished artists. In the lions before us we cannot help 
recognising in their strength, dignity, and grace, much that 
Wwe are accustomed to see on Landseer’s canvas. The 
mallet and the chisel are missed in the contemplation of 
the artistic beauty and life-like majesty of the animals be- 
fore us. More than sixty years have now elapsed since 
Horatio Nelson fell at the fatal Trafalgar. Every resource 
of which our national genius was capable, was ransacked to 
complete a fitting memorial of one for whom every British 
heart must beat with pride, long as the period from its 
commencement to its completion may appear; the raid is 
well repaid by the ransack. No nobler monument, naught 
in “sculptured urn or animated bust” could more ade- 
quately convey through the medium of art the testimony 
of a nation’s feeling to a nation’s pride. It is neither in 
our province or our inclination to ventilate critical remarks 
upon a work of which we all may be proud. Many are 
the faults which some or other of our contemporaries dis- 
cover and direct public attention to, are but as specks 
which may well pass unnoticed in a work so pregnant with 
the decided triumph of art. 
Well, indeed, may the boasted crest of the Percies which 
has been so long the admiration of our country cousins on 
Northumberland house, hide his diminished head, tail, mane, 
or anything else before his august brethren’s appearance. 
Well, indeed, may that most rampant specimen of bad 
taste, the sombre indistinct monument of the Iron Duke 
look, in comparison with this more sombre and more dis- 
tinct still. We cordially congratulate Sir Edwin Landseer 
ee 
