SCULPTURE. 
Buonaroti lias been honoured by his coun- 
trymen with the title of divine, nor was 
Bernini much less deserving of tliis honour. 
The French, altliough favoured with a 
climate little inferior to that of Italy, and 
situated upon its borders, have less distin- 
guished themselves in sculpture than might 
have been expected, but the national cha- 
racter is too volatile for the productions of 
tedious and incessant exertion, absolutely 
necessary in tlie sculptor ; hence it is that 
very few French names are celebrated as 
statuaries. It would, however, be unjust not 
to mention Roubiliac, who honoured Eng- 
land with his w’orks, which deserve every 
praise for just conception, and perhaps 
there is no modern instance of more beau- 
tiful contrast than in his monument to the 
memory of Lady Nightingale in M''estmin- 
»ter Abbey, on which the lifeless figure of 
the dying lady, and the eiger and terrified 
husband, have and ever will be greatly ad- 
mired. The skeleton wrapped in sepul- 
chral drapery, aiming a dart at the breast 
of the female, needs no other encomium 
than that of the celebrated anatomist John 
Hunter, who pronounced it a most perfect 
representation. Francois Girardon should 
also be mentioned as doing honour to the 
French nation by his numerous works, and 
by none more than his tomb of Cardinal 
Richlieu, originally placed in the college of 
the Sorbonne at Paris. 
The Germans and Dutch have distin- 
guished themselves greatly in painting, but 
taking the snbject in an enlarged point of 
view, they have done next to nothing in 
sculpture ; neither has the Spanish nation 
any very strong claim to distinction on this 
head. The sculpture of Great Britain is 
almost entirely confined to the interiors and 
exteriors of churches, and the statues which 
adorn them, are all, without exception, an- 
cient ; when the religion of our ancestors 
was tlie .“ame as that of the greatest part of 
the continent of Europe,, tliey gave large 
sums for the production of shrines and saints 
without number, but they seem to have had 
no idea of encouraging the noblest part 
of the art, by selecting men of superior ge- 
nius, and employing them on groups or 
single figures in white marble, the only sub- 
stance calculated to give due effect to the 
skill of the statuary ; this parsimonious con- 
duct, and probably very iadifterent re- 
wards, w'as the cause that all our old sta- 
tues are made of coai’se and perishable 
stone, and that they are in truth little bet- 
ter than copies of each o ther, wliich circum- 
stance may be partly accounted for ; besides, 
by the situations they occupied on the walls 
of sacred edifices, and their being invariably 
placed in niches, and those in the pointed 
style of artichecture, whence it became a 
matter of necessity to introduce but one 
figure, and that in an upright position ; yet 
under alt these disadvantages, a competent 
judge may discover in the majority of the 
works of our ancient sculptors a freedom 
and correctness that would, wdth due en- 
co;iragement, have produced works little, 
if at all, inferior to those of the Italian 
school. If we examine the turns or lines of 
the faces of the kings and saints, scattered 
over the surfaces of our cathedrals and some 
parish churches, it will be found that the 
artists who made them were capable of 
expre.'isnig dignity and piety, and their dra- 
pery is generally correspondent to the posi- 
tion of the limbs, and in large graceful folds. 
The admirer of tliis art cannot fail of being 
highly gratified by tracing the progress of 
English sculpture in that vast field for ob- 
servation, Westminster Abbey; where, in 
the cloisters, they will find the rude figures 
of abbots coeval with the time of William 
of Normandy, from which period down to 
the present moment there is almost an an- 
nual succession of figures ornamental and 
monumental. 
The Abbey having been partly rebuilt by 
Henry HI. the stnictiire was continued as 
the abbots could obtain the means, conse- 
quently there is an actual gradation in the 
excellence of the sculpture down to the- 
reign of Henry VII. The latter monarch 
determined to excel all his predecessors, 
and his chapel, or burial-place, is one blaze 
of rich decoration in every possible direc- 
tion. Having thus directed the attention 
of the reader to the place where a perfect 
knowledge of this subject may be obtained, 
we shall proceed to notice another branch- 
of the art, which has been continued in- 
Great Britain from the time of the refor- 
mation, at which period sculpture received 
its fiat as far as relates to the use of it for 
pious purposes. We know but little of the- 
statues which were placed about the altars 
and shrines of old times in this country, 
as they were destroyed without mercy, but 
vast numbers of tombs remain uninjured in 
every county ; in speaking of those, we must 
premise that very little opirortuiiity was 
given the artist to expand aud im|)rove his 
ideas, as a slavish custom prevailed of plac- 
ing all the statues on them in a posture, of all 
others, the most rigid and ungraceful, wirich 
