S C U L 
covered the walls, filled the niches and recesses, and even 
mingled with the foliages of the cornices and bands. On 
one place, the glory of heaven was represented, with 
saints, souls of just men made perfect, and ministering 
angels : on another, the horrors of hell—the pangs of dam¬ 
nation, and the writhing of evil spirits. The Day of Judg¬ 
ment was likewise sculptured, and the genius of latter times 
has added little to the severe and impressive power of the de¬ 
lineation. The Saviour descends with looks of meekness and 
mercy among his adoring apostles, and beneath him are seen 
the nations of the earth arising to judgment. Some start up 
unwillingly and with gestures of horror, while others emerge 
from the grave with the looks of awe and hope. Over the 
works of those days were scattered much good sense, right 
feeling and simple grace, which redeemed the imperfect 
workmanship. And, what is still more remarkable, arts and 
literature had not then revived in Italy. Down to the time 
of the final contest of the people with the church of Rome, 
a love of sculpture prevailed; domestic monuments crowded 
our cathedrals; and, in the chapel of Henry the Seventh 
alone, several thousands of figures were carved by native 
artists, with good taste and more than common skill. 
But from the time of the Reformation, when painting and 
sculpture were exiled from the churches, the native genius of 
the country was left entirely without employment; and 
wherever painting was required for the decoration of palaces, 
or sepulchral sculpture for the churches, foreign artists were 
employed, and, with little exception, supplied the country 
with a degeneracy of French, Italian, or Flemish art. The 
best of the foreign sculptors who have been employed since 
that time, were Cibber, Roubiliac and Scheemaker. Cib¬ 
ber executed the statues of Raving and Melancholy Madness 
on Bedlam gates; the bas-relief on the pedestal of the Monu¬ 
ment ; the greater part of the kings in the Royal Exchange, 
and a multitude of other statues for different buildings in 
various parts of the kingdom. “ The first of these stands 
foremost in conception and second in execution among all 
the productions of English sculpture. Those who see them 
for the first time, are fixed to the spot with sorrow and awe; 
an impression is made on the heart never to be removed— 
nor is the impression of a vulgar kind. The poetry of those 
terrible infirmities is presented;—from the degradation of the 
actual madhouse we turn overpowered and disgusted; but 
from these statues of Cibber, we retire with mingled awe and 
admiration.” 
Rys'orach succeeded Cibber, and Scheemaker came and 
divided with him the public patronage. Though feeble, 
literal and languid, they maintained something of the eleva¬ 
tion of style which Cibber introduced; they produced seve¬ 
ral recumbent figures which seem nature transcribed rather 
than nature exalted by art,—yet they are nature still, and 
welcome from that novelty. 
Roubiliac’s name still stands deservedly high. His ideas 
are frequently just and natural, and his execution is always 
careful and delicate. He spared no labour; he was not 
afraid of strong relief, of deep and difficult folds and sink¬ 
ings, and of attitudes which ate up marble and consumed 
time. But he sacrificed nature and simplicity for the sake of 
effect; his works are all too lively and too active. He lias 
little sedate beauty, little tranquil thought. His monument 
of Mrs. Nightingale, is his most famous work; and a work 
of beauty and pathos—a dying wife and an agonized hus¬ 
band. But he spoiled it by introducing Death projecting 
his allegorical dart against the woman, while the man seeks 
to stay it' with a hand of flesh and blood. His favourite 
notion was to express lofty thought and heroic feeling, by a 
crowd of figures and much stir and action: but those high 
qualities reside neither in multitudes nor in startling atti¬ 
tudes. The statue of Sir Isaac Newton is a splendid excep¬ 
tion to this censure: serene thought inspires the whole 
figure. The library of Trinity College, Cambridge, con¬ 
tains, moreover, six busts from his chissel, which Chantrey 
has admired and studied. 
Bacon infused more English sense into sculpture, than any 
T U R E. 879 
of his predecessors. He added a little dignity and a little 
manliness to the allegorical school of design. Amidst his 
ersonifications of cities and countries, and virtues and qua- 
tiesj and his crowds of chubby boys, there frequently ap¬ 
peared something of a better nature; his happier j udgment 
seemed often on the point of vanquishing allegory, but the 
dark abstraction always prevailed. Forms which came with¬ 
out the pain of study or the labour of meditation, were made 
too welcome; he was ambitious of finding a new labour for 
Hercules, and a Christian employment for Minerva. His 
draperies are too fluttering and voluminous. His monu¬ 
ments are crowded with figures, and overloaded with auxi¬ 
liary symbols. But his statue of Samuel Johnson is an ex¬ 
cellent work—stern, severe, full of surly thought. and con¬ 
scious power: and his Howard has the look of the philan¬ 
thropist. These statues stand at the entrance to the choir of 
St. Paul’s. 
Bankes dismissed all the idle pageantry with which Bacon 
had overlaid his monuments, and sought to make a few 
figures express an intelligible story. His allegories are ob¬ 
vious, or at least not easy to be mistaken. Victory crowns 
Captain Westcott with laurel—and Victory gives Captain 
Burgess her sword. But historical truth and national deli¬ 
cacy are alike wounded. He thought that dress concealed 
sentiment, and that this hero had only to be naked to be 
heroic. He was ever aspiring after simplicity and loftiness— 
—had a profound contempt for all that was modern, and 
thought that the charm of the antique arose from its nudity. 
The bust sculpture of Nollekens is deservedly esteemed. 
This popular branch of the art, when confined to legislators, 
warriors, orators and poets, becomes the handmaid of his¬ 
tory ; but the calls of vanity bring a thousand heads to the 
sculptor’s chisel, which have no other claim to distinction 
than what money purchases, while a man of genius contents 
himself with the fame of his productions, and is either too 
poor or too careless to confer a marble image of his person 
on posterity. Nollekens, like Bankes, had the ambition to 
introduce a purer and more tasteful style of art, but the works 
on which he expended his invention and employed his skill, 
promise to make but an ungrateful return. His busts will 
alone preserve his name. In his well known Venus, he 
strove hard with the antique—in his statue of Pitt he aspired 
to give an historical image of English mind, and in his 
monuments to the three Captains, Manners, Bayne and Blair, 
he sought to outdo the works of Roubiliac and Bacon. He 
has not succeeded in any of these attempts. His Venus 
wants the great charm of original thought and natural pro¬ 
priety of action. A handsome limb and a fine body will 
not carry a sculptor through without higher qualities. The 
goddess is dropping incense on her hair from a bottle, and 
looking aside. We see that such an action requires atten¬ 
tion, and the absence of it has spoiled the statue. Pitt is too 
theatrical—he is standing and looking with all his might—. 
the action passes the bounds of self-possession and clear¬ 
headed thought. But by the judicious use of the university 
gown (the statue belongs to Cambridge), the more incurable 
parts of modem dress are concealed, and Nollekens has fairly 
earned the rare praise of having used modern costume like a 
man of taste. When Nollekens ceased to make busts he 
ceased to interest us—he is feeble and unimaginative—but 
place the head of a man of sense before him, and all that 
nature had given, and no more, he could transfer to his 
marble. 
In Flaxman's mind, the wish to work in the classic style 
of Greece, and the love to work in the original spirit of 
England, have held a long and an equal war; sometimes 
forming natural and beautiful unions, and often keeping 
purely and elegantly asunder. To the aid of his art, he 
brought a loftier and more poetical mind than any of our 
preceding sculptors, and learning unites with natural genius 
in all the works which come from his hand. He has pene¬ 
trated, with a far deeper sense of the majesty of Homer, into 
the Iliad and Odyssey, than Canova, who dedicated his 
whole life to the renovation of the antique, nor has he failed 
to. 
