m s c u l f 
to catch the peculiar inspiration of whatever poet his fancy 
selected for illustration. We do not mean to say that he has 
entered into all the minute graces, but that he has never 
failed to reflect a true general image of his original. His 
conceptions are all inspired by strong sense and by the 
severer part of poetic feeling, but his workmanship is often 
slovenly and his draperies heavy, and he seems to despise 
the subordinate graces of careful execution. 
Westmacott has shared largely in public and in private 
favour, and some of the most expensive of our monuments 
have been confided to his talents. He has in so far profited 
by the wise example of West and the good sense of Flax- 
man, obeyed the admonition of our cold climate, and re¬ 
spected the blushes of our ladies—and clothed some of his 
works in the costume of the country. He has tried the alle¬ 
gorical, the natural and the poetical, and to which of them 
he is most devoted it is impossible to guess. His nature is 
rather heavy, his allegories somewhat startling, and his poe¬ 
try deficient in elegance and simplicity. But in his Hindoo 
Girl, there is a fine wildness; the stamp of a remote land is 
upon her: and in his Widowed Mother and Child, he has 
attained the pathos of truth. 
The statues of this artist merit some attention; they are 
numerous, and they are all historically correct with regard to 
portraiture; but their costume is of a mixed nature, some¬ 
times of a Roman, sometimes of an English character, yet 
neither the one nor the other in perfection. The antique 
part wants graceful simplicity, the modern is inclined to be 
coarse; he is unable to vanquish the obstinate flaps, lappels 
and kneebands of English dress. The great disgrace of 
Westmacott is the renovation of the statue of Achilles, in 
honour of Wellington and Waterloo. It has been very pro¬ 
perly asked, why he did not place the Duke there instead of 
this naked unknown ? 
Most truly has it been said, England may justly be proud 
of Chantrey; his works reflect back her image as a mirror; 
he has ibrmed his taste on no style but that of nature, and 
no works of any age or country, but his own, can claim 
back any inspiration which they have lent him. He calls 
up no shapes from antiquity: he gives us no established 
visions of the past; the moment he breathes in, is his; the 
beauty and the manliness which live and move around him, 
are his materials. An air of freedom and ease—of vigour which 
comes not from the muscle but from the mind—of sentiment 
making action her auxiliary, and a look of life and reality 
are stamped on all his statues, busts and groups. He courts 
repose—he seems not averse to gentle action, but has never 
yet sought in violent motion for elements either of sadness or 
solemnity. 
His works are all of a domestic or historical kind. His 
statues are numerous: James Watt is still living as far as 
sculpture can prolong life ; his perfect image meditating on 
the extraordinary power which man wields so easily and 
profitably, is preserved to the world. Of his erect figures, 
Washington is accounted the best; the hero of American 
independence seems the very personification of one wrapt up 
in thought—a man of few words, of prompt deeds, with a 
mind and fortitude for all emergencies. Grattan is a being 
of another class—earnest, voluble, in motion more than any 
other of the artist’s works, and yet with something both of 
dignity and of serenity. Horner is anxious, apprehensive, 
and mildly grave; you look, expecting him to speak. 
In all these works we admire a subordinate beauty, a de¬ 
corous and prudent use of modern dress, whilst it is retained 
for the sake of truth. All its characteristic vulgarities are 
softened down or concealed. 
Chantrey is a very prolific genius. Of his statues and 
groups there are scores; but of his busts, hundreds. We 
may name, as the best of the latter, Horne Tooke, Rennie, 
Watt, Wordsworth, Scott and Playfair. Of all these, perhaps 
that of Sir Walter Scott is the best. 
Bailey studied under Flaxman. His conceptions are, in 
general, just; and his workmanship far surpasses that of his 
master, and, indeed, is as finished as is requisite. His 
T U R £. 
lovely Eve has caused a more universal burst of admira¬ 
tion, than the people of England ever before conferred on a 
statue: and Poetry inspiring Painting, is a group of consi¬ 
derable effect. Quarterly Review, No. LXVII. 
The natural and laudable desire for excellence which so 
eminently distinguishes this country, has from time to time 
caused many regrets as to the low state of our sculptural 
art, compared with that of antiquity. We have been 
compelled to acknowledge the mortifying truth, that the 
finest statues in this country are in all the higher attri¬ 
butes of the art immeasureably inferior to those of Greece; 
and though this disgrace reflects on the rest of the world 
even more than ourselves, it is not the less felt by a nation 
which, in the other products of the imagination, stands so 
perfectly unrivalled. Without entering very deeply into 
a discussion which our limits will by no means allow us to 
do justice to, we shall take leave to introduce some reflexions 
on the causes of the high accomplishments of the ancient 
sculptors; from thence we shall endeavour to deduce the 
general principles that regulate the advance of the art,; and 
lastly, with much doubt and hesitation, propose a few sug¬ 
gestions as to the direction of the artist’s efforts in future. 
For all that is ideal, for all that belongs to the sublime 
and the spiritual in Grecian sculpture, we must look to reli¬ 
gion. It was this feeling that endued the Venus and the 
Apollo with a beauty confessedly more than natural, and 
which in the Olympian Jove, stamped with an appropriate 
dignity the ruler of the heavens. But that this feeling, po¬ 
tent as its influence might be, was not alone sufficient to the 
end in view, is proved by the feebleness of its operation with 
the Egyptians. Of this nation, the only sculptures were 
gods or deified kings, and yet how destitute of a divine na¬ 
ture are the huge deformities they have engendered. The 
Greeks owed their superiority to a truer imitation of nature, 
and this was derived from the studies their peculiar customs 
so abundantly afforded, but of which we have no modem 
examples. Their dresses were loose and majestic on the 
one hand, or were partial defences that left the fairest parts 
of the person exposed to view. Games and other pub¬ 
lic exhibitions of strength and agility were so frequent, that 
the proportions of the human form, and its minutest changes, 
its every action, were familiar to the eyes of all. With 
these models constantly before him, the sculptor imbibed 
the elements of his art, imperceptibly from his youth up¬ 
wards. Nor were these materials for imitation merely pre¬ 
sented to him as the common objects of nature, which a few 
admire, but many pass over unobserving: the noblest 
and the bravest disdained not these exhibitions; they were 
celebrated by the first poets, and regulated by the profoundest 
lawgivers. The youthful spectator had, therefore, not only 
the best proportions placed before him, but the movements 
they performed were exalted in his imagination, as the first 
of mortal achievements, as exercises that even the gods had 
not disdained to practice. Hence then it happened, that 
the knowledge of the body’s expression was as familiar 
to the Greeks as the knowledge of the expression of the face 
is to us: with the advantage on their side, that the imitation 
of the former was with them the highest glory; whilst with 
us portrait-sculpture is absurdly considered as second rate. 
If we enter somewhat deeper into this question, we shall 
still easily account for Grecian superiority on the universally 
prevalent grounds of profit and fame. Sculpture was better 
paid, and more highly esteemed in Greece than it can be in 
England, as was architecture and poetry. All these were 
popular amusements, and there were no others. The Greeks 
were not a reading people, nor an experimental people. 
They received their religion, politics and amusements from 
the language of imagination, transmitted to them solely by 
oral communications. Is it possible to conceive such a state 
of things in a civilized and partially idle and luxurious 
people, without the developement of a universal passion, a 
popular furor, in favour of fine speaking and acting j or 
that in such a state, a fine voice, animated countenance, and 
graceful 
