A TIME LIMIT FOR STATUES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 114, 10 November 1934, Page 25

A TIME LIMIT FOR STATUES

I". ' £g^""IONSIDERED as a collection the statues of London, for ' ; - \*^r their exaggerations and inadequacies, their strange con- •■ ' trasts, their general lack of harmony with condition '- and chcumstance, their frequent stupidity in kind and situa- < I tion, are indeed one of the very strangest sights in all the. town,' * ; writes Mr. Henry Leach in "Chambers's Journal." "; '"Is there a single one of them that any well-ordered com- ■■ mittee of inspection could report upon as being quite correct— " - even the later ones? Harmony among them could never be while " I ideas change and remembrance and veneration fade. It must be - • wrong of us thus to send our idols down to Posterity with the - - implied command and responsibility that they shall care for " '. them. In^our still warm emotion we raise a statue to the memory " of some personage lately gone from us, feeling that this is a'fair -• cSse'Tfor'immortality, arid thus pass it on to Posterity; yet even '" in ■ our 'own time 'a weakening begins. *'■ > "Should there he a law enacting i that no" such monument " should be raised'in public places'until a full generation-has ;; passed1 away? Perhaps then there would be, too few. Or an- ■ • other law concerning fcind and the dimensions, with a clause upon '.'. the placed making for good order and fair proportion, and, let y m us say, justice^which is always'such'a splendid word in-argu-ment? , ■' - - - "But in this matter of statues we are dealing with, the affairs - - of the world, ,of vanity,',all human' vanity^ and, as we know, many ;; threads of-most doubfful virtue run"~,through the tales of heroes ;; whom lovedV,so justice is better-kept apart. < The London >• collection, sot-varied and extensive,,is, after all, most. 3elight- ''. ful in the interest and wonderment proyoked by its surprises." ;: