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New Zealand Mail, Issue 244, 22 July 1876, Page 12

Something is always offending the Hon. Mr. Waterhouse. One time it is the four million loan and its negotiator, another time Mr. Finnimore and the Premier’s return for Wanganui. Next it is the insensibility of Mr. Beynolds to Florentine Art, and yet again it is the Martin drinking fountain. Foi Innately the fact that Mr. Waterhouse is offended by anything does not afflict a sinGle soul besides himself, and he is Gradually becoming a kind of Mr. Cowl in public life, who is privileged to say nasty cantankerous things because no-

body minds what he does say. His utterances in the Legislative Council are now a series of periodical complaints against everything and everybody, and people are beginning to wonder if he will ever find anything to be satisfied with. His condition of mind can be accounted for by the fact that he is a disappointed politician, and is. also a politician so petty-minded as to be unable to bear disappointment. He has never forgiven the colony because it seemed very glad to get quit of him as a Minister when he hoped for its assistance to get quit of others, and the colony being tolerably well satisfied without him, he ascribes all misfortunes to the men with whom it is content. He regards the Ministry as the cause of all evil, and equally ascribes to their machinations the fall in the price of wool and the earthquake of Wednesday night. But why he should make the Martin drinking fountain a cause of complaint it is hard to tell, or why he should be offended with Mr. Martin and the fountain it is difficult to find out. We find him reported as saying recently in the Legislative Council : —“ Only the other day the people of Wellington had the pleasure of seeing the decoration of Justice of the Peace conferred upon a gentleman because he had erected a pump, or rather a fountain, in the city; and he had little doubt that in the course of time they would see every person who had been instrumental in saving the life of a child which might fall over the wharf likewise made a J.P.” Now, as a matter Of fact, Mr. Martin, though he has neither imported replicas from Florence, nor endeavored' to decry the colony’s credit at Home, has done far more for the material advancement of New Zealand and Wellington than Mr. Waterhouse is ever likely to accomplish, and his appointment as a Justice of the Peace was so unanimously recognised as being a fitting compliment that we shall not insult him by defending that appointment. But we might point out to Mr. Waterhouse, who has learnt the cesthetic principles of Art by a few weeks’ sojourn in Italy, and whose artistic soul is offended by the sight of the Martin fountain, that the shape of that fountain is not Mr. Martin’s affair. On its site there had existed for some time a frightful apparatus connected in some mysterious manner with the water-supply of the city, and offering in appearance a neat compromise between a whaler’s trypot turned upside down and the bottom of a wash-house boiler. Mr. Martin determined that this abomination should be covered up, and covered up it accordingly is by a fountain paid for by him, which if not a thing of fairylike elegance, is at least inoffensive to the eye. Will Mr. Waterhouse, then, be kind enough to see that by hiding out of sight an unpleasant object Mr. Martin has sacrificed on the altar of Art quite as much as if he had purchased a plaster of Paris chef d’ceuvre from an Italian image dealer ? Perhaps Mr. Waterhouse will better realise the good Mr. Martin has done when we point out to him how inexpressibly gratified the community would be if someone were only philanthropic enough to put a moral extinguisher on Mr. Waterhouse himself, whose utterances are quite as repulsive to the public mind as the inelegance covered by Mr. Martin’s fountain was to the public eye. And indeed, if Mr. Waterhouse will but kindly reflect a little he will see that his criticism of the appearance of the fountain itself is ungenerous in his case. For whenever the time comes (and we sincerely trust it is a long way off) in which the country will be called upon to express its sense of the obligation it owes to the late Mr. Waterhouse, any testimonial to his memory is tolerably certain to take the form of that useful article which in life he so much resembles, and will find expression in the cheerful erection of—a pump, on which may be inscribed, “ I stand the image of my former self.”