n itself a
singular study in that tendency which, as I have said, is always making
things out worse than they are, and necessitating a systematic attitude
of defence. Thus, for example, some dramatic critics cast contempt upon
a dramatic performance by calling it theatrical, which simply means that
it is suitable to a theatre, and is as much a compliment as calling a
poem poetical. Similarly we speak disdainfully of a certain kind of work
as sentimental, which simply means possessing the admirable and
essential quality of sentiment. Such phrases are all parts of one
peddling and cowardly philosophy, and remind us of the days when
'enthusiast' was a term of reproach. But of all this vocabulary of
unconscious eulogies nothing is more striking than the word 'pompous.'

Properly speaking, of course, a public monument ought to be pompous.
Pomp is its very object; it would be absurd to have columns and pyramids
blushing in some coy nook like violets in the woods of spring. And
public monuments have in this matter a great and much-needed lesson to
teach. Valour and mercy and the great enthusiasms ought to be a great
deal more public than they are at present. We are too fond nowadays of
committing the sin of fear and calling it the virtue of reverence. We
have forgotten the old and wholesome morality of the Book of Proverbs,
'Wisdom crieth without; her voice is heard in the streets.' In Athens
and Florence her voice was heard in the streets. They had an outdoor
life of war and argument, and they had what modern commercial
civilization has never had--an outdoor art. Religious services, the most
sacred of all things, have always been held publicly; it is entirely a
new and debased notion that sanctity is the same as secrecy. A great
many modern poets, with the most abstruse and delicate sensibilities,
love darkness, when all is said and done, much for the same reason that
thieves love it. The mission of a great spire or statue should be to
strike the spirit with a sudden sense of pride as with a thunderbolt. It
should lift us with it into the empty and ennobling air. Along the base
of every noble monument, whatever else may be written there, runs in
invisible letters the lines of Swinburne:

'This thing is God:
To be man with thy might,
To go straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live
out thy life in the light.'

If a public monument does not meet this first supreme and obvious need,
that it should be public