here, is legible at a
glance. Then comes the _pose_ and expression of the whole, the calm
strength in repose, the indifference to little things, the resolute view
of great ones. Lastly, the soul of the maker, the spirit which was taken
from nature, abides in the massive bronze. These lions are finer than
those that crouch in the cages at the Zoological Gardens; these are
truer and more real, and, besides, these are lions to whom has been
added the heart of a man. Nothing disfigures them; smoke and, what is
much worse, black rain--rain which washes the atmosphere of the
suspended mud--does not affect them in the least. If the choke-damp of
fog obscures them, it leaves no stain on the design; if the surfaces be
stained, the idea made tangible in metal is not. They are no more
touched than Time itself by the alternations of the seasons. The only
noble open-air work of native art in the four-million city, they rest
there supreme and are the centre. Did such a work exist now in Venice,
what immense folios would be issued about it! All the language of the
studios would be huddled together in piled-up and running-over
laudation, and curses on our insular swine-eyes that could not see it. I
have not been to Venice, therefore I do not pretend to a knowledge of
that mediaeval potsherd; this I do know, that in all the endless pictures
on the walls of the galleries in London, year after year exposed and
disappearing like snow somewhere unseen, never has there appeared one
with such a subject as this. Weak, feeble, mosaic, gimcrack, coloured
tiles, and far-fetched compound monsters, artificial as the graining on
a deal front door, they cannot be compared; it is the gingerbread gilt
on a circus car to the column of a Greek temple. This is pure open air,
grand as Nature herself, because it _is_ Nature with, as I say, the
heart of a man added.

But if any one desire the meretricious painting of warm light and cool
yet not hard shade, the effect of colour, with the twitching of
triangles, the spangles glittering, and all the arrangement contrived to
take the eye, then he can have it here as well as noble sculpture.
Ascend the steps to the National Gallery, and stand looking over the
balustrade down across the square in summer hours. Let the sun have
sloped enough to throw a slant of shadow outward; let the fountains
splash whose bubbles restless speak of rest and leisure, idle and
dreamy; let the blue-tinted pigeons nod their heads walk