Of Mr. Peabody I think, cosy in his
armchair behind the Royal Exchange; of Nelson above the sparrows, and of
Perseus among the pigeons; of golden Albert, and of Harvey the not red.
Up looms Umberto, uncouthly casting them one and all into the shade.
I think of other statues that I have not seen--statues suspected of
holding something back from even the clearest-eyed men who have stood
beholding and soliciting them. But how obvious, beside Umberto, the
Sphinx would be! And Memnon, how tamely he sits waiting for the dawn!

Matchless as a memorial, then, I say again, this statue is. And as a
work of art it has at least the advantage of being beyond criticism. In
my young days, I wrote a plea that all the statues in the streets
and squares of London should be extirpated and, according to their
materials, smashed or melted. From an aesthetic standpoint, I went
a trifle too far: London has a few good statues. From an humane
standpoint, my plea was all wrong. Let no violence be done to the
effigies of the dead. There is disrespect in setting up a dead man's
effigy and then not unveiling it. But there would be no disrespect, and
there would be no violence, if the bad statues familiar to London were
ceremoniously veiled, and their inscribed pedestals left just as they
are. That is a scheme which occurred to me soon after I saw the veiled
Umberto. Mr. Birrell has now stepped in and forestalled my advocacy.
Pereant qui--but no, who could wish that charming man to perish? The
realisation of that scheme is what matters.

Let an inventory be taken of those statues. Let it be submitted to
Lord Rosebery, and he be asked to tick off all those statesmen, poets,
philosophers and other personages about whom he would wish to orate.
Then let the list be passed on to other orators, until every statue
on it shall have its particular spokesman. Then let the dates for the
various veilings be appointed. If there be four or five veilings every
week, I conceive that the whole list will be exhausted in two years or
so. And my enjoyment of the reported speeches will not be the less keen
because I can so well imagine them.... In conclusion, Lord Rosebery said
that the keynote to the character of the man in whose honour they were
gathered together to-day was, first and last, integrity. (Applause.)
He did not say of him that he had been infallible. Which of us was
infallible? (Laughter.) But this he would say, that the great man
whose statue they were