nts, tell you the facts by anticipation.

58. We have much excellent portrait sculpture; but portrait sculpture,
which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, even when produced by
men of genius;--nor does it in the least require men of genius to
produce it. To paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts
of painting; but any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, can
carve a satisfactory bust.

59. Of our powers in historical sculpture, I am, without question, just,
in taking for sufficient evidence the monuments we have erected to our
two greatest heroes by sea and land; namely, the Nelson Column, and the
statue of the Duke of Wellington opposite Apsley House. Nor will you, I
hope, think me severe,--certainly, whatever you may think me, I am using
only the most temperate language, in saying of both these monuments,
that they are absolutely devoid of high sculptural merit. But consider
how much is involved in the fact thus dispassionately stated, respecting
the two monuments in the principal places of our capital, to our two
greatest heroes.

60. Remember that we have before our eyes, as subjects of perpetual
study and thought, the art of all the world for three thousand years
past; especially, we have the best sculpture of Greece, for example of
bodily perfection; the best of Rome, for example of character in
portraiture; the best of Florence, for example of romantic passion; we
have unlimited access to books and other sources of instruction; we have
the most perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human and
comparative; and we have bribes for the reward of success, large in the
proportion of at least twenty to one, as compared with those offered to
the artists of any other period. And with all these advantages, and the
stimulus also of fame carried instantly by the press to the remotest
corners of Europe, the best efforts we can make, on the grandest of
occasions, result in work which it is impossible in any one particular
to praise.

Now consider for yourselves what an intensity of the negation of the
faculty of sculpture this implies in the national mind! What measure can
be assigned to the gulf of incapacity, which can deliberately swallow up
in the gorge of it the teaching and example of three thousand years, and
produce, as the result of that instruction, what it is courteous to call
'nothing'?

61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive on the evidence presented
by ou