conductor. It was impossible for reason to
assent to such a conclusion as this, and so the
ascent of the column, by mounting which these
doubts would be set at rest for ever, and
perhaps a satisfactory view of the Nelson statue
obtained into the bargain, became a matter of
necessity.

The ascent of that column, alone, during a
gale of wind, is not a pleasant or exhilarating
pastime. The winding stair is very dark, and, as
you mount, it is impossible not to think
perpetually of that young man who last threw himself
from this pillar's top, and in consequence of
whose suicide a cage has been placed round the
gallery. As you think of him, the echo of your
own steps leads you to believe that some one
else is ascending behind or in front of you, and
you half hope that this is the case, unless it
should happen to be a maniac, which contingency
suddenly occurs to you, and does not
raise your spirits. Suppose a robber of the
garotte tribe should follow you up and cut off
your escape from below? Suppose the man who
keeps the door should forget you, and go away,
locking you up there for the night? Certainly
this tube is suggestive of much that is unpleasant.
The darkness increases, too, as you get
near the top, and when you have attained the
highest step, you have, in pitch darkness, to
open the door which gives upon the gallery, and
which the wind, which up here blows a perpetual
hurricane, flings viciously back in your
face. He who ascends the Duke of York
Column with a wish to examine closely the statue
which forms its apex, will go away without
having secured his object, the figure being
invisible from the position occupied by the visitor
to this monument. He, again, who mounts
those one hundred and seventy steps, bent on
attaining the level of the figure of Nelson on his
pillar, will also be doomed to disappointment,
the extreme thickness of the atmosphere
rendering the hero and his column an undistinguishable
mass, not very different in appearance
from the chimney of a certain brewery on the
other side of the Thames.

This lonely gallery being, however, a good place
for reflection, your Eye-witness took advantage
of it to pass in review before himself all that
he had seen during his statue-studies; and then
the memory rose up to him of certain works in
bronze and marble, with the like of which—if
we had chosen— this town might have been
made beautiful. He thought of a figure at
Turin so great, not only as an embodiment of
masculine beauty, but also in its rendering of
as perfect and complete a thought as ever
entered the mind of man. He thought of that
soldier dropping the heavy sword into its sheath,
when its work was over, with that calm strong
face that set the allurements and the dangers of
ease as completely at defiance as the perils and
hardships of the war that preceded it. He
thought of this figure, so perfect an epitome of
manhood, the like of which has not been
produced since the hand of Michael Angelo became
as cold as the marble on which it wrought, and
afterwards he thought of the horse on which the
soldier rides—such a horse as no sculptor has
moulded for two thousand years as noble an
idealisation in its way as its rider. There lately
stood, not many yards from the place where the
memory of our great warrior is made the subject
of a ghastly caricature, a glorious figure of
Victory, designed by that same foreign hand
which raised the Turin statue, to do the English
soldier honour. Does any one still remember
that statue? Does any one remember how
reverently the teaching of nature had been
considered in the action of those arched and poising
wings—resting, but still on the alert? Does
any one remember the grand and startling form
of the whole composition, reminding one, at first
and at a distance, of some mighty hovering bird?
Is the exceeding beauty of that head forgotten,
the perpetual loving watch kept at the door of the
hero's tomb, and the jealous guardianship of his
sword? Are these things forgotten? Is the
figure of the Princess Elizabeth—Charles the
First's Elizabeth— forgotten? Is the Clive that
stood awhile before the Treasury remembered no
more? Are the many heads of women which,
had they come down to us with a history and a
pedigree, would have been talked of as marvels
of classic beauty— are these swept from our
memories? If so, there is still before our eyes
one more appeal against national prejudice to
which it is possible to point even at this moment.
Put on one side, and deprived of the honourable
place which it should have commanded, there is,
in the Sculpture-room of the Royal Academy, this
year, a work, the equal of which, unless
executed by the same hand, has never been seen
within the walls of that room. It is not this
time a soldier in colossal bronze: horse and man
quivering with life and strength. It is not an
angel hovering over us with outstretched wings.
It is not the lifeless form of the doomed daughter
of a doomed king. It is the figure of a child.
There is nothing more to be said of it. The
work is an embodiment of childhood, a realisation
of all we look for and delight in, in a child.
It is a faultless work. What REYNOLDS saw in
a child, MAROCHETTI, the sculptor who wrought
this figure, has, in a different way, seen too—
seen as completely, rendered as perfectly. There
needs no knowledge of Art, no depth of
connoisseurship,to understand this figure. Any one
with eyes can see it and appreciate it, as a most
exquisite presentation of the Truth.

Now ready, price 5s. 6d., bound in cloth,
THE SECOND VOLUME,
Including Nos. 27 to 50, and the Christmas Double
Number, of ALL THE YEAR ROUND.