Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/517

Rh 3rdly, To commence a selection of characters, which can alone answer the purpose of rewarding past or exciting future virtues; and the want of which selection makes a public monument scarcely any compliment.

It would be not invidious, but unfair, to criticize the several monuments in Westminster Abbey; but let any person of the least feeling, not to mention taste or art, unprejudice his mind, and he must find himself more interested in viewing the single statue erected by Mr. Horace Walpole, to his mother Lady Orford, than with any of the piles erected to great men. And if Mrs. Nightingale's monument captivates beyond many others, it is greatly on account of its simplicity; and its being very little more than a single figure. It may as well be supposed, that a young person can begin to write whole sentences without making single letters, as that statuaries can make groupes with so little practice as they have in single figures. But if the example is once set, it will most likely become a general fashion to erect statues or busts to every person whose family can afford it, throughout the country. Fifty statues and a hundred busts will be bespoke where one group now is; since a statue will probably be to be had for 300l. and a bust for 50l. Besides which, simple tablets may be admitted into country churches, subject to some arrangement which may answer the purpose of general ornament, and prevent churches from being disfigured, as they now universally are. The same reason which makes our chimney-pieces better worked, and sharper carved, than those which come from Rome, namely the greatness of the demand, will gradually improve our artists in the more elevated line of their profession. Their numbers and their constant employment will give a greater chance, if not a certainty, of genius discovering itself from time to time.

The selection might be made subject, in the first instance,

1. To the King's sign manual.

2. The vote of either house of Parliament.

3. The vote of the East India Company.

4. The ballot of the Royal Society.

5. The sense of any profession, taken under such regulations as may be deemed most unexceptionable.

6. The fame as to artists, men of letters, or other descriptions, subject to proper regulations.

The subscription and the vote must be a sufficient check upon all the latter description.

The liberality shewn in first opening the door of St. Paul's to the monument of Mr., who was a Dissenter, already gives the assurance that difference of religion will not deter from doing honour to striking worth, without regard to the persuasion Rh