THE GREAT EXHIBITION MEMORIAL.
The models and designs, forty-eight in number, sent in for this compe- tition, are now open to view at the South Kensington Museum. They comprise all sorts of notions, with very meagre ideas,—sculptural groups, obelisks, architectural monuments, fountains, grotto-work, and one or two mere eccentricities,—such as a transparent globe in a basin of water hard by the Serpentine, proposed as a Scientific, Artistic, and Industrial Congress Hall. Britannias, Queen Victories, Prince Alberts, Industries, &c., figure ad libitum in the detail of the several works. The form which any such memorials generally take is that of a sculptural monu- ment. We do not know whether the judges arc predisposed to make it so in this instance ; but if they do, we conceive that their choice is clear. There is one model which has an idea in it, and a highly terse and ap- propriate one, and which ought to win by several lengths. It bears the motto " Et, quasi cursores, vital lampada tradunt." The subject of the crowning group, supplemented by other symbolic figures, is two run- ners, as in the Grecian games, of whom one, having exhausted his course, " hands the torch of life and truth to a fresh and vigorous athlete, who is aspiring to bear it through a new career." This is ori- ginal, intelligible, thoroughly and naturally emblematic of the subject, and in artistic design vigorous and graceful. A French drawing, bear- ing the motto " Concordia," and with a strange character of archaic Greek art about it, is also evidently the work of a skilled hand.
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