ARCHITECTURAL NOTES
THE ARTILLERY MEMORIAL.
Dunnin the last few months the aspect of Hyde Park Corner has been completely altered. Till recently it retained both from the architectural character of the chief buildings abutting on it and from its associations a flavour of the post-War epoch covered by the reign of George IV. Decimus Burton's Colonnade and Constitution Hill Arch, Wilkins's St. George's Hospital and Apsley House, added to and refaced by Ben- jamin Wyatt, all date from about 100 years ago. It is true that the position of the arch has been changed and an unsuit- able Quadriga put on tep of it. This change, while relieving the traffic, spoilt the architectural lay-out of the open space. It did not, however, affect the buildings themselves and only made it the more desirable to leave alone a part of London entirely unadapted in itself for the erection of further memorials and, moreover, already dedicated in the public mind to an earlier war.
• But these considerations did not weigh with the competent authorities, and permission was accorded for the erection of a memorial on the triangle of asphalt facing St. George's Hospital. Even granted the difficulty of the site, even given the danger that anything erected there must of necessity look like an upstart, one is yet amazed at the magnitude of the failure. The elephantine tactlessness of the memorial is stagge ring. The best of a bad job might have been made by placing the memorial so that it faced the portico of St. George's Hospital, but this aspect of it is self-consciously asymetrical. The vast mass of masonry faces nothing and is led up to by nothing. The hardly conventionalized stone howitzer which tops it had better have been a real one. This would have been just as " frightful," and therefore just as useful in conveying a lesson, and not a whit less ugly. The sculptured figures and reliefs are merely trimmings. They will be thought by some to be too academic, but most critics will find considerable merit in them, particularly the reliefs. But they do not lighten or beautify the general mass. It is possible that in totally different surroundings the memorial might have had a certain grim and monstrous impressiveness, and it is obvious that there are many monuments in London which have much less artistic value, but surely there is none which is so entirely inharmonious with its setting and for that reason so great an eyesore.
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