THE QUEENS MEMORIAL.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Will no one say in public or in the Press what many of us, nay, most of us, are saying to one another, that the pro- posed application of the fund for the Queen's Memorial is a great and grievous mistake ? A statue ? Yes ; the very best that art can produce, but also—if it is to be appropriate and reverent and faithful—the simplest ; and therefore costing a mere fraction of the quarter of a million which it is proposed to raise. But the balance? Surely, surely as she would have applied it, as she did apply the large sum presented to her in 1887, to form a fund to help the sick and the feeble by nursing or in hospital, not to what at best can be but a costly display of architecture or sculpture, with little or no single- ness of meaning or appropriateness. Can we collect, as we are asked to do, sixpences and pennies from the poor who love and reverence the memory of the Queen, and then tell them it is to be spent upon an allegorical group in a London park? And lesthetically is it likely to be a success ? Ta sculpture our strong point? Is our climate, or are our London fogs, suitable to outdoor sculpture ? Are the existing statues in our streets on the whole commendable? The very magnitude pf the sum to be spent is likely to be fatal, for our worst failures are just those which have been most costly. Will no one in authority speak, and snatch us on the brink of this abyss before it is too late F—I am, Sir, &c., Park Corner, Heckfield, Winchfield.
JOHN MARTINEAV.
[We cannot agree that the nation does not want a beautiful and dignified physical reminder of the Queen. We desire that the Queen should be imperatively called to mind by some material monument so good that it cannot be overlooked. But, as we have said elsewhere, we are not very hopeful,. of getting it in a Platz outside Buckingham Palace. We would rather have seen the monument net from the grass of one of the parka—En. Spectator.]
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