A COLONIAL MONUMENT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
congratulate you on your proposal for a Colonial monument. It must of course be in Trafalgar Square. England, the Mother, ought to be surrounded by her soldier sons (I would include the English). These figures ought to be rte.' men, not abstractions. but they must not be the dreary dressed-up models they are in the Hyde Park Corner monu. ment. The soldiers ought to be in their fighting, not parade uniforms, and, although naturalistic so per, they should be heroic in build and pose. Thus alone can they be made effective. The man who has done this beet, I think, is St. Gaudens in his memorial at Boston to the Colonel of the negro regiment. There is something to be said for having the memorial under cover. The filthy air of London reduces all sculpture out of doors to a grimy silhouette. A loggia in which people could take refuge from storms would not be a bad place for the monument.—I am, Sir, &c., H. S.
[We agree with our correspondent as to the magnificence and force of Mr. St. Gandens's war sculpture, and should much like to see London possess a monument by so great an artist. But could not Mr. Watts be induced to design a monument, expressing in stone and bronze the true Imperial idea,—not the Imperialism of domination, but of freedom and beneficence, the Imperialism which seeks neither tribute nor monopoly, but stands rooted in liberty ?—ED. Spectator.]
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