But here the pleasing portion of the picture ceases--
every medal has its obverse, says the Italian proverb; and the comparatively low rank which his country occupies in this new field of view, is a melancholy contemplation for an Englishman. He finds that, in general, things are judged of only by the measure of their practical utility, and that the beautiful and the useful are usually deemed to be incompatible; thereby affording, however reluctantly we may admit it, at least some justification of Napoleon's celebrated and bitter reproach, that we are a nation of shopkeepers. It would seem, in truth, that we do not possess that quick perception of the beautiful which is enjoyed by the more excitable and imaginative sons of the south. In painting, we believe we possess a school second to none of modern art. But, beautiful as their works may be, can we place our Reynolds, Lawrence, Hogarth, and Gainsborough in competition with Raphael, Correggio, Rubens, or Claude? In sculpture also, can Westmacott, or even Chantrey--we speak with reverence of the illustrious dead--be compared with Michael Angelo or Giovanni de Bologna? When pressed on these topics, the candid Englishman must, with a sigh, confess his country's inferiority. Architecture also, with few exceptions, has long been our reproach. We judge of the degree of civilization and refinement to which ancient Greece and Rome attained, by the beauty and elegance of their mutilated remains. We find their temples, even in ruins, beautiful beyond the day-dream of our modern architects; some of them, till bold and sacrilegious hands despoiled them, adorned with sculptures which, surviving the destruction of the people who raised them, the wanton rage of barbarous enemies, and the inroads of the elements for near two thousand years, sill remain, in their decay, the wonder and admiration of the world, the models of modern sculptors, and the greatest treasure of art a nation can possess.
In the lapse of ages, perhaps, England, in her turn, may be deserted, her mines exhausted, her edifies ruined, her existence as a nation terminated. The site of her vast metropolis may once more become an undulating verdant plain, intersected by a tidal river; and, perhaps, nothing may remain outwardly to show the curious traveller where the ancient city stood. The pristine abode of man upon the earth, may again be thickly peopled, and civilization may have rolled back to the south, its ancient source. Then may history or tradition vaguely tell of powerful nations who once flourished in the north; their very existence doubted, perhaps, by all, and by many disbelieved. Some day, perchance, one whom accident or curiosity may have brought to the shores of ancient Britain, may wend his weary way along the bank of the noblest river of the land. On a mound a little higher than the rest, something on which the hand of man had evidently been employed may attract his attention, and stimulate him to search among the tangled weeds and brushwood which grow around. The discovery of a marble fragment may, perhaps, eventually lead to the uncovering of one of those statues which now grace the interior of our St Paul's, on the site of which the stranger had unconsciously been exploring. Or, suppose the traveller to have bent his steps in a north-easterly direction, towards the foot of that gentle slope which terminates at the base of the heights of Highgate and of Hampstead. Suppose him, by some strange chance, to stumble upon that incomparable specimen of modern sculpture which stands on high at King's-Cross, lifted up, in order, we presume, to enable the good citizens duly to feast their eyes upon its manifold perfections, as they daily hie them to and fro between their western or suburban retreats and the purlieus of King Street or Cheapside. What estimate would the stranger form of the taste or skill of those who placed on its pedestal the statue we have first supposed him to have found? It avails not to disguise the truth. What that truth may be, we leave to the intelligence of the reader to divine. But what would be the effect of the other discovery we have imagined? The traveller would turn away, convinced that history or tradition gave false accounts of the power and genius of the ancient inhabitants of the land on which he trod, that their glory was a dream, their civilization a delusion, their proficiency in the arts a fable. For the honour of our country, let us hope that the figure of which we speak may not be suffered much longer to disgrace a leading thoroughfare of our metropolis. It has already stood some eight or ten years, a melancholy monument of English taste and English art in the nineteenth century.