The well-known Nightingale monument is a wonderful _tour de force_, and every sculptor must admire it for its extraordinary “cleverness” in every point of view. It is of course altogether melodramatic, and no doubt travels outside the bounds of plastic art. Above is seen, in a sort of arched recess, the dying wife, supported by the arm of her husband, who is starting back in terror from what he sees below. A sort of iron door, as of a vault, has opened, and a grisly awful skeleton, in a sheet, half out of the vault, is about to launch his dart at the lady. There is a contrast of pictorial effect, for the arch is bluish grey, the iron door black, and the skeleton yellow. It has been a stock show for a hundred years or so. Here is _bravura_ indeed; but the reckless extravagance is redeemed by the amazing cleverness and poetry and even pathos of the show. Nor is dignity wanting. The dying wife is a graceful figure, which, says a good judge, “would do honour to any artist. Her right arm and hand are considered by sculptors the perfection of pure workmanship. Life seems slowly receding from her tapering fingers.” A tradition of the place runs that a burglar, who had got into the Abbey by night, was so scared by the figure of Death that he incontinently dropped his tools and fled. The crowbar is still preserved and shown! This monument, generally associated with Lady Nightingale, the daughter of Lord Ferrers, also commemorates her husband, Joseph Nightingale, and was erected according to a direction in the will of their son. The lady died in 1734, aged twenty-seven; the husband in 1752, aged fifty-six. This survival of eighteen years, during which time the sorrowing spouse had erected no monument, somewhat impairs the dramatic force of the picture.
Our sculptor used to grumble at the injustice done to the position of what he considered his best work, that of Wade. The marshal’s profile is displayed upon a medallion over which a female figure with wings is springing upwards with much spirit and animation to drive back Time with his scythe, etc. The figures are almost as vivacious as some of those by Rude, on the Arc de l’Etoile, including a mourning Hibernia (whose child he was) with a derelect harp, stringless.