As Lord Chesterfield said of Roubiliac, 'he was the only statuary of his day; all other artists were mere stone-cutters.' It is very desirable, in estimating his merits, to bear in mind that he stood alone; his rivals, Rysbrach and Scheemakers, he had completely outstripped; and, apart from his following of Bernini, he was clearly an artist of an original and creative kind. What is hard to forgive in him, however, and what indeed has much detracted from his reputation, is the fact that a long list of allegorical monstrosities was in some sort the result of his example. Charmed with certain of his works, and possessed just then by particular memories it deemed deserving of monumental celebration, the nation rushed recklessly to its stone-cutters. The terrible works which blemish and blister the walls of our cathedrals and churches were the consequences. Verrio and Laguerre had long set the fashion of disfiguring ceilings and staircases with their incomprehensible compositions. Roubiliac carved similar parabolic productions in marble and set them up in Westminster Abbey and elsewhere. In these, heathen divinities jostle Christian emblems; Paganism is seen abreast of true religion. In the aisle of a Gothic abbey, John, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, warrior and orator, expires at the foot of a pyramid, on which History, weeping, writes his deeds, while Minerva (or Britannia) mourns at the side, and Eloquence above, tossing white arms in the air, deplores the loss she has sustained. Here we find Hercules placing the bust of Sir Peter Warren upon a pedestal, while Navigation prepares to crown it with a laurel wreath; a British flag forming the background and a horn of plenty emptying its contents beside an anchor and a cannon. In the monument to Marshal Wade, Time is endeavouring to destroy a pillar adorned with military trophies, which fame as zealously protects. The famous Nightingale memorial represents a husband shielding a dying wife from the attack of Death: a grinning skeleton levelling a javelin as he issues from the opening iron door of a tomb. The admirable execution of these works cannot blind the critic to the utter unfitness and folly of their conception.