Yet another equestrian statue is that of Charles the Second at Edinburgh, set up by the magistrates of the city in Parliament Square, in honour of the restoration of the king. A writer in the _Athenæum_ for April 13th, 1850, speaks of it as the “finest piece of statuary in Edinburgh,” and urges the suitability of lead for the purpose. “In _Black’s Guide through Edinburgh_ it is spoken of as the best specimen of bronze statuary which Edinburgh possesses; it is, however, composed of lead. Now this leaden equestrian statue has already without sensible deterioration stood the test of 165 years’ (in 1850) exposure to the weather, and it still seems as fresh as if erected but yesterday.” Some years before this, one of the interior irons having given way, a part of the shoulder sank a little and it was taken down and repaired and sufficiently proved to be lead. Taking the figures above, it appears that the date of this work is 1685. Mr. James Nasmyth also wrote to the _Athenæum_, June, 1850, “to confirm as a practical man the perfect fitness of lead” as a substitute for bronze, and to recommend the _cire perdu_ method of casting, at that time discontinued in England; the process being to model the statue in wax on a solid core, to cast in plaster the finished wax model, and then to melt out the wax from this plaster mould, the space which it occupied being refilled with lead. Of course only one cast can be obtained in this way, whereas the old decorative statues spoken of later were cast in a piece mould and reproduced again and again. “The addition (still quoting) of about five per cent. of antimony will give it not only greater hardness but enhance its capability to run into the most delicate details ... it is in every sense as durable as bronze when subject simply to atmospheric action.” We shall see that an addition of block tin was made to the lead by the old figure founders. Type metal, which is so much harder than lead, is an alloy of lead and ¼ to ⅓ of antimony, or of two parts of lead to one of tin and one of antimony. In the courtyard of Houghton Tower, Lancashire, there is a statue of William III. brought from the dismantled Walton-le-Dale in 1834. The statues decorating the parapets of the large “classic” country houses are at times of lead; there are five of these at Lyme in Cheshire. Over the portico of the Clarendon at Oxford there are four of these statues representing the sciences. Until recently there was a figure of King James high up in a niche at the Bodleian. The figures of the good little boy and girl common at charity schools are also often of lead. The great Percy lion that surmounted old Northumberland House at Charing Cross (destroyed twenty years ago) is now on the river front of Syon House; it weighs about three tons, and it was placed in its original position in 1749. The lion on the bridge at Alnwick is also of lead, as the little boy found to his cost who climbed out on its tail.