The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 1, December, 1850Various
History
The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 1, December, 1850
Various
Art, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- History -- Periodicals
Other causes are--the wide social separation in this country, by virtue
of which our servants are strangers in the house, alien if not hostile
to the family; the want of our present customs to give scope for such
temperaments as need excitement; the state of the Poor-law, which makes
the honest man desperate and relaxes the proper control over the
vagrant.
The remedies for these causes must go deeper than bells for shutters or
snappish housedogs for the night: meanwhile, we must be content to read
of murders, and to use the best palliatives we can--even shutter-bells
and vigilant little dogs.
[From the Examiner.]
STATUES.
Statues are now rising in every quarter of our metropolis, and mallet
and chisel are the chief instruments in use. Whatever is conducive to
the promotion of the arts ought undoubtedly to be encouraged; but love
in this instance, quite as much as in any, ought neither to be
precipitate nor blind. A true lover of his country should be exempted
from the pain of blushes, when a foreigner inquires of him, "_Whom does
this statue represent? and for what merits was it raised?_" The
defenders of their country, not the dismemberers of it, should be first
in honor; the maintainers of the laws, not the subverters of them,
should follow next. I may be asked by the studious, the contemplative,
the pacific, whether I would assign a higher station to any public man
than to a Milton and a Newton. My answer is plainly and loudly, _Yes_.
But the higher station should be in the streets, in squares, in houses
of parliament: such are their places; our vestibules and our libraries
are best adorned by poets, philosophers, and philanthropists. There is a
feeling which street-walking and public-meeting men improperly call
_loyalty_; a feeling intemperate and intolerant, smelling of dinner and
wine and toasts, which raises their stomachs and their voices at the
sound of certain names reverberated by the newspaper press. As little do
they know about the proprietary of these names as pot-wallopers know
about the candidates at a borough election, and are just as vociferous
and violent. A few days ago, I received a most courteous invitation to
be named on a Committee for erecting a statue to Jenner. It was
impossible for me to decline it; and equally was it impossible to
abstain from the observations which I am now about to state. I
recommended that the statue should be placed before a public hospital,
expressing my sense of impropriety in confounding so great a benefactor
of mankind, in any street or square or avenue, with the Dismemberer of
America and his worthless sons. Nor would I willingly see him among the
worn-out steam-engines of parliamentary debates. The noblest
parliamentary men who had nothing to distribute, not being ministers,
are without statues. The illustrious Burke, the wisest, excepting Bacon,
who at any time sat within the people's House; Romilly, the sincerest
patriot; Huskisson, the most intelligent in commercial affairs, has
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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