It is a boy's face, very
beautiful and very pleasant too, but with an expression that one might
fairly suspect to be roguish if seen in the face of a living boy.
About equestrian statues, as those of various kings at Charing Cross, and
otherwhere about London, and of the Duke of Wellington opposite Apsley
House, and in front of the Exchange, it strikes me as absurd, the idea of
putting a man on horseback on a place where one movement of the steed
forward or backward or sideways would infallibly break his own and his
rider's neck. The English sculptors generally seem to have been aware of
this absurdity, and have endeavored to lessen it by making the horse as
quiet as a cab-horse on the stand, instead of rearing rampant, like the
bronze group of Jackson at Washington. The statue of Wellington, at the
Piccadilly corner of the Park, has a stately and imposing effect, seen
from far distances, in approaching either through the Green Park, or from
the Oxford Street corner of Hyde Park.
January 3d, 1858.--On Thursday we had the pleasure of a call from Mr.
Coventry Patmore, to whom Dr. Wilkinson gave me a letter of introduction,
and on whom I had called twice at the British Museum without finding him.
We had read his Betrothal and Angel in the House with unusual pleasure
and sympathy, and therefore were very glad to make his personal
acquaintance. He is a man of much more youthful aspect than I had
expected, . . . . a slender person to be an Englishman, though not
remarkably so had he been an American; with an intelligent, pleasant,
and sensitive face,--a man very evidently of refined feelings and
cultivated mind.
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