DIALOGUES OF THE STATUES.

No. IX.

BY PETER ORLANDO HUTCHINSON.

The Duke of York's Statue, Carlton-house Terrace, to Sir Ralph Abercromby's Statue in St. Paul's Cathedral.

THE bronze statue of the Duke of York, with its spike on its head, its military cloak over its shoulder, its right hand resting on the hilt of its sword, held like a walking-stick, and its left foot somewhat advanced, had for ten years stood on its granite column, that looks fat in the middle, silently and solemnly bending its attention towards the Horse-guards. Surely any passerby, who could contort his neck sufficiently to look all up there, would have said that sundry deep ponderings were occupying the Duke's statue's metal. So fixedly did he keep his regards in the same direction, that fifty marble statues, though stone blind, could not help having their curiosity excited by it. Even those that were shut out from a direct view of him by the intervening buildings, were, nevertheless, fully aware of his Royal Highness's bronze study-brown study, rather; for statues possess an invisible co-reciprocity of intelligence, one with another, something like the sympathetic animal magnetism of clairvoyants in the mesmeric state. It isn't everybody that knows this, but it is important that they should. Two or three of the monuments in the Abbey were bursting to inquire the cause; but their great inferiority in rank, as compared with a prince of the blood, acted as a check. This only shows that the thinking principle is the same after death as before. They knew the etiquette of statues, as much as if they had studied it from the book of some "Lady of Rank." At the same time, they might have taken courage, by recollecting that statues are not men: and also that death makes us all co-equals; not reducing some to gold-dust, and others only to iron-filings. The etiquette of statues, therefore, is not very rigid-like the loyalty of Leigh Hunt. There was Westmacott's magnificent group of Lieutenant General Sir Ralph Abercromby, in the south transept of St. Paul's Cathedral, that recollected how the real Sir Ralph had served under the living Duke of York in the Netherlands, and had enjoyed his most unreserved friendship; and this white marble (except the dust), less diffident, suddenly exclaimed"A penny for your thoughts!"

"Where's your money?" returned the Duke.

This ought to have been a settler, for Sir Ralph had not so much at his disposal as a single "rap; " which sum, in monetary transactions, is usually understood to mean something infinitesimally small. Besides, the marbles of departed heroes deal not in coin, notwithstanding that, according to Lucian, the shades of departed heroes certainly did. But some were miserable shirks. Menippus was a sad dog at forking out the ready.

"Redde naulum, sceleste!" cried Charon to this sinner, who wanted to get over the ferry for nothing.

Vociferare, siquidem hoc tibi jucundum est, Charon,” rejoined Menippus.

"Redde, inquam," persisted the ferryman; "id, cujus graciá te trajeci."

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Haudquaquam accipere possis ab eo qui non habet," was the reply; which ought to have been a good reason for not paying, had it only been believed.

"An est quispiam," continued Charon, inquiringly, “qui ne obolum quidem habet?"

"Sit ne alius quispiam, was the answer, “equidem ignoro. Ipse certè non habeo."

It wouldn't do. At last they threatened to cuff each other; but enter Mercury, and, behold, matters are made up. Menippus had only some lupine seeds in his pocket.

But shades in Pandemonium are not bronze and marble in London; and how-much-soever the infernals dealt in oboli and drachmæ, certain it is, Sir Ralph's statue had not one penny for the Duke's.

"I was first of all," said his Royal Highness, " running over a long train of circumstances more or less connected with that building, whose discrete, but discordantly striking clock, serves as an oracle to the sun; for whilst I was forty-seven years a soldier, and thirty out of that commander-in-chief, you may be sure that many notable things occurred. But just at the moment you spoke, I was watching one of the Blues sauntering along upon the parade ground, talking to that pretty nursemaid. There he goes, happy dog, all boots and helmet,-his bulk at each end, like an hourglass. I was rather contemplating his boots than himself. He must have been an ingenious fellow who invented those gaping, funnel-like tops. Each boot makes an admirable rain-gauge, when he sits on horseback with his knees bent, and the clouds send down a good pelting shower of rain. He never need complain of thirst when he is campaigning in the desert; for when his legs and stockings get once well saturated, and the interstices all filled up till they run over, be sure there is a good supply for some weeks to come. If I had been bootmaker to the army, I would have kept the rain

out of a soldier's boots, rather than devised so effectual a mode of conducting it into them.”

"Indeed," said Sir Ralph, "there are several reforms yet of which the army stands in need. At last they are going to introduce education-and high time, too, since it is notorious that many of our old general officers can do little more than write their own names. We have had queer grammar from the Iron Duke before now. It would be well, for the sake of morality, and the prevention of a host of crimes, if they would introduce marriage; for, as the case now stands, marriage is virtually forbidden in the army. Your Royal Highness and Lord Hill were called the friends of the army

"Who is that taking Lord Hill's name in vain?" cried a loud voice, from some remote region, no one knew where.

"Who are you?" demanded Sir Ralph Abercromby. "Me? Why, I am Lord Hill's statue, near Shrewsbury. What are you saying about me, I should just like to know?" "I was only telling the Duke of York's statue, that you were a friend to the army, and praising you up a little bit."

"Oh," was the satisfied rejoinder; "if that was all, pray go on, and welcome."

So the former went on.

"You both did much for the army," he continued; "and stood by it in many difficulties. Still, according to the old system of things, a vast amount of abuses existed, and, indeed, continue even to the present day. By the wholesale yearly brevets that took place, ignorant men bought themselves on, so that at the end of the war, there were nearly eight hundred general officers on the list-not one half of whom were worth their salt. You remember what people said about these sales, and how you were charged with recruiting your own financies." "It was Mrs. Clarke-it was all Mrs. Clarke. A word with you on that subject."

"Ay," continued the other, "there is always a Mrs. Clarke somewhere. The same things were found in the navy; and there are about seven hundred and thirty captains in command of only eighty ships. The pernicious system of rising in the profession by purchase, or by Court interest, holds out no inducement for young men to improve themselves. Parliament should take it up, and see if something cannot be done; for nothing can be effectually managed without Parliament. A child, with interest, before the down is upon his chin, can step over the gray-headed heroes of a hundred fights. And some of us, with this same interest, can rise high in the Church, too, even before we are weaned."

"Don't be impertinent: that is a hit at me," said the Duke. "I know I was made Bishop of Osnaburgh when I was six

months and eleven days old; and it is true I had not received much deep theological study at that age; but though a dignitary of the Church, my person was not sacred among princes, nevertheless. I remember my eldest brother George broke his fiddle-bow over my head one day, because I offended him when he was practising. When the king afterwards saw the bow, he inquired how it happened; to which the Prince of Wales replied-Sire, I broke it beating Osnaburgh.'"

"I have heard of that circumstance," observed Sir Ralph, "and I thought that the spike upon the top of your statue's head was intended to represent a part of the fiddle-bow still sticking there."

"Oh, nonsense!" was the rejoinder; "that is a lightning conductor. It is a villainous addition to a fine work of art.

Some

say it looks like the iron bar on the top of a flag-staff, on which a weathercock is intended to swing; and some others, who have more pious associations, think it resembles one ray of the cruciform glory, such as we see in the old paintings surrounding the heads of the saints. All this is complimentary. As for my granite column, it is plain, but massive. A curious optical delusion attends this column: it looks fat in the middle. I conclude that it is only an optical delusion, as no architect could produce such a monstrous fact, as the shaft of a column having a larger diameter in the middle than at the base. But just look at it from Regent-street, where this appearance is manifest to every eye. Just go and look at it."

"This fiddle-bow affair," observed Abercromby's marble -which, by-the-bye, is scarcely visible for dust" did not, at all events, beat the spirit out of your Royal Highness, as was evinced in your duel subsequently with Colonel Lennox."

"No, faith," was the answer; "it rather aroused what was dormant within me. That was a close shave, that meeting. He cut off one of my side curls; and one inch nearer would have sent York a long journey at a short notice. Then, indeed, I should never have gone to the Netherlands, 'to tickle the French with the long broad-sword,' as the ballad of the day expressed it; nor have married my German Princess, to consign her to Oatlands, there to establish a colony of dogs; nor have been attacked by Colonel Wardle; nor duped by the woman I confided in. I escaped a hard death by lead, and died comfortably at last in my crimson chair with the blue seat, at twenty minutes past nine o'clock of January 5th, 1827. My Posthumous Letter,' dated September 1st, 1826, contains a vindication of my conduct on various occasions, and my opinions on various momentous subjects."

"True," added the other speaker: "it touches upon the

charges which were brought against you in Parliament, but from which you were exonerated in the House of Commons, by 278 votes to 196, on the division; and it enters largely into the subject of Catholic Emancipation, or, as you preferred to call it, Catholic Consolidation '-to which you were conscientiously opposed. The Romish party in Ireland hated you for your sentiments; but you call blessings down upon that country, nevertheless; and you end with the words- May the dews of God's beneficent providence fall kindly upon my country of England, Ireland, and Scotland.' You even mention your solicitude about the profession to which you had devoted so much attention, care, and kindly interest, during the greater portion of your life. I wish, with your Royal Highness, that certain most desirable reforms could be effected in the army. As I said before, Parliament should take the subject up; but this is almost a hopeless wish, as fifteen of its members belong to the two services. The want of the rudiments of an ordinary English education, the gross ignorance of geography, tactics, fortification, mathematics, and languages, have been the source of infinite evils. Lord Hill very properly advocated military libraries"

"So I did," cried the statue near Shrewsbury.

"I know you did," said Abercromby. "In 1793, the army was miserably weak, ill regulated, and devoid of all order, union, and compactness. It was without men of talent, and without men of influence or rank to command it."

"This is why the command in Holland was given to me," observed the Duke.

"So it has been asserted," added the former speaker; "and grievous were the results of the campaigns in the Low Countries. The causes of these results were attributable to the then military system, or rather the want of all system. Your allies on the continent, the Prussians and Austrians, were military pedants, who acted on erroneous principles, and therefore did no good. As regarded yourself, you shared the ignorance of other commanders of the King's regiments. The command was given to your Royal Highness, in order to give dignity to that command; and you carried a great name, as the son of the King of England, over to Holland with you. But that name, without military science, was not sufficient to gain victories. The event proved it. The exploits of Vandernoot and Van der Mersch got rid of Austrian dominion-signally at the battle of Turnhout; and turn out it certainly was to these Austrians; for they ran out of the town before the Dutchmen, like sparks from under a blacksmith's hammer. Much good to the Bourbon cause, against the French republicans, was expected by your presence in the field. Though you prevailed at Valenciennes, you were defeated by those French scourges of Europe on the 4th of September, 1793,