Those Young French Faces Those young French faces, so intact physically-new and unblemished, gay and fresh and good-are most of all delightful by reason of the contrast their activity affords with the far deeper fascination of their times of passiveness and of quiescence—the times in which there moves on them no longer the slight life of the moment: the spell instead is their suggestion of so many Pasts-the Pasts of all their Race; careers and passions finished, and hopes dead-so that in their 'eyes of youth,' seemingly saddened, and in their expressive, flexible lips, there speaks the Romance of twenty generations of civilisation and of charm-of subtlety, of suffering, of disillusion, of a resigned tenderness. Those young French faces ! Hermance: Le Lautaret Nothing sad, however, about Hermance; nothing grave even, except that she is sensible-her head 'screwed on her shoulders '-but certainly no burden of inherited responsibility; only so much of youth and spirit and impeccable beauty-in a new world, it seems, a new creature. And what is Hermance physically? To talk about her form and colour, her tallness, elasticity, her eyes, her shining, sparkling, energetic hair, would be still in great measure to rest on the outside of things; no one of these being the essential part of her, though they all count in her effect. Her voice, pitched pleasantly, and used so well, so ready and decisive in her perfect speech of France-to name that, to insist upon its cadences, the tone's expression of the flexible soul, may be to bring you nearer to her. Instantly merry, instantly indignant. Un mot vif for the thing of which she disapproves; and then it is all over. Instantly forgiving. Caractère gai-she knows it, and she says so. And such a temperament of hopefulness and brilliant courage will be a strong defence against assaults of Time-against the troubles of all days. Those who feel her personality are raised, when she is present, to a level not their own. To the dispirited some gladness and endurance then seems possible in contact with a being who has so much of them. She is a tonic to the santé morale. Affectionate, Hermance inspires affection; and volatile, she scatters pleasure. Yet shall I still be understood a little if I add this?— that her effect on you seems less the effect of a delightful girlhood than of a beneficent physical force. You think of Hermance, with her twenty years-well, as a woman certainly-but above all things as of some widespread natural power-as of a flash of morning light: as of the freshness of the travelling wind. Good-bye, Dauphiné ! Descending to Bourg d'Oisans yesterday-to the great valley with the poplars-from the mountains by La Grave, I felt, while tasting the suave beauty of the newer landscape, a keener thirst for the hills. Upon the summits-amidst the bareness of Le Lautaret, in that exalted silence I had longed for Briançon and its encircling chain, and just a touch of the Provence which is Romance to me-for it is nothing but Provence which lies below this last strong-place' in the mountains-and I had descended to Bourg d'Oisans, within reach of the railways and Paris. But, once within sight of our more ordinary world, there came to me a yearning for one Good-bye to the mountains. I felt a call, a very summons, to the heights. And so I said to my chauffeur, this morning, that the auto must turn, and must retrace the road that it had followed yesterday that great route nationale whose state and engineering assure me I am nowhere but in France. And so to-day, in five hours' steady journeying, I have mounted the slopes and been again to the summits, and seen the greyness, and seen the vegetation-the black-green of the pines, the foliage of the larch, the sunny and gold-green meadows, the incomparable grace of the poplar on the lowlands, the hillsides now rich and radiant -a turn, and they are suddenly austere. And at Le Lautaret itself, I have beheld the bare, grey crags and scanty, precipitous pasturage, and have looked along the downward slopes towards lower mountains, behind which lurks Briançon and its promise of the South. Thus have I had, of all Dauphiné, as it were, one last vision. And to Dauphiné a Good-bye. Again some day?' 'Again next year? ' one asks one's self. What does the Future hold? Again never? FREDERICK WEDMORE. THE ROYAL OPEN-AIR STATUES THE progress which is being made with the great memorial to Queen Victoria, opposite Buckingham Palace, will probably cause not a few people to turn their attention to the royal statues that are dotted about London, in more or less conspicuous places; it may also, it is to be hoped, cause those responsible for the decoration of the metropolis to consider the advisability of filling up the numerous lacunae that exist; for some of the most notable of those who have ruled over this country are still lacking what of immortality a statue can give. As a matter of fact the Sovereigns of England would appear to have had something less than justice done them in this respect, at least in the capital of the Empire; for either are they without such memorials at all, or they have received statuary fame in a sadly belated manner; while in most cases the statues that have been erected have been placed in such isolated positions that many of them are but little known even to those who are no strangers to the complexity of London. Indeed not a few people would find it difficult to satisfactorily answer a carefully formulated examination paper on the subject, or even to reply intelligently to the casual inquiry of a stranger to the metropolis. Where, for instance, does William the Third bestride his ambling charger? How many statues are there of Queen Anne, and where do they stand? Where are we to look for Richard the First, and Charles the Second, and George the First? Even those who have some hazy notions as to the positions occupied by the statues of these sovereigns would be hard put to it to name the date of their erection or the sculptors who executed them. And this is the more to be deplored inasmuch as a representative and complete series of royal statues would help to form a vivid commentary on the history of the country, and would present to us in plastic form the embodiments of what are often otherwise but dim and shadowy personalities. From Charles the First to Victoria, the series of statues of British monarchs is a fairly complete one; but before Stuart times only four sovereigns are represented: Richard the First, by Baron Marochetti's equestrian figure in front of the House of Lords; Henry the Eighth at the main entrance to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, erected in 1702; Edward the Sixth in the first court of St. Thomas's Hospital, the work of Scheemakers, and originally set up by Charles Joyce in 1737 in an earlier building of the hospital; and Queen Elizabeth over the side entrance of St. Dunstan's in the West, a statue which originally graced the west front of the old Ludgate, and one of the few relics which survived the Great Fire of London. When Temple Bar was still an interesting though cumbersome memorial of past times, four more sovereigns stood in effigy upon it, notably James the First, Anne of Denmark, Charles the First, and Charles the Second, the work of an indifferent sculptor named Bushnell who, not inappropriately, died mad in 1701. The selection of Stuarts to decorate Temple Bar was due to the fact that they were placed there during the reign of Charles the Second in 1670; but notwithstanding this, the statue of Anne of Denmark was for long popularly supposed to represent the great Elizabeth; and on the anniversary of that Queen's accession a wreath of gilded laurel and a golden shield with the motto 'The Protestant Religion and Magna Charta' were affixed to the figure; while Roger North states that the Pope in effigy was solemnly burned beneath it, what time the assembled crowd was accustomed to shout lustily: Your popish plot and Smithfield threat We do not fear at all, For lo! beneath Queen Bess's feet You fall, you fall, you fall! O Queen Bess! Queen Bess! Queen Bess! although it was really the somewhat colourless consort of James the First who was standing proxy for the fair Virgin throned in the West! One other great name must be mentioned as amongst the rulers of this country prior to the Stuarts who have received statuary immortality--that of Boadicea; and the fearless wife of Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, still seems to defy the Roman legions, in Thornycroft's group which was placed in its present position, at the corner of Westminster Bridge, in 1898. Probably the most beautiful statue in London is that of Charles the First, at Whitehall, the first equestrian statue ever erected in London; in any case the sad fate of the monarch, the hold he still exerts over the minds of the people, the interesting history attached to the work, and the legend surrounding the fate of its sculptor, all combine in endowing it with an interest which is absent from any other statue in London, perhaps in the world. As most people know, it There was formerly another statue of Edward the Sixth over the entrance to Christ's Hospital in Newgate Street, now demolished. was the work of Hubert le Sueur, a pupil of John of Bologna, and was executed in 1633, at the charge of Lord Treasurer Weston, and not, as has frequently been stated, of Lord Arundel. Lord Weston intended the statue for his gardens at Roehampton, and the agreement between him and the sculptor provided for the casting of a horse in brasse, bigger than a great horse by a foot; and the figure of His May King Charles proportionable, full six foot.' It was also arranged that Le Sueur should discuss the matter with His Majesty's riders of great horses,' which is interesting as proving that no pains were spared to make the work complete and accurate. The sum agreed upon was 600l., ' for the full finishing the same in copper, and setting it in the place where it is to stand,' and the time given for its completion was eighteen months. There is a traditionary story to the effect that when completed, Le Sueur challenged anyone to find fault with the work, and that upon someone pointing out that the saddle-girth had been forgotten, the sculptor in a fit of mortification committed suicide. Unfortunately for the anecdote, the saddle-girth, although not very noticeable, can still be distinguished! The statue was not yet erected at the commencement of the Civil War, and it was therefore sold by Parliament to one John Rivett or Rivet, a brazier living at The Dial, near Holborn Conduit, according to Walpole, with strict injunctions that it should be broken up; and, inasmuch as fragments of brass were sold by Rivett to devoted royalists, as mementoes of the Royal Martyr, the contract appeared to have been duly carried out; when lo! at the Restoration, the statue was produced safe and sound from the cellar where the wily brazier had carefully hidden it. Kennett, in his Register for 1660, mentions the finding of the statue, and the application of the Earl of Portland (the son of Lord Treasurer Weston) to the House of Lords for its restitution to himself. This was granted; but whether Rivett proved recalcitrant, or was able to satisfy the Lords of his legal right to the statue by purchase, does not appear; in any case, it is probable that he made a good fight for it, as it was not till 1674 that the figure was finally placed in its present position, the site being selected as that on which Queen Eleanor's Cross originally stood, and where, later, Harrison and certain other regicides were executed. The beautiful pedestal on which the horse stands was the work of Joshua Marshall, Master Mason to the Crown, who was also responsible for some of the decorations to Temple Bar, and not, as Walpole states and as is generally supposed, of Grinling Gibbons. Sir Christopher Wren made two drawings for the base, which were, however, not used, although one was very similar to Marshall's design; but Sir Christopher superintended the erection of the statue to which on each succeeding 30th of January 'people pay that reverence as |