§ ADMIRAL WALCOTTsaid, he rose once more to call the attention of the House to the incomplete state of the Nelson Monument in Trafalgar Square, the answer which he had received last year to a similar complaint was, he believed, no more satisfactory to hon. Members than himself, He was sure in the mind of that great man the predominant feature was the strongest of all human desires, the yearning for immortality, and not the vulgar thirst for fame and celebrity, but the aspiration of a noble nature for memory and continuance in the minds of his countrymen after death. Monuments of granite, the material least subject to decay, and capable of perpetual renovation, most fully became such a man exempt from the wrongs of time; for statues and pillars were scarcely to be considered copies or images of the departed, because they were ever germinating and sowing seeds in the minds of others, provoking and reproducing similar actions, emulation and imitations in their successors, like a ship passing through the vast seas of time, and making distant generations partake of the greatness, the excellences, and heroism of the dead. Like the Roman of old, Augustus Cæ sar, who would upon his entrance on public life stretch forth his hand to the statue of Cæ sar in prayer, "so may I obtain the honours of my illustrious ancestor." He, therefore, earnestly entreated the completion of this monument to show that not only did we reverence the memory of Nelson, but that we had set it up to encourage activity, to quicken zeal, to kindle and enforce hope, and to show that success and honours to those who imitated him were certain. Conscious that he was speaking the sentiments of hon. Members and of the country at large, he would once more urge upon the Government how desirable it was 510 to complete the Nelson Monument on account of the respect we owed to his memory, and a just appreciation of our country upon the part of strangers who visited the Metropolis, and for the sake of that profession of which he was in death as in life the brightest ornament.
MR. COWPERsaid, he felt bound to acknowledge there had been considerable delay in the completion of the monument; but it should be borne in mind that worse things than delay were to be apprehended in the case of statues placed in Trafalgar Square. The Government had, he might add, done all they could in the matter by entrusting the composition of the lions by which the monument was to be adorned into the hands of so eminent an artist as Sir Edwin Landseer, who was, he believed, at present carefully occupied in modelling those animals—a work in which be would, no doubt, be stimulated to increased exertion by the eloquent language of the hon. and gallant Member who so well represented the British lion in that House.