purposely added to it a large number of the works of English painters in order to encourage art, and that with the same object he had advocated the adornment of the interior of St. Paul's with appropriate sculptures by modern artists.[1] Of the disfigurement of Westminster Abbey by monuments, Lord Lansdowne had a very keen appreciation, but he appears to have hoped for better things. He fortunately did not live to see the figure of Mr. Perceval blocking up one of the finest windows, or that of William Pitt with his two legs straddling apart, in order to enable the economic Nollekens to hew the marble for the head, from between the legs of the statue.
Of the art collections made by Lord Lansdowne, the gallery of ancient statuary at Lansdowne House now alone remains. Gavin Hamilton, the painter and antiquary, had commenced excavations in the neighbourhood of Rome, as a speculation. The violence of barbarian invaders, and in a still greater degree the bigotry of Christian iconoclasts, had caused the overthrow and partial destruction of the statues which, themselves the spoils of Egypt and of Greece, it had been the pride of the conquerors of the world to make the adornment of their temples and public places. Gavin Hamilton set to work assiduously to recover whatever had escaped the combined ravages of time and religious fury. His first researches were made in 1769 upon the site of Hadrian's Tiburtine villa, now called the Pantanello, where some excavations had already been made by Signer Lolli for the benefit of Cardinal Polignac and the King of Prussia. "They began at a passage to an old drain cut in the tufa, where they found an exit to the water of Pantanello, after having worked some weeks by lamplight and up to the knees in stinking mud, full of toads, serpents, and other vermin."[2] Undeterred by these difficulties, and assisted by the knowledge
- ↑ Pettigrew's Life of Lettsom, ii. 228. A letter on sepulchral decorations by Lord Lansdowne to the Committee appointed for the erection of a monument to the memory of John Howard is to be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1791 (pt. i. 395-396), and is printed in the Appendix.
- ↑ Dallaway's Anecdotes, 365.
