CAPTAIN COOK’S STATUE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5439, 2 September 1878, Page 3

CAPTAIN COOK’S STATUE.

(Prom the London Daily Telegraph.) Sydney, the fair capital of Now South Wales, has done honor to herself by deciding to erect a lasting memorial to the illustrious circumnavigator whose name is imperishably associated with our Australian Empire; and equal discrimination has been shown by the committee appointed to carry out the enterprise by commissioning Mr. Thomas Woolner, E.A., to execute the colossal statue in bronze which has just been temporarily placed in the largo open apace between the United Service and the Athemoum Clubs in order that the metropolis may have an opportunity of appreciating a magificent work of art prior to its removal to the Antipodes. Tho foremost sculptor of our age—now that Gibson and Poley arc gone ■ — tho earnest, thoughtful, refined yet sternly puissant artist to whom we owe tho Oxford statue of Bacon, tho Cambridge statue of Macaulay, the Bombay statue of David Sassoon, and tho noble busts of Tennyson, Carlyle, Darwyn, and ■ Gladstone, has added another leaf to his laurels in his statue ot James Cook. The great mariner ot whom Nelson was wont to say that he would gladly have served under him as a cabin boy, has been wisely represented by tho sculptor in his habit as he lived, that of a British naval officer in the eighteenth century. To have draped his form in classic robes would have been simply absurd. The immortal discoverer must to the end of the chapter bo “ Captain” Cook, neither more nor loss; and'thus Mr. Woolner has extenuated nothing of tho squarely-out uniform coat, with its broad tails, the .lappels barred with gold lace, tho long-flapped waistcoat, the kneebreeches, and the buckled shoes. Foley’s admirable statues of Burke and Goldsmith, in front of Trinity College, Dublin, sufficiently prove that oighteenth-oentury costume, when tastefully and judiciously rendered in sculpture, are not necessarily hideous ; it ia only the unpicturssque coat, trousers, and hat of

the Victorian en that are tho j>a«l the despair of-the sculptor. Wyatt has' made the cooked hat and pigtail of George 111. iu Cockspur-streot not only tolerable, but sightly; and Mr. Wnolner, had ho the opportunity, would doubtless do grateful justice to the buckskins and top-boots of a patriotic Englishman who most assuredly merits a statue —Sir Francis Burdett; but is there a single plastic effigy of Sir Robert Peel in the frock-coat and pantaloons of the year 1850 that can be looked upon without horror? Tho attitude of the figure now open to public criticism in' Waterloo-piaoe Is strikingly vigorous. The right hand la raised high in air, as though in joy and triumph at the site of that land which the deep studies of the explorer had convinced him must bo nigh, and for which he had been anxiously watching since the first poep of day. So Christoford Colon may have uplifted his hand when the look-out man uttered bis exulting shout of “ Tierra! Tierra ! It was a subtle thought of tho sculptor to place the telescope in Cook’s left hand. The land is before him wide spread out, and the optic glass is no longer needed. Thoroughly has Mr. Woolner interpreted the lines of the navigator’s grand face the massive head with its deeply indented temporal bones, the penthouse brows, the broad, strong, investigating nose, the squarely moulded jaws, the firmly cut lips, the spacious chin. He had a face, his constant friend and illustrious fellow-traveller, Sir Joscpli Eauks, used to say, eminently of the “ knowning ” or what the Scotch call the “kenning” kind ; and it was, indeed, quite as much by the immense sum of knowledge which, under the most adverse circumstances, tie had been aide to acquire, ashy his dauntless courage and invincible energy and perseverance, that James Conk earned for himself not only in our naval bnt in our scientific annals a place to which Raleigh nobly though unsuccessfully aspired, and which Bacon—the great contender that tlie grand result of learning was “ fruit ” would have been proud to possess, ■