And saw at dawn the lofty bawn
Of Castle-Connor fade."
O'Connor's Child.
ROBERT SNOW.
Chantrey's Sleeping Children (Vol. ii., p. 70.)—Your correspondent PLECTRUM is anxious to know on what grounds I attribute to Stothard any part of the design of the monument in Lichfield Cathedral known as Chantrey's "Sleeping Children?" I will endeavour to satisfy him.
The design, suggested, as it were, by the very nature of the commission, was communicated by Chantrey to Stothard with a request that he would make for him two or three sketches of sleeping children, at his usual price. What Stothard did, I have heard my father say, was very like the monument as it now stands. The sketch from which Chantrey wrought was given to me by my father a few months before his death, and is now suspended on the wall of the room in which I write.
It is a pencil-sketch, shaded with Indian ink, and is very Stothard-like and beautiful. It wants, however, a certain sculptural grace, which Chantrey gave with a master feeling; and it wants the snow-drops in the hand of the younger sister,—a touch of poetic beauty suggested by my father.
The carver of the group (the person who copied it in marble) was the late Mr. F.A. Legé, to whom the merit of the whole monument has been foolishly ascribed.
I should be sorry to impress the world with the belief that I mean in any way to detract from the merit of Chantrey in making this statement. I have divulged no secret. I have only endeavoured to explain what till now has been too often misunderstood.
PETER CUNNINGHAM.