. Discovery. Science. DISCOVERY 243 \ertue justly found them. His projects miscarried ; his one colossal oil painting " of a Triumph," found no purchaser; his very house in Park Lane, "the lane from Piccadilly to Tyburn," remained unfinished. He lost his money in a scheme for bringing coals to London bv sea ; he lost his estate in Kent by a law- suit ; he lost his reason; his model of the Trojan Horse, a sort of glorified drinking booth, in whose head twelve men could sit, was wrecked by a gale ; and his only consolation was the devotion of his familv, two sons and a daught
. Discovery. Science. DISCOVERY 243 \ertue justly found them. His projects miscarried ; his one colossal oil painting " of a Triumph," found no purchaser; his very house in Park Lane, "the lane from Piccadilly to Tyburn," remained unfinished. He lost his money in a scheme for bringing coals to London bv sea ; he lost his estate in Kent by a law- suit ; he lost his reason; his model of the Trojan Horse, a sort of glorified drinking booth, in whose head twelve men could sit, was wrecked by a gale ; and his only consolation was the devotion of his familv, two sons and a daughter, who lived on in the desolate half-finished house and told \'ertue, who had a long interview with them in 1725, and saw with pitv the ruined relics of poor Bushnell's ambitions, that the world was not worthy of their father. Some idea of the peculiarities of Bushnell's style mav be gathered from the Charles L and H. which the writer identified last year in niches on the first landing of the Old Bailey, which, with Gibbons' Charles H. in the Royal Exchange, are now the sole survivors of that lost Pantheon of the English Kings, the Royal Exchange of 1667. The Berninesque draperies, the intense unresting vigour of the lines, make them unique among English sculpture, though, like the statues on Temple Bar, they are marred by a certain amateurishness which is even more con- spicuous in other works, and is whollv lacking only in the splendid figure of Viscount Mordaimt at All Saints', Fulham, his undoubted masterpiece. If Pierce, on the strength of his portrait busts, may be called the English Bernini, Bushnell is no less unquestionably the most Berninesque of our decora- tive artists. The proud swell and volume of his draperies, the vitalitv and poise of his figures, are unique in English statues; the Charles L would not be out of place on the Bridge of St. .-^ngelo, nor the Mordaunt, a work finer because intended to be seen at closer quarters, in St. Peter's. Grinling Gibbons (1
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