THORWALDSEN

Bertel, the sculptor, was born in 1770, and as a boy helped his father to cut figureheads in the royal dockyard at Copenhagen. He went to Rome in 1797, and studied the work of Canova and Car stens, and in 1803 he was commi ioned by Sir Thomas Hope to execute a marble statue of Jason. His succe was immediate and permanent. He was most succe ful in subjects from Greek mythology. Three Estates of the Realm, as in France before the Revolution, are the Lords, the Clergy, and the Commons. The higher clergy entered the House of Lords, and so the lower clergy obtained the right to vote for members of the House of Commons. There is a theory that the two Houses are equal in authority, that the House of Lords, as a permanent and hereditary body, can check hasty or revolutionary impulses in the House of Commons and this was so practically before 1832, because the; Peers controlled the great majority of elections to the Lower House. But since 1832 it has been obvious that the latter is the governing House, and that the Lords are neither able to resist, nor justified in resisting, a majority of the Commons when that majority represents* majority of the nation. And it is precisely when the Commons are bent on making some great and sudden changes that the Lords have really least power.