There is an excellent precedent in Vitruvius, II. 8. 15, for dealing with a War Memorial. Artemisia captured the city of Rhodes about 350 B.C. and put up a War Memorial there, comprising two bronze figures: one, a portrait of herself, in the act of scourging the other, a personification of the city. After the Rhodians had driven her out, they wanted to remove this War Memorial; but they had scruples, as it had been consecrated. So they decided that the site was holy ground on which no foot might tread, and therefore built a wall round it; and they made the wall so high that nobody could see the War Memorial.
In such figures as Rhodes, personified, the ancients had a great advantage over us, as they were all accustomed to these personifications. We have only John Bull for England, and Britannia for the British Isles. There is nothing Britannic about Britannia: she is merely Athenê holding Poseidon’s trident instead of her own spear. John Bull is out of date: one cannot imagine that worthy person using any weapon but his fists; and there would be very little dignity in a pugilistic group of John Bull knocking out the German Michael. Some sculptor should create a type that really would personify England.
Though personification appears to be a lost art now, it may (I think) come into vogue again. Sooner or later, landscapes will be photographed in colours with such perfection that no artist could do more. Then the artist will either turn photographer and go out with a camera and wait for days or weeks till he can catch the right effect, just as photographers wait now for untamed birds and beasts in pictures of wild life; or else the artist will go back to the old Greek plan, personifying clouds and hills and streams and all the other features of the landscape--not (I hope) just copying the ancient type of river-gods and nymphs and fauns, but creating new types of his own. I should much like to see the river Wrey personified: a lithe figure dancing merrily but with great reserve of strength.
Wreyland would be quite unlike the river Wrey, if they were both personified in human shape: it would be more like Autumn, as portrayed by Keats, “sitting careless on a granary floor, ... or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep, ... or by a cider-press.” The ‘half-reaped furrow’ would be a fitting symbol of the projects that are undertaken here with so much zeal and then abandoned incomplete. And the figure would embody all the lethargy and drowsiness that come of this relaxing air.