3-065-777 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Monument to the 42nd Highlanders in Dunkeld Cathedral, [Scotland], 1874. 'This monument, publicly unveiled by the Dowager Duchess of Athole, was provided by the officers of the regiment, as a memorial of their comrades killed in battle...[It] consists of a mural tablet...of the finest Carrara marble. The sculptor is Mr. John Steell...The subject is taken from "The Black Mousquetaire," in the "Ingoldsby Legends"...The principal figure is the officer who has visited the scene of carnage. With cap in hand, he stoops over the bodies of his comrades, mourning their sad fate...among the general wreck and ruin, the officer comes upon a young ensign of the same regiment who has been killed, and whose body is lying over a gabion, with his head downwards. The brave youth still grasps with his right hand the colours which he had so gallantly borne, and with which, even in death, he refused to part. The face bears a calm and heroic expression - the figure, as a whole, presenting the very embodiment of true and devoted courage...In one part of the tablet is represented a fallen Russian, who is distinguished by his helmet, which is lying beside him, and by his cartouche-box with the double eagle engraved upon it'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.