nd
love of the humanities are rare. It has its mischief, too. The old
scholar's opinion on statue-making in general and on London's statues in
particular are expressed with a dry frankness that is refreshing. I make
no effort to resist quoting a little:

"It is in the nature of things that statues should be made.
They were made more than two thousand years ago, and I
believe the business has never stopped, for when people
could not get good statues, they were content with bad, as
we are now.

"If I might give advice to the men now living, who look
forward to the honour, if it is an honour, of being set up
in bronze in the highways, or in marble in Westminster Abbey
or St. Paul's; if I might advise, I would say, leave a
legacy in your will for your own statue. It will save much
trouble and people will think better of you when you are
gone, if you cost them nothing. As to their laughing at you
for looking after your own statue, be not afraid of that.

"It is very disagreeable nowadays to see a man standing for
ever on his legs in public, doing nothing but stand, and
seeming as if he were never going to do anything else.

"If a man shall try to persuade me that a statue should be
nothing more than the effigy of a man standing on a
pedestal, I shall never be convinced. I would rather see a
living man standing on an inverted cask, as I have seen a
slave when he was sold, not that the sale is a very pleasant
thing to see, but the man produced a much better effect than
many of our statues, for he expressed something and they
express nothing.

"As we cannot or at least ought not to make our statues
naked or blanket-dressed, and as body and legs are merely
given to a statue in order to support the head, for the legs
and body might be any legs and any body, would it not be
wise to be satisfied with the head only? This would be a
great saving, and though the sculptor would get less for a
head than for a head with body and legs to it, he would have
more heads to make. This is a hint, which I throw out by the
way, for the consideration of committees who sit on
statues, by which I mean men who sit together to talk about
a thing of which most of them know nothing.

"When the negroes of Africa have been brought to the same
state of civilization