LONDON, AND VOYAGE TO SINGAPORE 323 



although clever modellers of the human figure in any re- 

 quired attitude, had all been trained in the schools of classical 

 sculpture, and were unable to get away from this training. 

 The result was very curious, and often even ludicrous, a 

 brown Indian man or girl being given the attitudes and 

 expressions of an Apollo or a Hercules, a Venus or a 

 Minerva. In those days there were no photographs, and 

 the ethnologist had to trust to paintings or drawings, usually 

 exaggerated or taken from individuals of exceptional beauty 

 or ugliness. Under my suggestion alterations were made 

 both in the features and pose of one or two of the figures 

 just completed, so as to give them a little more of the Indian 

 character, and serve as a guide in modelling others, in which 

 the same type of physiognomy was to be preserved. I went 

 several times during the work on the groups of South Ameri- 

 can origin, but though when completed with the real orna- 

 ments, clothing, weapons, and domestic implements the groups 

 were fairly characteristic and life-like, yet there remained 

 occasionally details of attitude or expression which suggested 

 classic Greek or Italy rather than the South American savage. 

 These ethnological figures, although instructive to the 

 student, were never very popular, and soon became the 

 subject of contempt and ridicule. One reason of this was 

 their arrangement in the open, quite close to the passing 

 visitor, with nothing to isolate them from altogether incon- 

 gruous surroundings. Another was, that they were not care- 

 fully attended to, and when I saw them after my return 

 from the East, they had a shabby and dilapidated appear- 

 ance, and the figures themselves were more or less dusty, 

 which had a most ludicrous effect in what were intended to 

 represent living men and women, being so utterly unlike the 

 clear, glossy, living skins of all savage peoples. To be suc- 

 cessful and life-like, such groups should be each completely 

 isolated in a deep recess, with three sides representing houses 

 or huts, or the forest, or river-bank, while the open front 

 should be enclosed by a single sheet of plate-glass, and the 

 group should be seen at a distance of at least ten or fifteen 

 feet. In this way, with a carefully arranged illumination 



