"Ah-Chin, my dear fellow, your enthusiasm is admirable; but we need more than the serene, the cheerful, and the generous!" As he said this he smiled at my look of bewilderment—for I was puzzled. Since then I have understood better. Art among the Barbarians must be suited to the restless eagerness of their nature, which demands excitement. And the passions which ought to be severely repressed, Art, in a hundred ways, finds itself best rewarded to covertly gratify. Thus, all the strong emotions are most coveted, either as shown on the canvas or in the marble. Male figures, nude, writhing, wrestling, and in attitudes of force, or expressing hate, or pain, or fierce contention, or, if in repose, lapsing into the languor of desire. Female figures, for the most part, so managed as to stimulate those feelings, or to suggest those incidents which a wise man likes to ignore; or in such methods as to suggest emotions of shame, of terror, of suffering, or of crime—often debasing or evil in tendency, and rarely to any good purpose. Pictures of bloody fights, of burning cities, of great ships sinking, or blowing up with all on board; of wretches tearing or cutting at each other, or struggling in blood and fury amid the waves. Statues distorted by agony, or paralysed by terror—in such, Barbarian Art greatly delights. In this, as in the sculpture of the Temples, showing, in another form, its fierceness and love of strong excitement.
In the cities, there are occasionally statues to men who have been famous; and, in some of the great Temples, Sculptures of High-Castes are sometimes set up. They are, as a rule, strange exhibitions. Many of the great pieces consist of a crowd of figures in marble—an astonishing jumble. There are figures blowing great horns; other impossible ones representing huge human birds hovering about; chiefly, however, naked women, with wings awkwardly fastened behind the shoulders, transporting the dead; and others (again females) with rings of leaves held in their hands over the head of the dead or dying man! All this is done, or attempted to be done, in marble; and involved in it will be a great ship burning, or great guns being fired, and men and women being killed by hundreds; or other dreadful scenes wherein the great man took fearful part! Memorials or huge paintings, in honour of persons famous in fight and plunder, are thus exhibited in the Temples and public Halls. They are, in general, very astonishing!
In the street corners are sometimes placed, on pedestals of huge stone, carved effigies of a King, or of a Queen, or of some High-Caste man. Of some Brave, who has cut off more heads than usual, or who has seized more plunder, or carried fire and sword over the lands of distant tribes. He is sometimes on horse-back; sometimes naked, with shield and sword, and very terrible; sometimes so far aloft, on top of a high stone column, that nothing can be descried but a cocked hat and a pigmy figure under it. Rarely there may be a statue to some High-Caste, who has been distinguished for wringing more taxes from the common people, and, by this means, keeping large armed bands at work abroad—to the glory of the English name! more rarely a statue to the memory of any one renowned for a life useful to mankind.
As works of Art, these things are not to be criticised. They are works of money—that is, paid for by weight; merely meant to compliment a party or faction in the State, and not to honour, particularly, the subject of the Work, or to give a noble expression of human genius or skill. No purpose, perhaps, in the sordid workman other than to pocket the large sum for the big show! Nothing wherein a grand imagination, inspired by a fine enthusiasm and full of a noble conception, glows and breathes in the stone, and makes it imperishable!
Whether an unconscious disgust leave these public statues and monuments alone in their ugliness, I know not; but they are totally neglected, begrimed, covered with filth—often made the roosting-places of the unwashed street Arabs (beggar boys) and loafers [na-sthi]. Even the statues of living Sovereigns are so totally forgotten and deserted, that the nose of Majesty may be a small pyramid of dirt, and the ermine robes more defiled and foul than the rags of the street mendicant!
The Western Barbarians are very fond of Science [kno-tu-ze]—(this is the nearest word in our language, though quite defective)—and consider themselves in this to be far superior to the ancients and to all the peoples beyond the great Seas. I have never been able to comprehend, nor do I think the Barbarians themselves comprehend very accurately, the meaning of the word.
They will say of a man who is almost a fool, "Ah! but he is very scientific." Of another, constantly blundering, and who has been famous for prodigies of mistake, "His science is astonishing." A builder of a great ship, or of a great bridge, sees his ship upset or his bridge fall down; none the less, he demonstrates to his admiring countrymen that, upon scientific principles, the ship should have stood upright and the bridge been as stable as rock!
A doctor kills his patient [vi-zton] scientifically; a dentist cracks the jaw in extracting a tooth; a surgeon breaks the leg which he cannot set: Science is satisfied—"all was scientifically done!" A man spends his life in looking at the stars; he is a man of wonderful science. Another keeps a List of fair and rainy days during twelve moons; his scientific attainments are respected and his observations recorded, as if the fate of the harvests were involved.
You will hear of a man of marvellous science, before whom ordinary scientific men stand uncovered in silence; he has discovered a new kind of tadpole, and added another to the already interminable terms of natural Science.
I have heard one of these learned professors [pho-phe-sti] say wisely, "He is a benefactor of the race who makes two blades of grass to grow where one grew before;" "but," he added, "he is a greater who teaches mankind how to do this." In this way, wishing to show that an idiot might chance to find a way to double his growth of grass, but would be incapable of discovering the cause; so that, probably, the accident would die with the finder. A wise man would, at once, look for the reason, and finding that, be able to secure the benefit for all time. This knowledge of cause is the kind called Science.