Great Britain and Ireland{Albert Edward, Prince of Wales.
Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh.
Prussia Frederick William, Crown Prince of Prussia.
Hesse Louis, Prince of Hesse.
Saxony Albert, Prince Royal of Saxony.
France Prince Napoleon (Jerome).
Belgium Philippe, Comte de Flandre.
Russia The Czarowitz.
" Nicolas, Duc de Leuchtenberg.
Sweden and Norway Oscar, Prince of Sweden and Norway.
Italy Humbert, Prince Royal of Italy.
" Amadeus, Duke of Aosta.
Austria{Charles Louis, Archduke of Austria.
Rainer, Archduke of Austria.
Denmark Frederick, Crown Prince of Denmark.
Paris, 1867.

ELKINGTON’S MARK. FRANCHI AND SON’S MARK.

Cincinnati is already sharing these reproductions; and the signers of the above document would gladly have the Governors of the American States which possess museums add to it their names, and transatlantic museums avail themselves of its advantages. These advantages are very great, as, after one cast has been made, the cost of the rest amounts to little more than that of material and transportation. This kind of work is now done in such perfection that it were easy for an untrained eye to doubt which is original and which reproduction. The firms officially connected with the Science and Art Department always use marks which have a money value in Europe. For three or four pounds any museum or private collector may obtain perfect copies of ancient shields, salt-cellars, tankards, tazzas, fire-dogs, knockers, whether chased or repoussé. Old specimens of this kind are rare and costly. A beautiful pair of bronze fire-dogs —pedestals surrounded by Cupids, and supporting respectively Venus and Adonis—made in Venice about 1570, are rather costly, the work being intricate and the figures four feet high; but Franchi’s copper-bronze copies at £30 are nearly as good as the originals, which were considered cheap at the £300 paid by the museum. A wonderful old Italian bronze knocker (1560), fourteen and a half inches in height and thirteen inches wide, which cost £80, is reproduced by the same firm for £4.

It is, however, the large casts of Oriental objects and ancient German shrines that will probably be of paramount interest to an American. It is here shown that the most notable and interesting objects in the world can be copied with the utmost exactness, and in their actual size, and brought within reach of the people of any country. Even Trajan’s Column is here; and, though in this case it has had to be set up in two columns instead of one, many others have confirmed my experience of the impossibility in tracing out at Rome the figures which cover it so satisfactorily as they can be made out at South Kensington.

The 17th of May, 1880, is an historic day in the annals of the museum. On that day was thrown open to the public its Indian section. A small collection of Indian curiosities has long been wandering from one place to another in London, and had finally been shelved at the very top of the India Office. So, at any rate, it was stated, and most persons were willing to accept the statement on faith by the time they reached the third story of that edifice. However, the collection steadily increased up there, and it was at length removed to some rooms at South Kensington. But there it attracted little attention from the public, though much from scholars, and it was publicly announced that it would be closed because it did not pay expenses. The authorities ultimately followed better counsels: they gave it up to the Direction of the South Kensington Museum. The Queen loaned it the magnificent collection of Oriental armor from Windsor Castle; Indian treasures hitherto dispersed through the other courts of the museum were gathered together in the new section; Dr. Leitner’s collection of Græco-Buddhist sculptures was added; the walls adorned with Carpenter’s water-colors illustrative of Indian scenery and life; and lo! London awaked one morning to find that it had a new and splendid institution, which the Queen and her family had visited the day before with “the greatest satisfaction.”

It is indeed a noble section; and if any one has read about India, is at all interested in its pantheon, its mythology, or its relation to the evolution of humanity, he may pass many fruitful days or even weeks in these wonderful rooms. There is no university in the world where one can learn so much about India, especially if he should study these objects in connection with Fergusson’s History of Indian and Eastern Architecture. Immediately on entering, one passes those strange remains brought by Dr. Leitner from Peshawar, which exhibit the influence of Greek art upon India at the time when Buddhism was there in its zenith of power. Next we pass beneath the model of the great Sanchi Tope Gate. The Buddhist Tope is a sort of mound or barrow, only built of earth and stone with great care; it is shaped like a regular dome, surrounded by a double railing, and is reached through four large gates of the finest and most elaborate carvings. This hill-like dome, wherever found, appears to have no other use than to contain some tiny relic—one of Buddha’s hairs, say, or his toe-nail. In the Mahawanso, the Buddhist history of Ceylon, it is said: “The chief of the Devos, Sumano, supplicated of the deity worthy of offerings for an offering. The Vanquisher, passing his hand over his head, bestowed on him a handful of his pure blue locks from the growing hair of his head. Receiving and depositing it in a superb golden casket, on the spot where the divine teacher had stood, he enshrined the lock in an emerald dagoba, and bowed down in worship.” The thorax-bone of Buddha is a great relic; but most sacred of all is his left canine tooth, whose shrine probably originated the famous Car of Juggernaut. Among the treasures in this section is a drum-shaped reliquary of pure gold; it is about three inches high by two in diameter, and panelled with saints in relief. It was found in one of these huge topes; inside it were wrappings within wrappings, and last of all some hardly distinguishable speck representing an unknown saint.

The model of the great gate is probably the largest achievement of the copying art ever known. In 1869 the party set out with twenty-eight tons of materials, chiefly plaster-of-Paris; these were drawn by bullocks one hundred and eighty miles; and in a year’s time three full-sized casts of the magnificent structure were completed without a flaw—which is marvellous, considering the extremely fine and complicated character of the carvings. This structure, erected in the first century of our era, is thirty-three feet in height. There are two high pillars—every inch of whose surfaces is covered with symbolical carvings—supporting capitals made of elephant-heads—the elephant being the animal in whose shape Buddha descended for his incarnation. Above the elephants three cross-beams are stretched, upholding pinnacles bearing the phallic Trisul, the Wheel, the Lion. There are winged lions that remind us of Assyrian influence; there are sieges and wars (no doubt about the relics); scenes relating to the princely and amorous years of Siddharta, but nothing of his asceticism or his lowliness; everywhere symbolical forms, especially the serpent, which is always intertwined with the emblems of early Buddhism, indicating that his first converts were the serpent-worshippers called Nagas. The intricacy and fineness of all this work, constituting, as Fergusson has said, the “picture Bible of Buddhism,” are indescribable.

Throughout this Indian section there are large photographs of the temples and palaces representing the eras of Indian architecture—Buddhist, Dravidian, Jain, Moslem—and near many of them actual specimens or casts of their ornamentation. Some of these specimens of sculptured ornamentation fill one with amazement at the degree of art-culture they imply, and by their refined beauty. Here the capital of a pillar is fringed round with small elephant-heads; there a pedestal is adorned with mounted horsemen in relief, so regularly dispersed that at first they might hardly be noticed. There are some architraves from Rajpootna, of the eleventh century, made up of gods, goddesses, and symbolic forms, the tracery of which is so refined and the execution so delicate that it would be impossible to find any European work of like antiquity to equal it. These arts are still kept up. There are some screens from Mirzapore and from Agra, made of perforated sandstone or marble, which are meant for ventilation and also to admit a little light: they are so delicate, and the figures so fine-edged, as to induce one to touch them and make sure they are not made of paper or wax.