If a person
is ugly he does not sit as a model for his own statue, although it bears
his name. He gets the handsomest of his friends to sit for him, and one
of the ways of paying a compliment to another is to ask him to sit for
such a statue. Women generally sit for their own statues, from a natural
disinclination to admit the superior beauty of a friend, but they expect
to be idealised. I understood that the multitude of these statues was
beginning to be felt as an encumbrance in almost every family, and that
the custom would probably before long fall into desuetude.
Indeed, this has already come about to the satisfaction of every one, as
regards the statues of public men--not more than three of which can be
found in the whole capital. I expressed my surprise at this, and was
told that some five hundred years before my visit, the city had been so
overrun with these pests, that there was no getting about, and people
were worried beyond endurance by having their attention called at every
touch and turn to something, which, when they had attended to it, they
found not to concern them. Most of these statues were mere attempts to
do for some man or woman what an animal-stuffer does more successfully
for a dog, or bird, or pike.
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