"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!