Page:Meda - a tale of the future.djvu/78

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74
MEDA:

which I was conversant. I examined many of these works, but found them not the least like the originals that I had seen. The ideas that these people had of the true proportions of the human frame of those they called the ancients, was to me almost grotesque. They apparently could not realize the fact that the heads of their figures were at least twice the size they should be; and they apparently failed to see that the enormous chests that they gave their figures did not exist in the days of the ancients, nor did they realize the fact, that the ancients had stomachs of a reasonable size. Only think of a large-headed, big-chested Venus having her ancles garnished with these extraordinary leg weights. On passing into another room, I saw the cause of this disregard of the true proportions of the ancients. Here the students were working from the living model. It so happened that Venus was the subject, and I must say I never saw a more extraordinary Venus. The modelling of these students, who evidently belonged to a very