Former City of London School for Boys, Victoria Embankment EC4

The central arch of the school is graced by the Classics and Poetry, and they are supported on either side by Art and History.
To the left G.W. Seale has carved Drawing and Music, as lively a pair of girlies as could be imagined being turned away by the porter for not being properly dressed for a Victorian educational institution. Drawing is doing a quick sketch of the bust of a bearded Greek philosopher. Music is blowing a strange flute thing, with a harp ready at her feet for the next item on the programme.
To the right is History, represented by girl scribes from ancient and modern times.
Ancient girl is carving some sort of lettering on a monument. What language is it? The letters look vaguely like cuneiform, but that may just be my ignorance. The girl's costume doesn't help identify what civilisation she comes from (there is not much of it) and her hairstyle is generic 'exotic ancient civilizations style', as worn by Elizabeth Taylor in so many movies.
Modern history is represented by a properly dressed female angel, with wings, writing on a scroll. The lamp of Holy Scripture provides illumination.
Looking back through the kaleidoscope of the 1960s, can we see the origin of many hangups and traumas here?

Former City of London School for Boys, Victoria Embankment EC4

Between the statues of giants of poetry, drama and science, the arches of the City of London School were filled with allegorical figures by G. W. Seale, a member of the Seale dynasty of architectural sculptors that included Gilbert Seale who carved the merfolk in Kingsway.
The figures represent the areas of knowledge that the unfortunate boys were expected to study, and their positions form an interesting commentary on the prestige the various subjects enjoyed in Victorian education.
In the prime position, at the centre over the main entrance, are Classics and Poetry. Classics wears a crown and holds a laurel wreath in her hand, presumably ready to bestow on the boy who got the Classics Prize on speech day. Her right hand rests on volumes of Virgil, Ovid and Homer.
Poetry sits beneath a tree and holds a shepherdess's staff, to indicate her pastoral inclinations. In her lap is the gaping mask of tragedy.
On either side are the arts and history.
But relegated to the outside arches are the subjects that would actually have been most use to the students in the rapidly changing technological world of the 1880s, mathematics and science. It took more than a century for the pecking order to change in British education.
I will post pictures of these in the next few days.