"No work of the present time is ever universally admitted as an indisputable standard. It is only when time has placed an interval between the present and the past, wide enough to destroy all the rivalries of competition; that great works receive the full acknowledgments of their merits, and become standards to which we all appeal. Thus in the art of writing our own language, we refer to the best models of past instead of to the works of our own days; and our youth at school are chiefly trained on the written models of Greece and Home, instead of those of our own country. The advantage of this consists in having before us examples which all appeal to, not because we contend that they are in all respects the best, but because they were the best of their day, and being written in a language no longer subject to change, may be taken as an universal standard by which all civilised nations may measure their thoughts and the mode of expressing them. The frieze of the Parthenon and the dramas of Sophocles, the forms of the marble and the conceptions of the great poet, still speak to our imagination and our understanding: we recognise, in both, the beauty of proportion, the simplicity and truth of design; and we all assent to a standard which we feel to be in harmony with nature, and to which all nations will yield a more ready obedience than to any other that we can name.
"Though the artist and the student may examine the sculptures of the Parthenon with somewhat different views, their studies are more nearly allied than is generally supposed. The artist who looks at them merely as delineations of form, without reference to the ideas which gave them their existence, loses half the pleasure and the profit; and the student who merely names and catalogues them, without connecting them with the written monuments of Grecian genius, that is with the illustration of ancient texts, is also pursuing a barren study."
And now the visitor's way lies through the sculpture galleries, back to the grand entrance. He has accomplished the labour of examining all that is exhibited to the public generally of the contents of the national museum. He may wander into the eastern wing of the building (if it be open to the general visitor), and through the northern, where the vast library of printed books and manuscripts are deposited; but these are only accessible to the public under special regulations. This remark is applicable also to the print-room.
The visitor, however, cannot leave the British Museum, having wandered over it and examined its various curiosities, without getting something from his journey. It is full of suggestive matter, which, with a little direction, may be turned to useful account by large classes of the people. It affords glimpses into the mysteries of the Animal Kingdom, with all its varieties, its wonders, its traceable progresses, its past and extinct forms, its promises of future developments. Then the mineralogical galleries afford the general visitor a peep at the formations of the earth; the various developments of minerals; the natural state of ores and stones which most men see only in their manufactured state. From the mineralogical tables the visitor stepped aside to examine the wondrous revelations of extinct animal life recovered from the bowels of the earth; he saw the colossal megatherium, the towering mastodon, and the great Irish elk. He understood something of the progress of animal life, from the fishes and the saurians. Then he passed into the Egyptian room, and found himself surrounded with the preserved bodies of the ancient Egyptians; he examined their household gods; he pried into their coffins; he saw their food; he was familiarised with their apparel. Still proceeding onward, he came to the beautiful bronzes; and then he saw the wonders that the ancient tombs of Etruria disgorged. He still advanced in the galleries, till he came to a room that was a little museum in itself—an exhibition of the curious industries of many different countries. Here were Buddhist temples; Chinese chopsticks; marvels from savage islands; a tortoise-shell bonnet; a Chinese bell;—in short, a room packed from the ceiling to the floor with a compact mass of curiosities. And then he left the upper floor of the building, after having spent two days there, through two towering cameleopards. He came a third time, and at once passing many things that tempted him by the way, he passed on into the great and wonderful Egyptian Saloon. Here he lingered for hours over ancient Egyptian tombstones; before colossal sarcophagi; thinking of the tough work Belzoni must have had of it with the young Memnon; endeavouring to realise the approach to the ancient Egyptian temples through rows of colossal and majestic sphinxes. Next he passed on to the ruins of Nineveh, and its mystic mounds. Here he was with Layard for a time, dreaming of the ancient Assyrians and their winged bulls. Hence he passed into the Lycian room, and saw something of the strange remains of the Xanthus of old; and then, probably, he went home to dream of these great marvels of the times gone by. But he came again; and this time hovered throughout the day amid the ruins of the arts of ancient Greece. And now he has examined these; and he may leave the national museum, assured that he has some useful knowledge of the curiosities which scientific men have gathered from the remote parts of the world, for the benefit of the learned resident in England.
The tens of thousands who flock to the museum in holiday times prove its attractions; and it is with the hope that these attractions may be enhanced by the help of a methodical and homely guide, chattering to the visitor various bits and scraps of pertinent information as he passes from one object to another, that these four visits have been presented to the public. They do not pretend to be scientific books, but simply companions of the hour, that urge little points of information while the mind is particularly impressible; and showing the kind of interest that attaches to objects which, for the want of a timely word, the visitor would have passed unnoticed.
Many objects which are curiosities to the scientific man, but which could not in any way interest the casual visitor, have been passed by without hesitation.
Our main object has been to give the visitor clear impressions of the different departments or classes into which the national collection naturally divides itself, by guiding his eye consecutively to those objects which bear relation to each other. It was necessary, to make ourselves attractive as guides, to eschew all learned and stiff formalities; to class matters easily as we found them; and to sustain the visitor's interest throughout his four journeys. The monotony of a formal catalogue is repulsive to visitors chiefly bent upon enjoying a few hours amusement; therefore we chose to direct the eye to objects, and at once to interest the visitor in them, by shortly explaining their points of interest. The success which this endeavour met elsewhere has encouraged us to perform the present task; and we hope shortly to be at the elbow of visitors to other interesting buildings and exhibitions.
The popularity of the British Museum may be shown by quoting the last return of the number of visitors, &c., presented to the House of Commons. This return proves that, while the public interest in the collection is on the increase, that the guardians of the different departments look out eagerly for new curiosities:—"The number of readers—or rather of visits made by readers, in 1850, was 78,533:—or, an average of some 268 per diem:—the Reading Rooms having been kept open 291 days. The number of books returned to the shelves of the General Library from the Reading Rooms was 119,093; to those of the Royal Library, 11,252; to those of the Grenville Library, 387: to the closets in which the books are kept from day to day for the use of the readers, 110,950:—making a total of 241,682, or 830 per diem. The number of volumes added to the Library amounts to 16,208 (including music, maps, and newspapers); of which 837 were presented, 11,793 purchased, and 3575 received by copyright. The Keeper of the MSS. has been busy cleaning, cataloguing, and stamping. Eleven of the valuable Cottonian MSS. on vellum (including the Chronicle of Roger de Wendover, supposed to have been utterly destroyed), and two Old Royal as well as five Cottonian on paper, all injured in the fire of 1731, have been carefully repaired, inlaid, and rebound. The purchases include a Psalter of the tenth century, formerly belonging to the monastery of Stavelot, in the diocese of Liége,—'a remarkably fine Greek MS.' containing the works ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite,—and the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzum, 'with scholia written in the year 6480 (A.D. 972);'—together with nineteen additional volumes of a series of transcripts from the Archives at the Hague, of documents relating to English history, extending from 1588 to 1614 and from 1689 to 1702.—In the 'Department of Natural History,' we find that great progress has been made in the arrangement of the contents of Room No. VI.,—its wall cases having been entirely filled with the gigantic Osseous Remains of Edentata and Pachydermata, and that the Central Room of the Northern Zoological Gallery has been devoted to a collection of the Beasts, Birds, Fish, Reptiles, Shells, Sea Eggs, Starfish, and Corals found in the British Islands. The purchases include 'a silver decadrachm of Alexander the Great,' from the collection of Colonel Rawlinson,—the first ever discovered,—'and two very rare British gold coins, having on them the name TIN.'"
THE END.
NOTES
[1: Undoubtedly the finest coral is dredged from the Mediterranean; it is an important article of commerce at Marseilles.]
[2: "The shrikes, or butcher-birds (laniadae), are a numerous and widely-diffused assemblage, living upon the smaller birds and insects; the former of which the shrike sticks, when killed, upon thorns, as a butcher hangs up meat in his stall; hence the name of the genus."—Vestiges of Creation.]
[3: Vestiges of Creation.]
[4: These birds build in the crevices of precipitous rocks, and tho female lines the nest with the down plucked from her breast. From these nests natives rob the down and sell it.]
[5: Vestiges of Creation.]
[6: "Oxides are neutral compounds, containing oxygen in equivalent proportions."—Dr. Ure.]
[7: Sesquicarbonate of soda that is found in the west of the Delta. In Mexico there are several natron lakes.]
[8: The cuneiform character, which was used in every part of Asia Minor, up to the time of Alexander the Great, consists of a series of wedges or accents variously combined, as, [Cuneiform: *** **]].
[9: A Metope may be described as the intermediate space in a Doric frieze, between two triglyphs, or separating grooves.]