155 



was built in 1784. He entered upon it as soon as it was finished, 

 and the Museum continued to be exhibited till 1870. 



The year before he commenced it he succeeded in re- 

 covering the pay that was due to him from the East India 

 Company. He had never ceased to call- at the India House, but 

 for nineteen years he was denied a hearing, so unwilling were the 

 directors to hear anything amiss of their servants abroad. But 

 now. Sir Joseph Pennington, of Muncaster Castle (the first Lord 

 Muncaster) was chairman, and Sir Henry Fletcher, M.P. for Cum- 

 berland, a director. The case was referred to a committee, of 

 which Sir Henry Fletcher was one, and he received the ;^6o pay 

 due to him. This act of tardy justice gratified him far beyond its 

 intrinsic value. He was always a staunch Whig, and no doubt he 

 had great pleasure in writing to Sir Henry Fletcher next year, that 

 he hoped he would be returned M.P. for Cumberland without 

 opposition, but if there was a contest he might depend on his 

 attendance at Cockermouth on the polling day, and three or four 

 more in his interest. 



In 1785 — -June loth, he enters in his journal : — "Soon this 

 morning found six musical stones at the end of Long Tongue," on 

 the sandbeds of the river Greta. He afterwards mentions, that 

 while the first six of the collection he formed were in perfect tune, 

 the remaining ten cost him half a year to collect and reduce, by 

 chipping, into perfect tune, working twelve hours a day. It has 

 been the ill-fortune of Peter Crosthwaite to lose whatever credit 

 may be due to this and other discoveries. When a party firom 

 Keswick travelled with a set of five octaves, and played in the 

 presence of Royalty, the merit of the discovery was given by the 

 press, and claimed by the chief of the party, as due to him. Mrs. 

 Southey (Caroline Bowles) wrote, requesting that I would contradict 

 the statement in the London newspapers, as she had done in a 

 public room where they were exhibiting. I did not think it worth 

 while, but when the same statement was made in Keswick, by 

 advertisement, I did think it right to point out that the History of 

 Cumberland mentioned the set in Crosthwaite's Museum many 

 years before the collector of the new set was born. A Whitehaven 



