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BRITISH MUSEUM, THE. 



BRITISH MUSEUM, THE. 



370 



the proposal was at once accepted, and an Act of Parliament (26 

 George II. c. 22) secured the prize. The same Act of Parliament 

 showed that a new spirit had been awakened in the legislature by 

 providing for the purchase of the great Harleian collection of manu- 

 scripts for the sum of 10,OOOJ. A few years before the great Harleian 

 library of printed books, brought together by the same collectors, 

 Harley the statesman Earl of Oxford and his son, had been allowed 

 to be dispersed, to the irreparable loss of the national literature. 

 The act directed also that the Cottonian library, which had become 

 public property in 1700, apparently by donation from its proprietor, 

 Sir John Cotton, should be added to the new establishment, which was 

 to bear the name of the " British Museum." 



Sir Hans Sloane had in his will named fifty persons whom he 

 requested to act as trustees of his collection, and thirty other persons 

 of high official rank and distinction, whom he requested to act as 

 " Visitors," hi the sense in which that word is used in connexion with 

 the colleges at the universities, in which the Visitors have the right of 

 examining into the observance of the statutes. The Act of Parliament 

 made no appointment of visitors, but vested the government of the 

 museum in a body of forty-one trustees, of whom six were family 

 trustees, or representatives of the Sloane, the Cotton, and the Harley 

 families; and twenty official trustees, as the Archbishop of Canter- 

 bury, the Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of Commons, 

 the Secretaries of State, and others, who were to elect the remaining 

 fifteen in consideration of personal merits and fitness. 



One of the first duties of this body was to consider where the new 

 establishment should be located. Sir Hans Sloaue had contem- 

 plated its conservation at the manor-house of Chelsea, which was 

 included in the sale of the museum, but on consideration the trustees 

 decided against this arrangement, and presented the manor-house to 

 the family. Two mansions were offered the trustees for purchase 

 Buckingham House in St. James's Park, which afterwards became 

 the Queen's House, and has since become the royal palace, and 

 Montague House in Great Russell Street, immediately adjacent to 

 Bloomsbury Square, at one corner of which Sir Hans Sloane had 

 resided till at the age of eighty he relinquished his profession and 

 retired to Chelsea. For Buckingham House, with its grounds and 

 gardens, the price asked was 30,000/., and for Montague House, also 

 with noble gardens covering seven acres and a half, little more than 

 10,0001. Montague House was selected, and the choice was a most 

 fortunate one. At that time the building stood on the very out- 

 skirts of town, so much so indeed that the " fields behind Montague 

 House " were still the favourite resort of duellists, and the view from 

 the back windows stretched without interruption to the sister hills of 

 Highgate and Hampstead, which bounded the horizon. It was never- 

 theless close to the main thoroughfare of Holborn, and to the Oxford 

 Road, as Oxford Street was then called, and the only drawback to the 

 advantage of the situation was that the wretched district of St. Giles's 

 was in the immediate vicinity. In the century which followed, the 

 open fields to the northward, eastward, and westward, were covered 

 with miles of building, but this immense extension of the metropolis 

 had the advantage of making the situation of the Museum more 

 central. The new buildings in its immediate neighbourhood, funning 

 the pleasant district called " the Squares," are of the tranquil and 

 respectable character, best suited to the contiguity of a muijeum. 

 The destruction of the old dens of St. Giles's, and the formation of 

 New Oxford Street on their site, have placed it in the enviable position 

 of standing in a quiet street, yet in the immediate neighbourhood of 

 one of the most brilliant and crowded thoroughfares in London, and 

 if the proposed continuation of Tottenham Court Road to Trafalgar 

 Square be ever effected, it will be within a few minutes' walk of the 

 point where two great thoroughfares from east to west, and from south 

 to north will intersect each other. 



The building which first received and for many years contained the 

 British Museum was reputed to have been erected by a Frenchman, 

 and was certainly adorned exclusively by French artists, a circumstance 

 which gave rise to the popular but improbable notion, that the cost of 

 it had been defrayed by the king of France. Ralph Montague, after- 

 wards Baron and Duke of Montague, ambassador from James II. to 

 Louis XIV., had about 1674 erected on the site a mansion of more 

 than ordinary splendour from the designs of Robert Hooke, the mathe- 

 matician, but in 1686, owing to the negligence of a servant the building 

 was burned to the ground. It has been often stated that the architect 

 of the new structure was Pierre Puget, of Marseille, eminent as a 

 sculptor, painter, and both civil and naval architect, and that he was 

 sent from Paris expressly to superintend it, but in the ' Biographic 

 Universelle,' no mention is made of his having come to England, and 

 the building bore no trace- of the peculiar style which induced some 

 to call him the French Michel Angelo. The new mansion was raised 

 on the foundations of its predecessor. Towards Great Russell Street, 

 it simply presented a sparingly ornamented brick wall, with an 

 entrance in the centre surmounted by a small cupola, and with two 

 peaked turrets at the ends. On passing through the gateway, the 

 visitor found himself under an Ionic colonnade on one side of a large 

 courtyard, on the northern side of which, immediately fronting him 

 was the main building, a somewhat plain and unpretending edifice of 

 brick, with stone dressings, 216 feet in length and 57 feet high, with a 

 flight of step* leading up to the main door. On the two other sides of 



ARTS AND SCI. DIV. VOL. II. 



the courtyard were the offices of the mansion, which, during the time 

 of its occupation as the Museum, were appropriated to the residence of 

 some of its officers. A view of the front on a large scale may be found 

 in Strype's ' Survey of London," for 1754. The visitor, who crossing the 

 courtyard entered the building, found himself in a stately hall at the 

 foot of the grand staircase, which was one of the most striking features 

 in the interior architecture, and a representation of which is given in 

 Ackermann's ' Microcosm of London.' Its walls and ceiling, and the 

 walls and ceilings of all the principal rooms were adorned with fresco 

 paintings by three . French artists, Charles de la Fosse, Jacques Rous- 

 seau, and Jean Baptiste Monoyer, executed with admirable skill, and 

 representing flowers and dead game, as well as several of the stories in 

 Ovid's ' Metamorphoses." The show rooms, twelve on the ground- 

 floor, and as many on the first floor, were in general stately and well 

 lighted, the front row looking on the courtyard, and the back on the 

 garden. A ground-plan of the whole was published in Dodsley's 

 ' London and its Environs,' in 1761, and another in Britton and 

 Pugin's ' Public Edifices of London," in 1823. 



Such was the Museum, which after some years of preparation was 

 opened for public inspection for the first time on the 15th of January, 

 1759. The establishment then consisted of three departments only, 

 the printed books, the manuscripts, and the natural history. The 

 earliest regulations for the admission of the public were extremely 

 different from those now in force at the Museum, but they bear 

 some resemblance to those which are still observed at the Soane 

 Museum in Lincoln's-inn-Fields. It was provided by the regula- 

 tions that " admission to such studious and curious persons who 

 are desirous to see the Museum " should be obtained by means of 

 " printed tickets, to be delivered by the porter upon their application 

 in writing, which writing shall contain their names, condition, and 

 places of abode, also the day and hour at which they desire to be 

 admitted." This list was to be submittted every night to the principal 

 librarian, or in his absence to another officer of the Museum, who, if 

 he considered the parties admissible, was to " direct the porter to 

 deliver tickets to them according to their said request, on their apply- 

 ing a second time for the said tickets," observing, however, that not 

 more than ten tickets were delivered for each time of admission. The 

 parties who produced these tickets were to be allowed three hours 

 of inspection of the Museum, spending one hour in each department, 

 and being taken in charge by a different officer for each, and the 

 regulations for their reception are so detailed as to occupy about 

 four pages octavo in Dodsley's ' London and its Environs." How they 

 operated in some cases may be learned from the account of a visit 

 which was paid to the Museum by Hutton-, the historian of Birming- 

 ham, in December 1784, and which he described in his " Journey from 

 Birmingham to London,' published in the following year. Hutton, 

 who had but a few days to stay in the metropolis, was unwilling to 

 quit it without viewing the Museum, but " how to accomplish it was," 

 he says, "the question. I was given to understand that the door, 

 contrary to other doors, would not open with a silver key, that interest 

 must be made some time before, and admission granted by a ticket on 

 a future day. . . . By good fortune I stumbled on a person possessed 

 of a ticket for the next day, which he valued less than two shillings ; 

 we struck a bargain in a moment and were both pleased." When he 

 gamed admission, he was hurried through the rooms, he tells us, in 

 about thirty minutes by a surly conductor, who was both unwilling 

 and unable to explain the curiosities, and he left in great dissatisfaction. 

 " I had laid more stress," he says, " on the British Museum than on 

 anything I should see in London. It was the only sight that disgusted 

 me." The system which he thus described continued for many years 

 longer, probably till 1803, when several alterations in the management 

 took place. In the first 'Synopsis,' or official guide to the Museum, 

 published in 1808, it is stated, that on the first four days of the week, 

 120 persons may be admitted to view the Museum, in eight companies 

 of 15 each; but no mention is made of the necessity of their pre- 

 viously obtaining tickets. In the ' Synopsis ' for 1810, a great advance 

 appears. " According to the present regulation," it is stated, " the 

 Museum is open for public inspection on the Monday, Wednesday, and 

 Friday in every week (the usual vacations excepted), from ten till four 

 o'clock, and all persons of decent appearance who apply between the 

 hours of teu and two are immediately admitted, and may tarry in the 

 apartments or the gallery of antiquities without any limitation of time, 

 except the shutting of the house at four o'clock." From that period 

 the regulations have been constantly growing more liberal, and the 

 increase in the number of persons admitted in the course of a year 

 is striking, though there has been some ebb as well as flow. The 

 numbers hi several twelvemonths, as given in the returns, are as 

 follows : 



From May, 1807, to May, 1808 . 

 From March, 1817, to March, 1818 

 From Christmas, 1827, to Christmas, 1828 

 From Christmas, 1837, to Christmas, 1838 

 From Christmas, 1847, to Christmas, 1848 



13,046 



50,172 



81,228 



266,008 



897,985 



In the year 1850, the numbers were just above a million; in the 

 following, or "Exhibition year," when multitudes flocked to the 

 Crystal Palace, the astonishing number of 2,527,216 was attained, a 

 cipher surpassing that of the whole population of London. Since 



B B 



