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BRITISH MUSEUM, THE. 



BRITISH MUSEUM, THE. 



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Europe, that is not already looted up in fiscal collections or does not 

 become so, will in the course of another century become the property 

 of the British Museum." On the other hand,- complaints have 

 been frequently made in England that owing to the paucity of 

 public grants, manuscripts which there was an opportunity of 

 acquiring with a liberal expenditure, have been allowed to pass into 

 private hands, where they are inaccessible except by private favour ; 

 and have been and often are locked up in " cold obstruction " by 

 private caprice. The date assigned by Dr. Pertz for this new impulse 

 is that of the appointment of the Rev. Josiah Forshall to the keeper- 

 ship of the manuscripts, and there can be no doubt of the increased 

 activity of the department in the way of acquisition during his 

 administration (1827-1837), and that of his successor Sir Frederic 

 Madden. Some results of this activity have been already enumerated 

 in the mention of the separate collections, others are brought to the 

 cognisance of the public in the exhibition cases of the manuscript 

 department, since that exhibition commenced in 1858. In these cases 

 the ' Magna Charta,' the ' Alexandrian Codex,' the ' Durham Book,' 

 and many of the other curiosities already mentioned, are laid open to 

 public curiosity ; and also a selection of autographs. There are those 

 of English sovereigns from Richard II. to George III.; of several 

 foreign sovereigns, including Charles V., the Czar Peter, Frederick 

 the Great, and Napoleon ; others of statesmen and warriors, including 

 the last letter of Nelson on the eve of the battle of Trafalgar, and a cal- 

 culation made by Wellington on the field of Waterloo ; others of men of 

 genius and world-wide influence, including Ariosto and Tasso, Luther and 

 Calvin, Erasmus and Voltaire. There are also the original manuscripts 

 of Tasso's Malpiglio, of some of Lope de Vega's plays, of Ben Jonson's 

 Masque of Queens, of Pope's translation of Homer, of Sterne's 

 Sentimental Journey, of Johnson's Irene, and of Walter Scott's Kenil- 

 worth, in the handwriting of their authors. There is the deed by 

 which Milton assigned the copyright of ' Paradise Lost," presented by 

 Rogers, the poet, in 1852 ; and there is a mortgage deed with the 

 signature of Shakspere, purchased in 1858. The mortgage is for 601.; 

 the signature, we believe, was purchased for 3201. 



Department of Antiquities. In the infancy of the Museum, the 

 antiquities being few in number and of little value, were considered, 

 with other artificial curiosities, as an appendage to the natural history ; 

 the coins, medals, and drawings of the Museum collection were at that 

 time appended to the department of manuscripts ; and the prints and 

 engravings to the library of printed books. When, in 1772, a very con- 

 siderable assemblage of articles of Greek and Roman antiquity, com- 

 prising the largest collection then known of ancient fictile vases, was 

 purchased of Sir William Hamilton for 8400/., the augmentations were 

 not so numerous as to require an increase of the establishment. The 

 arrival of the Egyptian monuments acquired by the capitulation of 

 Alexandria, in 1801, which were ordered in the following year by King 

 George III. to be placed in the British Museum, first suggested the 

 erection of an additional edifice, rendered still more indispensable by the 

 purchase of the Towuley Marbles in 1805. Accordingly, upon the com- 

 pletion of the building intended for the two collections, a new department 

 was created, in 1807, by the name of the Department of Antiquities, and 

 the magnificent collection of ancient sculpture was at length opened for 

 the inspection of strangers and the improvement of artists, an advan- 

 tage which the students of the Fine Arts had never before enjoyed in 

 this country. To this department the Hamilton vases and antiquities 

 were transferred, together with t'ae coins, medals, drawings, and 

 engravings. 



In 1814, a communication having been made by the Townley family 

 that there still remained in their possession a very large collection of 

 ancient bronze figures and utensils, of Greek and Roman coins, gems, 

 drawings, 4c., all of which might serve essentially to illustrate the 

 sculptures purchased in 1805, the House of Commons granted in that 

 year the sum of S'200/. for the purchase. 



In 1815 the Prince Regent, at an expense of little less than 20,0001., 

 purchased and ordered to be deposited in the Museum an extensive 

 series of sculptures, the frieze of the temple of Apollo Epicurius, at 

 Phigaleia in Arcadia, which are known from Pausanias to be the 

 genuine productions of the earlier time of the school of Phidias. To 

 these, in 1816, was added the Elgin collection, which as contributing 

 to the progress of the arts in this country, is the moat important 

 accession received by the Museum since its institution. It chiefly 

 M of the exquisite sculptures which once adorned the pediments 

 and frieze of the Temple of Minerva, on the Acropolis of Athens. For 

 the purchase of these, parliament voted the sum of 35,0001. 



n this period, many individual objects of much interest have 

 been, from time to time, added to these collections : as, for example, 

 a Cupid, from Mr. iiurkf's collation; a group of Mithras, bought of 

 Mr. Standish : the Rondinini Faun ; a Torso of Venus, which was 

 injured by the fire at Richmond House ; a statue of Hadrian ; a bas- 

 relief of the Apotheosis of Homer, purchased for 1000J. ; a Venus of 

 the Capitol, presented by King William IV. ; while, in later years, the 

 following great collections have been secured for the Museum, chiefly 

 by the zeal and labour of English travellers. 



I. The Lycian JkfarUrt, procured during two expeditions in the years 

 1842-44 by Sir Charles Fellows, and consisting chiefly of reliefs from 

 an Ionic edifice, and from the so-called Harpy Tomb, at Xanthus ; 

 together with a miscellaneous assortment of sculptures, some native 



Lycian, but mostly Asiatic Greek, from difierent places at the S W. 

 angle of Asia Minor. 



II. Sculptures from the Mamokum of ffalicarnassus, comprising 

 eleven bas-reliefs, with combats of Greeks and Amazons ; procured for 

 the Museum through Sir Stratford Canning, at that time H. M. Ambas- 

 sador at Constantinople. 



III. Sculptures from Nineveh, obtained by a series of excavations con- 

 ducted during 1847-50 by A. H. Layard, Esq. ; and, on his return to 

 Europe, between the years 1851-56, by H. Rassam,Esq.,and W. K. Loftus, 

 Esq. A collection comprising the results of very extensive excavations 

 at Nimrud (the Calah of the Bible), Koyunjik (Nineveh), Kalah Sherghat 

 (Assur) ; together with a large assortment of miscellaneous antiquities 

 from Babylon, Birs-i-Niinrud (Borsippa),aud from many ancient sites in 

 Southern Chaldaea, including those of Warka (Erech), and of Mugaher 

 (Ur of the Chaldees). To exhibit these monuments in some degree, a 

 suite of three long narrow rooms, originally intended for other purposes, 

 exceeding 300 feet in length, has been made use of, with an additional 

 transept at their southern end, together with a large room in the base- 

 ment of the building. In these rooms the sculptures have been 

 arranged, so far as has been possible, chronologically ; an arrangement, 

 however, which is far from complete, owing to the contracted nature of 

 the space devoted to these monuments. With these may be noted a 

 collection of Persepolitan marbles, presented in 1825 by Sir Gore 

 Ouseley, forming a valuable addition to some which tad been previously 

 presented by the Earl of Aberdeen. 



IV. A much larger collection of sculptures and other antiquities, 

 excavated by C. T. Newton, Esq., H.M. vice-consul at Mytilene, on the 

 site of the Mausoleum of ffaUcarnassus, during the years 1856-58, and 

 comprising many additional slabs from the frieze, two colossal statues 

 (probably those of King Mausolus and of his Queen Artemisia); 

 together with portions of two colossal horses, and of the quadriga 

 which surmounted the edifice; with columns, capitals, and other archi- 

 tectural members in sufficient number and perfection to render it 

 possible for any well-informed architect to reconstruct the original 

 building. 



V. A curious collection (also procured by C. T. Newton, Esq., during 

 the years 1857-58) from the site of the Temple of Apollo at Didymi, 

 near Miletus, and from Cnidus, embracing several sitting figures of the 

 earliest Greek art, which were originally placed in the Sacred Way 

 leading up to the Temple of Apollo from the sea ; together with an 

 inscribed lion, and other inscriptions in the Archaic Greek character. 

 From Cnidus, Mr. Newton has sent home a magnificent colossal lion, 

 with many other interesting fragments of sculpture. 



VI. A large number of mosaic pavements, and nearly 100 Phoenician 

 inscriptions, excavated on the site of ancient Carthage, by the Rev. 

 Nathan Davis, in the years 1856-59. The pavements, many of which 

 are in excellent preservation, are unquestionably Roman, and perhaps 



. . . thage by 



Scipio. For the appropriate exhibition of these large and important 

 collections, no provision can be made within the limits of the present 

 building. It has been therefore found necessary to place Mr. Newton's 

 sculptures for the present in a glass shed erected under the columns in 

 the portico, while Mr. Davis's Carthaginian antiquities may be found 

 in an unoccupied part of the basement, to the right of the new 

 Nineveh Room. 



Coins and Medals. The foundation of this part of the collection 

 was laid in the cabineta of Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Hans Sloane. 

 More than 6000 ancient medals were purchased with the Hamilton 

 collection in 1772. In 1799, a collection of coins and medals, esti- 

 mated at the value of 6000/., was bequeathed to the Museum by 

 the Rev. Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode. In 1802 the trustees pur- 

 chased the most complete series of Anglo-Saxon coins then known, 

 which had belonged to Samuel Tyssen, Esq., for 620/. In 1810 a series 

 of the coins of England from the Conquest to the reign of George III., 

 which had been made by Edward Roberts, Esq., of the Exchequer, for 

 his son, was purchased for the sum of 4000 guineas ; and about the 

 same time a series of papal medals for 135/., and a collection of Greek 

 coins from Col. de Bosset for 8001. In 1814 the Townley collection of 

 Greek and Roman coins (particularly rich in Roman large and second 

 brass) was added by vote of parliament, and a collection of Greek 

 coins offered for sale by Capt. Gust, was purchased by the Treasury for 

 the sum of 63QI. Another considenible as well as choice collection of 

 Greek coins was obtained at the time of the purchase of the Elgin 

 marbles. In 1818 Lady B.inkri presented all such coins and medals 

 belonging to the extensive cabinet of Mrs. S. S. Banks as were not pre- 

 viously in the Museum, including a considerable collection of foreign 

 coins. In 1824 Mr. R. Payne Knight bequeathed his Greek coins to 

 the Museum, which, joined to the Greek coins already in the cabinets, 

 made the Museum series of kings and cities superior even to the cele- 

 brated collection of the King of France. In the following year King 

 George IV. presented to the Museum a cabinet of coins and medals 

 which had been attached to the library of George III., which contained 

 a valuable assortment of German coins, and of the medals of the 

 illustrious men of Italy. During more recent days vast additions have 

 been made to the collection of Greek and Roman coins by purchases 

 at several important sales, such as those of the Duke of Devonshire, 



