MUSEUM. 



97 



Polyhymnia, Urania, and Calliope. The poets feign 

 that Jupiter spent nine nights with Mnemosyne, in 

 Pieria, and, in that period, begot the nine Muses. 

 Immediately after their birth, they came, singing 

 and dancing, to Olympus, where Jupiter exalted 

 them to a divine rank. Not far from the top of 

 Olympus is their palace, near that of the Graces, 

 where they sing and dance. They are commonly 

 represented as virgins, though children of the Muses 

 are sometimes mentioned. Even Urania is called, 

 by Eustathius, the mother of Linus. Among the 

 adventures of the Muses, their three contests with 

 the Sirens, the daughters of Pierus, and the old bard 

 Thamyris, are particularly famous. The Sirens were 

 conquered: the muses plucked the feathers from their 

 wings, and made garlands out of them for themselves, 

 while the Sirens flew away, ashamed, in the shape of 

 prating magpies. When the Muses contended with 

 them in song, the heaven, the stars, the rivers, and 

 the sea stood still, and mount Helicon leaped for joy, 

 and Neptune, to prevent it from mounting to the 

 heavenly regions, despatched Pegasus, who struck 

 his foot upon the summit of the mountain ; at the 

 song of the unfortunate Pierides, black darkness 

 covered the fields. The bard Thamyris, who con- 

 tended with them, stipulated that, should he come 

 oft' victorious, each of them should yield to his em- 

 braces one night ; but, should he be conquered, they 

 might impose upon him whatever punishment they 

 pleased. They were victorious ; and, as a punish- 

 ment for his audacity, deprived him of his eyes 

 and of the art of playing upon the lyre. A certain 

 tribe, says tradition, listened to the singing of the 

 Muses with so much pleasure that they forgot their 

 food, and, being on the point of perishing with 

 hunger, were in compassion converted by the Muses 

 into grasshoppers, who sing continually, without 

 requiring (as it was believed) any nourishment. The 

 customary occupation of the Muses was singing and 

 dancing. The ancients knew nothing of the par- 

 ticular occupations which have, in later times, been 

 attributed to each of their number. Calliope became 

 the goddess of epic poetry. She was the most dis- 

 tinguished among the Muses, the protectress of 

 kings, whom she endowed with eloquence and song. 

 Clio was the goddess of history; Euterpe, of music, 

 particularly of wind-instruments ; Thalia, of comedy; 

 Melpomene, of tragedy; Urania, of astronomy; Erato, 

 of lyric and erotic poetry; Polyhymnia, of eloquence 

 and mimicry ; and Terpsichore, of the dance. If we 

 translate their names, Erato signifies the lovely; 

 Calliope, the eloquent ; Euterpe, the pleasing ; Tha- 

 lia, the joyous, particularly at feasts ; Melpomene, 

 the musical; Polyhymnia, variety of song ; Terpsi- 

 chore, the dance-loving; and Clio, fame. (See the 

 teparate articles.) Their surnames are, for the most 

 part, derived from their places of residence, Heli- 

 con, Pindus, Parnassus, and the sacred fountains 

 there (hence Caslalidcs, Pimpleidcs, &<;.). They are 

 commonly represented as beautiful virgins, adorned 

 with wreaths of palm leaves, laurel, roses, or the 

 feathers of the Sirens. They dance in a circle, 

 together with Apollo. (See Museum Pio-Clemcn- 

 tinum, vol. 1. plates 17 28, and vol. 4. plates 14, 

 15.) Their worship extended from Greece to Italy: 

 the Romans originally called them Cameena:. In 

 Rome, they had a separate temple, and a grove 

 sacred to them. The swan, the nightingale, and the 

 grassliopper were also sacred to them. They had a 

 knowledge of past ages, and were invoked, by poets, 

 at the commencement of their lays. 



MUSEUM. Every collection of interesting objects, 



of nature or art, brought together for the instruction 



of the student, or the satisfaction of the curious, is 



called a museum, a word which originally signified 



v. 



a grotto of the Muses, or a temple of the Muses, and 

 which was first given in the above sense to that part 

 of the royal palace in Alexandria, which Ptolemy 

 Philadelphia assigned for the library. Works of the 

 fine arts, collected in museums, cannot produce the 

 same effect as when in the places for which they 

 were originally intended. When the images of Her- 

 cules, Hermes, and Cupid, stood in the gymnasia ; 

 when Alcamenes' statues of Venus were lialf hidden 

 by bowers and trees; when the figures of Diana, with 

 her nymphs, were found in lonely forests ; Myron's 

 groups of the Nereides, on the sea-shore ; the statues 

 of Apollo, Bacchus, and the Muses, in the theatres ; 

 the lofty image of Jupiter, at the Olympian games; or, 

 in more recent times, when the picture of the Virgin 

 stood over the altar, surrounded by columns and arches, 

 then the works of art were in their proper places, 

 and produced the effect for which the artist intended 

 them. But a deluge of barbarism swept over the 

 civilization of ancient times, and the works of ancient 

 art were hurled from their seats. When the light of 

 civilization again dawned upon Europe, it was natural 

 for men to seek with avidity for the relics of ancient 

 art ; and, as the changes which had taken place in 

 religion and in social institutions forbade the restora- 

 tion of them to their old uses, they were treasured up 

 in collections, as proofs of the existence of a perfec- 

 tion which mankind had long lost. But this spirit of 

 collecting may be carried, and has been carried, to 

 an extreme. In the last century, particularly, the 

 governments of many countries thought themselves 

 authorized to despoil all the provinces of the few 

 works of art which they had preserved, and to crowd 

 them, often without any taste, in collections, into the 

 capital. Of late, the mode of arranging museums 

 has been greatly improved, the works of art being 

 disposed in situations corresponding to their charac- 

 ter ; at least, this has been the case with some 

 museums of works of sculpture, of which the Glyp- 

 totheca (q v.) and the new and grand museum at 

 Berlin are honourable examples. We find the first 

 collections of works of art in the peristyles of ancient 

 temples. Delphi, with its treasure chambers, divided 

 according to the different tribes of Greece ; the temple 

 of the Samian Juno and the Palladian Acropolis at 

 Athens were very rich in works of art, consisting of 

 consecrated gifts, arranged with taste. The succes- 

 sors of Alexander accumulated all kinds of works of 

 art in their royal seats, in order to carry them about 

 at their triumphs in long processions. Similar was 

 the fate of foreign works of art in ancient Rome. 

 The captured statues were carried about like slaves; 

 and among the Roman emperors there was more than 

 one imitator of Nero, who ordered five hundred sta- 

 tues to be sent from Delphi, to ornament his " golden 

 house." The practice of removing works of art from 

 their original localities had therefore already begun ; 

 real museums, however, existed not as yet. The 

 barbarians afterwards broke in upon Rome, and the 

 works of art were involved in indiscriminate destruc- 

 tion. The finest marbles were used for building walls ; 

 the noblest statues were burned for lime. Hardly a 

 single statue or picture escaped, except those which 

 were buried under the ruins, and thus preserved by 

 the very extent of the surrounding destruction, to 

 kindle, in future ages, a new love for the fine arts. 

 In the beginning of the fifteenth century, only about 

 five antique statues of marble, and one of bronze, 

 were known to exist in Rome. In Florence began 

 the dawn of a new day for the fine arts, in the age of 

 the Medici, (q. v.) Cosmo I. collected antiques, 

 and laid the foundation of the famous Florentine 

 museum. Other princes of Italy soon followed tfie 

 example. Pope Leo X., of the family of Medici, 

 transplanted the love of the fine arts, which distin- 



