2. so 



NATURE 



[January io, 1895 



SIR CHARLES NEWTOX, K'.C.B. 



THE hand of death has lately fallen heavily on the 

 ranks of the older scholars ; and classical archae- 

 olog>' has especial losses to record Only a few months 

 back, there passed away Heinrich Brunn, the lioyen a.n& 

 most picturesque representative of German Hellenism ; 

 and we in England have now sustained a loss no less ] 

 severe. Though Newton had of late years become too 

 infirm for active work, and had in fact done little since 

 his retirement in 1SS5, it is now, when he has gone from 

 among us, that his loss will be most keenly felt. It was ' 

 not so much in his actual achievements, though these 

 were considerable enough, that his truest claim upon our 

 recollection lay ; nor yet in the f.^ct that he had practi- 

 cally opened up a new science for English scholarship : 

 it was more than all in the personality and force of 

 character of the man, which impressed itself on all with 

 whom he came in contact, and the masterful influence 

 which was by no means confined within the limits of his 

 own science. It was to this that he owed his success ; 

 and there have been few instances in which a necessity 

 has been so opportunely met by the man most adapted 

 for it. For when Newton joined the Museum in 1S40, 

 the study of actual monuments was still in its infancy ; 

 Greece itself was very little known, and a pseudo-clas- 

 sicism had been evolved from the mistaken illustration 

 of literary sources with an often inferior Gricco-Roman 

 art. Behind him lay the period of learned and in- 

 genious but useless theory ; two things were needed to 

 clear away this tangle of ide^is — a fuller supply of the 

 best practical material, and a wider scientific method. 



At that time the Departments of Antiquities at the 

 Museum, which now are four, were all united in one. 

 The disadvantages which such an arrangement must 

 have entailed are obvious enough, but there was 

 this compensating advantage, that a young man in 

 Newton's position was at the outset enabled to attain a 

 certain familiarity with the wider aspects of his study, 

 and perhaps a breadth of view and sympathy which is 

 more difficult at present. He was thus by his training, 

 as well as by his natural bent, led to a large view of 

 things. 



In an address to the Arch;cological Institute at Oxford, 

 in 1850, he urges a powerful plea for the comparative 

 method in archaeology and, as the necessary corollary, 

 for enlargement of museums. In this address, which as 

 archxological teaching was singularly in advance of its 

 times, the writer has laid down the formula; upon which 

 the modern science of archaeology may be said to take 

 its stand. A museum must not be a mere collection of 

 disjointed, disconnected phenomena, but the central con- 

 sulting-room, as it were, to which all scientific questions 

 may be referred for comparison and elucidation. Classical 

 art and archaeology, like all other studies, cannot but 

 lack perspective in isolation : the external conditions, 

 the ethnographical characteristics, the position of the 

 Hellenic race in its relation to the rest of mankind, their 

 art, architecture, life, and thought must be collated and 

 classified with a due regard to the continuity and correla- 

 tion of things. The arch.xologist, in short, " must travel, 

 excavate, collect, arrange, delineate, decipher, transcribe, 

 before he can place his whole subject before his mind. 

 But the plodding drudgery which gathers together his 

 materials must not blunt the critical acuteness required 

 for their classification and interpretation : nor should that 

 habitual suspicion which must ever attend the scrutiny 

 and precede the warranty of archrcological evidence give 

 too sceptical a bias to his mind.'' The key-notes here 

 sounded were kept steadily in mind throughout his 

 whole life. It was but a few years after, that his sojourn 

 in the East, as consul at Mytilene, enabled him to put his 

 ideas into practice, and to initiate for ICngland the "era 

 ■of the spade." 



NO. 131 5, VOL. ",1] 



The discovery with which Newton's name will always 

 be inseparably associated is that of the Mausoleum at 

 Budrum, collections from which now fill almost an entire 

 room at the British Museum. Budrum had been visited 

 by Prof Donaldson early in the century, and the pre- 

 sentation to the Museum, in 1S46, of the twelve slabs 

 removed from the castle of the Knights of St. John, had 

 called renewed attention to this monument. In 1847 

 Newton published a memoir, in which Donaldson's site 

 was selected as that which probably concealed the 

 ruins — a conjecture which other travellers contemptu- 

 ously rejected. It was not till 1857 that Newton was 

 enabled to verify his conjecture by actual digging, and 

 the account which he gave of his discovery, in his 

 "Travels and Discoveries in the Levant" (p. 86), is one 

 of the most fascinating episodes in a fascinating book. 

 Even when the site was thus determined beyond all 

 doubt, the difi'iculties had only begun ; the obstacles of 

 Turkish officialism and native greed were enough to have 

 broken the heart of a less indomitable energy ; but his 

 own untiring efforts, backed by the friendly assistance of 

 Lord Stratford de Redcliffe at Constantinople, brought 

 the undertaking to a well-merited success. 



Lord Stratford was only one out of many friends 

 whom Newton succeeded in enlisting in the cause he 

 had at heart ; he had pre-eminently the priceless faculty 

 of inspiring others with his own enthusiasm ; possessed 

 of considerable social gifts, he was enabled to make 

 many friendships, which served him in good stead both 

 at home and abroad. If a special grant were required, 

 whether for excavating a promising site, or for enriching 

 the Museum with an important collection, he rarely failed 

 to wring a reluctant consent from a Treasury too apt to 

 neglect any cause which is not sufficiently self-assertive. 

 During most of the period of his keepership he was thus 

 able to maintain or to encourage enterprise or explora- 

 tion abroad, set on foot by men who had caught the in- 

 fection of his energy in personal contact with himself 

 Smith and Porcher at Cyrene, Dennis at Benghazi, 

 Pullan at Prienc, Salzmann and Biliotti at Budrum and 

 Rhodes, Wood at Ephesus, and, more recently, Ramsay 

 in Asia Minor, all owed the initiation of their enter- 

 prise, or very material support, to Newton at home. 

 Perhaps one of his most solid claims to our 

 gratitude lies in the fact that he was thus instru- 

 mental in obtaining no less a sum than / 100,000 

 in special grants for the purchase of collections for the 

 British Museum, over and above the annual sums voted 

 by Parliament. Of these the most important was pro- 

 bably the great Blacas collection in 1867, a transaction 

 which is admirably illustrative of Newton's resourceful 

 self-reliance and power. The French Government (and 

 probably others also) were known to beinclined to treat for 

 the collection, and the English representative had at short 

 notice to determine a sum which should be at once 

 enough to carry the position, and yet not be deemed ex- 

 travagant. Newton telegraphed on the Friday to Panizzi ; 

 next day the trustees of t!ic .Museum met, DisracU came 

 purposely to the meeting, and the historic treasure was 

 ours. . 



To his energetic guidance the Hellenic Society and 

 the British School at Athens both owe in a large degree 

 their initiation and their present position. It was indeed 

 in such practical initiation, and in the inspiration of 

 others rather than in actu.al teaching, that Newton's true 

 sphere lay. Vet all who know his writings, and still more 

 those who had the privilege of personal intercourse with 

 him, will acknowledge the debt they owe to his teaching, 

 either direct or indirect. To any one regarding the period 

 over which his activity extended, from a lime when 

 archsological science was, as it were, casting its skin, 

 down to the complete transformation of to-day, to any 

 one who knows the masses of now useless literature which 

 form the cast-off slough, it is really astonishing to turn 



