THE BRITISH MUSEUM
The British Museum is a very wonderful place, so wonderful that few
people understand what they see there. They wander along the corridors
looking vaguely at the cases of precious and rare objects on every side;
they are impressed by the size of the place, but they do not come to the
Museum with the idea of looking for anything particular, and they go
away without learning anything. No one man, however clever, could
understand about all the things that he will find there; and as for a
child appreciating even a small part of the treasures there collected,
it is impossible. Supposing a very clever man, who had travelled in many
foreign countries, had begun while he was still young to gather together
all the valuable and curious things he saw to make a little museum, that
would be worth seeing; but probably it would be made up of only certain
things that that particular man liked and understood. Now, the British
Museum is the museum belonging to the nation, and instead of only
certain things being collected, there are curious and valuable things
belonging to every kind of study. For instance, if you were studying the
different nations or wild tribes of the earth, you would find things
belonging to various tribes of people in the Museum; or if you were
interested in rare old books, you would find more of them at the Museum
than anywhere; or if you wanted to find out anything in any branch of
study, you would find clever men at the Museum who would help you.
Sometimes a man who has made a collection of interesting things in his
lifetime leaves it to the Museum at his death, or perhaps the Museum
buys his collection for the nation; and so every year more and more
things are accumulated, until the value of the treasures stored in the
great building is greater than anyone could imagine. I expect when you
have read all this you will say: 'Then do let us go to the Museum. Even
if I don't understand, I'd like to see it.'
So we will go to this solid massive building across the wide space of
gravel in front, where the pigeons wheel round our heads and run about
on the ground almost under our feet, up the wide, shallow steps under
the huge columns into the great entrance-hall. It is all free. The
smallest child and the most important man can walk in there alike
without anyone's asking questions. As we stand in the entrance-hall
there is a wide staircase on one side, and in front of us are swinging
glass doors leading by a passage to a great room called the
reading-room. To go into this room it is necessary to get permission
from the attendants in the hall, who make you sign your name on a piece
of paper. Once inside, the size of the vast room almost takes your
breath away. There is a great dome ceiling, and the walls are lined with
books; there are shelves upon shelves, and thousands and thousands of
them. In the middle of the room is a circular desk, where some men are
sitting; and round this desk, again, there are shelves lined with huge
books, and all these books are filled with nothing but the names of the
other books which are kept at the Museum, and which anyone can see by
taking certain precautions. People are allowed to walk in just to see
the room, by asking in the hall; but if anyone wants to study here he
has to write beforehand for a ticket, then he can go in and look in the
catalogue (that is what the big books full of names are called) for the
book he wants. He writes it on a slip of paper, and puts on the paper
also the number of any seat in the room he has chosen. Then he places
the piece of paper in a basket and goes away and waits, perhaps twenty
minutes, for the books he wants--for he can ask for any number at one
time--and presently a man brings them to him.
From the centre desk there are other long lines of desks like the spokes
of a wheel stretching out from the middle to the sides of the room, and
here numbers of people sit reading all day long. It is very interesting
that so many people should work so hard. Look at one of them. He is an
old clergyman, gray-haired, and with many wrinkles on his face. He is
reading books of sermons so that he can preach next Sunday a sermon made
up out of the books. Next to him is a young girl dressed very plainly.
She has eyeglasses on, and looks severe. She belongs to an office, and
has been sent down here to write out some quotations from a book that
cannot be got anywhere else than at the Museum. She earns her living by
working for the office, and she likes it very much, and would not change
her life with another girl who drives about in a carriage dressed in
fifty-guinea frocks, and pays calls on rich people, even if she could.
Near her there is a dark-skinned man, a negro. What can he want? Perhaps
he is working up to pass an examination. And near him is a worn,
tired-looking old fellow, who has gone to sleep over his books. He was
well-off once and enjoyed his life, and many people were glad to be
invited to his house. But he was foolish and lost all his money, and now
he comes up and asks for a few books just as a pretence, so that he can
sit there in the warmth and comfort for a little while. There are many
authors in the room busy making books, books, still more books, out of
those that have been already written. When will it stop?
A copy of every book that is published has to go to the British Museum.
The publishers are bound by law to send a copy here, and so hundreds of
books pour in continually; there is no end to them. Even in the days of
Solomon it was said: 'Of making many books there is no end, and much
study is a weariness of the flesh.' But the books that were then written
were as nothing to those that have since been written, and every year
brings forth more than the one preceding.
You have noticed that round this vast room the walls are covered with
books looking gloomy and grey. But these are only a tiny part of the
books stored here. If you ask the attendant in charge he will take you
behind those walls, where you will think you have stepped straight into
a dream-world, for there are passages and passages all lined with books.
You might lose yourself, and wander on and on between streets of books
higher than your head for many and many an hour. But the storage of
books is not the only difficulty the librarian has. He has to keep
copies of all the principal newspapers, too. Now, a newspaper in itself
is a little thing, small and thin; but when you think of newspapers by
the hundred, newspapers by the thousand, going on growing and
accumulating, then you can understand how difficult it must be to find
room for them all.
Well, we can leave the book-room and go to other parts of the Museum. We
can wander down corridors filled with beautiful statues or with mighty,
enormous figures, far bigger than you can conceive until you have seen
them--figures whose fist is bigger than your whole body, whose fingers
are about the size of you, made by the ancient Egyptians, the wonderful
people who held the Israelites in captivity--great frowning, mighty
figures brought here from across the sea. Or you can go down other
corridors lined with many things from savage lands--curious ornaments
and boats, and rough skin clothes; or you can see, too, the most
interesting part of all, where there are mummies.
In the days long ago, when the land of Egypt was very great and
powerful, while England was a lonely little island inhabited by savage
men, who knew of nothing beyond their own shores, the Egyptians used to
spend much time and money on preserving the bodies of their dead, for
they thought that if a man's body were allowed to decay he could never
live again in the other world; so when anyone died the body was cut open
and filled with rich spices and wrapped in many bandages all steeped in
certain ointments. And these things really did preserve the bodies from
decay, so that now, two or three thousand years after, we, the English,
who have learned to travel and understand many things, go to the land of
Egypt, now not great and mighty any more, and pull out the dead bodies
of their kings and queens, who lived and loved and reigned when our
ancestors were savages, and we bring them back to England and put them
in glass cases for everyone to see. There they lie, these people who
thought so differently from us, who never knew anything about us, who
were rich and powerful, and now are of no consequence. It seems strange,
doesn't it? Some are still in the painted wooden cases, into which they
fit as into coffins; others have been taken out, and are shown with all
the red-brown bandages wound round and round their limbs, and in some
cases part of these bandages have been undone and the foot or the leg of
a mummied man or woman is visible.
There is not much else here that can be explained in writing, though
many things that you would care to see.
At South Kensington there are many large fine buildings, and the finest
of them all is the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was opened by King
Edward in 1909. It contains all sorts of wonderful and beautiful art
work.