Your Committee have the satisfaction to state that, their funds being
thoroughly exhausted, they have been enabled to save the usual expense
of travelling, and have taken advantage of the liberality of the
Government for the purpose of visiting the British Museum. Your
Committee remained some time at the outer gate, for the purpose of
making some observations on two boxes, which it is understood have been
there for sentries; but, as they have not discovered what a sentry is,
your Committee conclude that the word must be a corruption of centuries.
On going through the court-yard the Association made some experiments
upon the atmosphere, with the view of calculating the difference (by
means of the differential calculus) between the air inside the gates and
that which circulates on the outside; but your Committee are unable to
state any satisfactory result to their arduous experiment.
On entering the hall of the Museum your Committee have to complain of
being deprived of their walking-sticks; but this annoyance was in some
degree compensated by their receiving in exchange some very curious
pieces of tin, which are, no doubt, of very ancient origin. They were at
once referred to the chairman of the mineralogical section, who
pronounced them to be the coin generally in use in the nineteenth
century, for the word tin is frequently met with, in old books, where
money is clearly the article alluded to.
Upon reaching the great room your Committee were met by an officer of
the Museum, who conducted them over the building, and pointed out to
your Committee the chief objects of interest.
The Association had the satisfaction of looking at a very ancient
machine, called the stocks, which served the double purpose of punishing
offenders and regulating the money market. The chairman of your
Committee was appointed to sit on the stocks, and did so for a
considerable time, in the course of which he fully ascertained how they
might have been available for punishment, but he is still at a loss to
discover the monetary uses which our ancestors evidently put them to. It
must be regarded as one of the lost arts, like chuck-farthing, and other
mysteries, which are now only left to us in the pages of history.
Your Committee were greatly delighted by a series of portraits of a
tribe of individuals, carrying _flagelli_, or whips, and whose noses
were made the subject of a very learned paper by your president. The
extreme redness of the point was formerly supposed to arise from
drinking brandy; but your president having taken several successive
draughts of that spirit, without any peculiar redness in the nose
becoming immediately obvious, was prevented by exhaustion, ending in
utter prostration, from continuing his very ingenious and interesting
experiment. It is believed, by your Committee, that the redness of nose,
which was characteristic of the old _auriga_, or coach-driver, arose
from a constant habit of blushing, which the peculiar modesty of the
race, as it is found alluded to in reports of police cases in past ages,
would account for easily.
But the great attraction to your Committee consisted in the two
celebrated figures of antiquity, known to the public as the Whig and
Tory, by whom, according to old writers, this country was torn for a
considerable period. Your committee congratulate themselves that they do
not live in those shocking times, when, according to contemporary
writers, the Whigs ruined the British Constitution four times in six
years, and the Tories gave, in the same period, eleven death-blows to
public liberty. How the Constitution ever was restored to health, or how
liberty was brought to life, has greatly puzzled your Committee; but
they have at last discovered that there were, in those days certains
pills which eradicated everything; and, as mention is made in old books
of various pillars of the state, your Committee have no hesitation in
attributing the wondrous cures to the means alluded to.
Your Committee had almost forgotten to mention a very curious old
machine, called a drop; and, taken in connexion with the black-letter
phrase of "a drop too much," there can be no doubt that the drop now in
the Museum was that which is constantly spoken of as "too much," by the
old chroniclers.
The remains of a gibbet also gave rise to a curious discussion in one of
the sections, and your Committee at last decided that the instrument was
used by a hanging committee attached to a society of painters, who,
under the pretext of executing justice, were in the habit of resorting
to all sorts of cruelty.
The Association were likewise favoured with the perusal of a very scarce
old volume, mysteriously labelled, "A tax-gatherer's Book;" from which
your Committee are led to infer, that there were formerly a class of
marauders who traversed the kingdom, going from door to door, and
exacting sums of money from the inhabitants. To show the frivolous
pretexts that sufficed for these plunderers to carry on their system of
rapine, your Committee have only to observe that a demand was made on
account of light and air, which were actually in those days paid for by
the people in the form of what was called a window-tax.
Your Committee having concluded their inspection of the British Museum,
returned into the open air; and a shower of rain coming on, they had an
opportunity of making a series of observations on the effect which
moisture produces upon the skin, and the power of the animal caloric, in
the human foot, to resist for a time the chill ultimately engendered by
walking into puddles.