The subsequent explosion of parliamentary anger was rather increased

than lessened by an attempt of Henry FOX (afterwards the first Lord

Holland) to extenuate LEHEUP’S offence by some arguments of the ‘_Tu

quoque_’ sort. By a great majority, the House of Commons sent up an

address praying the King to direct his Attorney General to prosecute the

chief offender, who was accordingly convicted and fined a thousand

pounds. It is not uninstructive to note that Horace WALPOLE—himself one

of the SLOANE Trustees—treats the matter in one of his letters exactly

in the offhand man-of-the-world style in which Henry FOX had treated it

in the House of Commons.[54]

By this unfortunate episode, the name of one of the best of Englishmen

was brought into a sort of momentary connection with the name of one of

the worst. But the chief discredit of the story does not really rest

upon LEHEUP. A private citizen, of moderate means, had been willing to

expend seventy or eighty thousand pounds—besides an inestimable amount

of labour and research—upon an object essentially and largely public.

Yet a British Parliament could not summon up enough of public spirit to

tax its own members, in common with their tax-paying fellow subjects

throughout the realm, to the extent of a hundred thousand pounds, in

order to meet an obvious public want, to redeem an actual parliamentary

pledge, and to secure a conspicuous national honour for all time to

come. That want of public spirit did not exhaust its results with the

ruin of the poor families, scattered here and there, whose scanty means

had been hazarded and lost by gambling, under a parliamentary

temptation. It impressed itself, so to speak, on the subsequent history

of the institution for more than forty years. The Museum had been

founded grudgingly. It was kept up parsimoniously.

Had that fact been otherwise, the story of the knavery of Peter LEHEUP

would have little merited recital a century after it, and he, had passed

into oblivion.

The value of so small an incident in the crowded story of our National

Museum lies simply in the fact that it forms a just and salient

illustration of the narrowness of spirit with which the then

representatives of the people received the liberal gift of public

benefactors. It serves to show why it was that, from the year 1753 down

to some years after 1800, the History of the British Museum casts very

little honour on Britain as a nation, whereas the precedent history of

its integral parts, as separate and infant collections, casts, and will

long continue to cast, great honour on the memory of the COTTONS, the

HARLEYS, and the SLOANES, by whom they were painfully gathered and most

liberally dispensed.

Happily, as the course of this narrative—whatever its

shortcomings—cannot fail to show, the literary and scientific treasures

which men of that stamp had collected, came, in a subsequent generation

(and, in a chief measure, by dint of the exertions of the Trustees and

Officers to whom they had been, in course of time, confided) to be more

adequately estimated by Ministers and by Parliament in their public

capacity, as well as by the more cultivated portion of the people

generally. For more than a half-century past the History of the British

Museum has been one that any Briton may take delight and pride in

telling. And such it promises to be, preeminently, in the time yet to

come. In a conspicuous sense, the men by whom it was first founded, and

the men by whom, for what is now a long time past, it has been

administered and governed, have alike been true workers for Posterity.

BOOK THE SECOND.

_THE ORGANIZERS, AND EARLY AUGMENTORS._

_CONTENTS OF BOOK II_:—

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.—EARLY HISTORY OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

II. A GROUP OF ARCHÆOLOGISTS AND CLASSICAL EXPLORERS.

III. THE COLLECTORS OF THE CRACHERODE, LANSDOWNE, BURNEY, AND

EGERTON LIBRARIES, AND OF THE APPENDANT COLLECTIONS.

IV. THE KING’S LIBRARY—ITS COLLECTOR AND ITS DONOR.

V. THE FOUNDER OF THE BANKSIAN MUSEUM AND LIBRARY.

“The King made this Ordinance:—That there should be a mission of three

of the brethren of Solomon’s House, whose errand was only to give us

knowledge of the affairs and state of those countries to which they were

designed, and especially of the Sciences ... and Inventions of all the

World; and withal to bring us books, instruments, and patterns in every

kind....

“We have also precious stones, of all kinds; many of them of great

beauty.... Also, store of fossils.... But we do hate all impostures and

lies, insomuch as we have severally forbidden it to all our fellows,

under pain of ignominy or fines, that they do not show any natural work

or thing adorned or swelling, but only pure as it is, without

affectation of showing marvels....

“We have also those who take care to consider of the former labours and

Collections, and out of them to direct new explorations ... more

penetrating into Nature than the former.... Upon every invention of

value we erect a statue to the inventor, and give him a liberal and

honourable reward.

“We have hymns and services, which we say daily, of laud and thanks to

GOD for His marvellous works, and forms of prayer imploring His blessing

for the illumination of our labours.”—BACON, ‘_New Atlantis, a Work

unfinished_.’

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

‘A Museum of Nature does not aim, like one of Art, merely to charm

the eye and gratify the sense of beauty and of grace.

‘As the purpose of a Museum of Natural History is to ... impart and

diffuse that knowledge which begets the right spirit in which all

Nature should be viewed, there ought to be no partiality for any

particular class, merely on account of the quality which catches and

pleases the passing gaze. Such a Museum should subserve the

instruction of a People; and should also afford objects of study and

comparison to professed Naturalists, so as to serve as an instrument

in the progress of Science.’—

RICHARD OWEN, _On a National Museum of Natural History_, pp. 10; 11;

115.

_Househunting.—The Removal of the Sloane Museum from

Chelsea.—Montagu House, and its History.—The Early Trustees

and Officers.—The Museum Regulations.—Early Helpers in the

Foundation and Increase of the British Museum.—Epochs in the

Growth of the Natural History Collections.—Experiences of

Inquiring Visitors in the years 1765–1784._

[Sidenote: BOOK II, Chap. 1 EARLY HISTORY OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.]

The practical good sense which had always been a marked characteristic

in the life of Sir Hans SLOANE is seen just as plainly in those

clauses of his Will by which he leaves much latitude, in respect of

means and agencies, to the discretion of his Executors and Trustees.

It is seen, for example, when, after reciting some views of his own as

to the methods by which his Museum should be maintained for public

use, he adds the proviso—‘in such manner as they (the Trustees) shall

think most likely to answer the public benefit by me intended.’ He had

a love for the old Manor House at Chelsea, and contemplated, as it

seems, with some special complacency, the maintenance there of the

Collections which had added so largely to the pleasures of his own

fruitful life. But he was careful not to tie down his Trustees to the

continuance of the Museum at Chelsea, as a condition of his bounty.

They were at liberty to assent to its removal, should the balance of

public advantage seem to them to point towards removal.

Chelsea was in that day a quiet suburban village, distant from the

heart of London. As the site of a Museum it had many advantages, but

it was, comparatively and to the mass of visitors and students, a long

way off. The Trustees assented to a generally expressed opinion that

whilst the new institution ought not to be placed in any of the

highways of traffic, it ought to be nearer to them than it would be,

if continued in its then abode.

[Sidenote: Edmund, Duke of Buckingham, to Duke of Shrewsbury.]

One of the first places offered for their choice was the old

Buckingham House (now the royal palace). It was already a large and

handsome structure. The charm of its position, at that time, was not

unduly boasted of in the golden letters of the inscription conspicuous

upon its entablature—

‘_Sic siti lætantur lares._’

Its prospects, as described not very long before by the late ducal

owner, ‘presented to view at once a vast town, a palace, and a

cathedral, on one side; and, on the other sides, two parks, and a

great part of Surrey.’ Its fine gardens ended in ‘a little wilderness,

full of blackbirds and nightingales.’ Yet it was close to the Court

end of the town. But the price was thirty thousand pounds.

Another offer was that of Montagu House at Bloomsbury. Less charmingly

placed, and architecturally less striking in appearance than was its

rival, both its situation and its plan were better fitted for the

purposes of a public Museum. [Sidenote: MONTAGU HOUSE AND ITS

HISTORY.] It stood, it is true, on the extreme verge of the London of

that day. Northward, there was nothing between it and the distant

village of Highgate, save an expanse of fields and hedgerows. And for

a long distance, both to the east and the west, no part of London had

yet spread beyond it, except an outlying hospital or two. But there

were already indications that the town would extend in that northerly

direction, more quickly than in almost any other. The house had seven

and-a-half acres of garden and shrubberies; and its price was but ten

thousand, two hundred and fifty pounds.

Montagu House had been built about sixty years before for Ralph

MONTAGU, first Duke of Montagu. A spacious court separated the house

from Great Russell Street, towards which it presented to view only a

screen of pannelled brickwork, having a massive gateway and cupola in

the centre, and turreted wings, masking the domestic offices, at

either end. The house itself was rather stately than beautiful, but

its chief rooms and its grand staircase were elaborately painted by

the best French artists of the day. And the appendant offices were

more than usually extensive.

It stood on the site of a structure of much greater architectural

pretensions, erected for the same owner, only twelve years before,

from the designs of Robert HOOKE. That first Montagu House had been

burned to the ground.

The offer of Montagu House was accepted by the Trustees and approved

by the Government. It was found needful to make considerable

alterations in order to adapt the building to its new uses. This

outlay increased the eventual cost of the mansion, and of its

appliances and fittings, to somewhat more than twenty-three thousand

pounds. The adaptation, with the removal and re-arrangement of the

Collections, occupied nearly five years. It was not until the

beginning of the year 1759 that the Museum was opened for public

inspection. When removed to Bloomsbury, it was but brought back to

within a few hundred yards of its first abode.

[Sidenote: CONSTITUTION OF THE MUSEUM TRUST.]

We have seen that according to the plan for the government of the

institution which SLOANE had sketched in his Codicil of July, 1749,

there would have been a Board of Visitors as well as a Board of

Trustees. But, by the foundation Statute, enacted in 1753, both of

these Boards were incorporated into one. Forty-one Trustees were

constituted, with full powers of management and control. Six of these

were representatives of the several families of COTTON, HARLEY, and

SLOANE, the head, or nearest in lineal succession, of each family

having the nomination, from time to time, of such representatives or

‘Family Trustees,’ when, by death or otherwise, vacancies should

occur. Twenty were ‘Official’ Trustees, in accordance, so far, with

SLOANE’S scheme for the constitution of his Board of Visitors; and by

these two classes, conjointly, the other fifteen Trustees were to be

elected.

The Official Trustees were to be the holders for the time being of the

following offices:—(1) The Archbishop of Canterbury, (2) the Lord

Chancellor, (3) the Speaker of the House of Commons, (4) the Lord

President of the Council, (5) the First Lord of the Treasury, (6) the

Lord Privy Seal, (7) the First Lord of the Admiralty, (8 and 9) the

Secretaries of State, (10) the Lord Steward, (11) the Lord

Chamberlain, (12) the Bishop of London, (13) the Chancellor of the

Exchequer, (14) the Lord Chief Justice of England, (15) the Master of

the Rolls, (16) the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, (17) the

Attorney-General, (18) the Solicitor-General, (19) the President of

the Royal Society, (20) the President of the College of Physicians.

[Sidenote: Act of 26 Geo. II, c. 22, Clauses 4–8.]

To the first three of these Official Trustees Parliament entrusted the

appointment, from time to time, of all the Officers of the Museum,

except the Principal Librarian, who is to be appointed by the Crown,

on the nomination of the ‘Principal Trustees,’ as the first three

Trustees—the Archbishop, Chancellor, and Speaker—have always been

called.

The following fifteen persons were the first _elected_ Trustees, under

the Act of 1753:—The Duke of Argyle, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord

Willoughby of Parham, Lord Charles Cavendish, the Honourable Philip

Yorke, Sir George Lyttelton, Sir John Evelyn, James West, Nicholas

Hardinge, William Sloane, William Sotheby, Charles Grey, the Reverend

Dr. Thomas Birch, James Ward, and William Watson. [Sidenote: Records

of British Museum, in MS. ADDIT., 6179.] The first meeting of the

Trustees under the Act was held at the Cockpit, Whitehall, on the 17th

of December, 1753.

The first ‘Principal Librarian’[55] was Dr. Gowin KNIGHT, a member of

the College of Physicians, and eminent, in his day, as a cultivator of

experimental science. Some magnetic apparatus of his construction and

gift was placed in the Museum soon after its opening, and attracted,

in its day, much attention. He received the appointment after a keen

competition with the more widely-known physician and botanist, Sir

John HILL. The first three ‘Keepers of Departments’ were Dr. Matthew

MATY, Dr. Charles MORTON, and Mr. James EMPSON. Dr. KNIGHT retained

his post until 1772.

MATY and MORTON succeeded in turn to the office of Principal

Librarian, and their respective services will have a claim to notice

hereafter. EMPSON had been the valued servant and friend of Sir Hans

SLOANE. He is the only officer whose name appears in SLOANE’S Will. He

had served him as Keeper of the Museum at Chelsea for many years.

There is, in one of the letters of Horace WALPOLE to Sir Horace MANN,

an amusing account of an initiatory meeting of the original Trustees,

held prior to their formal constitution by Parliament. It is marked by

the writer’s usual superciliousness towards all hobbies, except the

dilettante hobby which he himself was wont to ride so hard. ‘I employ

my time chiefly, at present,’ he wrote to MANN, in February, 1753, ‘in

the guardianship of embryos and cockle shells. Sir Hans SLOANE valued

his Museum at eighty thousand pounds, and so would anybody who loves

hippopotamuses, sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese....

We are a charming wise set—all Philosophers, Botanists, Antiquarians,

and Mathematicians—and adjourned our first meeting because Lord

MACCLESFIELD, our Chairman, was engaged in a party for finding out the

Longitude.’

‘One of our number,’ continues WALPOLE, ‘is a Moravian, who signs

himself “Henry XXVIII, Count de REUSS.” The Moravians have settled a

colony at Chelsea, in Sir Hans’ neighbourhood, and I believe he

intended to beg Count Henry the Twenty-Eighth’s skeleton for his

Museum.’ This distinguished foreigner does not appear in the

parliamentary list.

The Chairman of the preliminary meeting so airily described by

WALPOLE, continued, under the definitive constitution of the Trust, to

take a leading part in its administration. It appears to have been by

Lord MACCLESFIELD that the original ‘Statutes and Bye-laws’ of the

Museum, or many of them, were drafted.’

[Sidenote: THE REGULATIONS FOR ADMISSION AND STUDY.]

In the form in which they were first issued, in 1759, these statutes

directed that the Museum should ‘be kept open every day in the week,

except Saturday and Sunday.’ [Sidenote: 1759–1803.] For the greater

part of the year the public hours were from nine o’clock in the

morning until three o’clock in the afternoon. On certain days, in the

summer months, the open hours were from four o’clock in the afternoon

until eight—so as to meet the requirements of persons actively engaged

in business during the early part of the day. But the publicity was

hampered by a system of admission-tickets which had to be applied for

on a day precedent to that of every intended visit. The application

had first to be made, then registered; a second application had to

follow, in order to receive the ticket; and the ticket could rarely be

used at the time of receiving it. [Sidenote: MS. ADDIT., 6179, ff. 36,

seqq.] So that, in practice, each visit to the Museum had commonly to

be preceded by two visits to the ‘Porter’s Lodge.’

The visitors were admitted in parties, at the prescribed hours, and

were conducted through the Museum by its officers according to a

routine which, practically and usually, allowed to each group of

visitors only one hour for the inspection of the whole. Special

arrangements, however, were made for those who resorted to the Museum

for purposes of study. [Sidenote: _Statutes and Regulations_, part ii,

§ 3.] To such, say the statutes, ‘a particular room is allotted, in

which they may read or write without interruption during the time the

Museum is kept open.’

[Sidenote: MS. ADDIT., 6179, as above.]

The aggregate number of persons admitted as visitors—exclusive of

students—was, for some years, restricted to sixty persons, as a

maximum, in any one day.

In order to give the reader a definite and clear idea of what was

seen, in 1759, by the earliest visitors to the British Museum, in its

rudimentary state, some sort of ground plan is essential, but the

merest outline will suffice for the purpose.

There were at Montagu House two floors or stories of state apartments.

The upper floor was that which was first shown, after the formation of

the Museum.

The visitor, having ascended the superb staircase painted by LA FOSSE,

passed through a vestibule and grand saloon (_A_ _B_) furnished with

various antiquities, into the ‘Cottonian Library’ (_C_), and thence

into the ‘Harleian Library,’ which occupied three rooms (_D_, _E_, and

_F_). He then entered the ‘Medal Room’—containing the coins and medals

of the SLOANE and COTTON collections (_G_); the ‘SLOANE Manuscript

Room’ (_H_); and the room containing the chief part of the antiquities

(_I_)—

[Illustration:

_Rough Diagram, showing Principal Floor of the original British

Museum of 1759._

]

Then the visitor, passing again through the vestibule (_A_) and great

saloon (_B_), entered the rooms _K_, _L_, and _M_. _K_ contained the

minerals and fossils of Sir Hans SLOANE’S collection; _L_, the shells;

_M_, the plants and insects. Thence he passed into _N_, which was

devoted to the bulk of the SLOANE Zoological Collection, and into _O_,

containing artificial and miscellaneous curiosities.

Descending to the floor beneath, by the secondary staircase between

_N_ and _O_, the visitor then entered the small room _P_, which

contained the magnetic apparatus given by Dr. Gowin KNIGHT, and the

rooms, _Q_ and _R_ devoted to the reception of the greater part of the

Royal Library, restored by HENRY, Prince of Wales, and augmented—but

with extreme parsimony—by several of the Stuart monarchs, whose

additions to the shelves were, indeed, much oftener made of books

given, than of books bought. He then passed into SLOANE’S Printed

Library, which occupied the whole of the spacious and handsome suite

of rooms _S_, _T_, _V_, _W_, _X_, and _Y_, and (passing through the

Trustees’ Room _Z_,) entered the room _A A_, containing the EDWARDS

Library; ending his tour of inspection in the room _B B_, in which was

arranged the remainder of the old Royal Library, the main portion

whereof had been seen already in _Q_ and _R_.

[Illustration:

_Rough Diagram, showing Ground Plan of the original British Museum

of 1759._

]

When the combined Museum and Libraries, thus arranged, were first

opened to the inspection of the curious Public in 1759, the

collections enumerated in the Foundation Act of 1753 had, it is seen,

already received some notable increase by gifts. [Sidenote: EARLY

HELPERS IN THE FOUNDATION AND GROWTH OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.] The first

donor was the House of Lords, by whose order the historical

collections of Thomas RYMER, royal historiographer, and editor of the

_Fœdera_, were given to the Trustees, immediately after their

incorporation. [Sidenote: 1755–57.] Then followed, in 1757, the gift

of the Royal Library and that of the Lethieullier Antiquities from

Egypt. [See Chapter II.]

The next donor, in order of time, was a Jewish merchant, and

stock-broker, of humble origin, but of princely disposition.

[Sidenote: 1759. DA COSTA’S HEBREW COLLECTION.—HISTORY OF THE

COLLECTOR.] Solomon DA COSTA was one of the many men who have done

honour to commerce not merely by its successful prosecution, but by

the conspicuous union of mercantile astuteness with noble tastes and

true beneficence. [Sidenote: _Correspondence of Thomas Hollis._] His

talents for business enabled him to make a hundred thousand

pounds—which in his day was more, perhaps, than the equivalent of four

hundred thousand in ours. He had made it, says a keen observer, who

knew the man well, ‘without scandal or meanness.’ When wealth made him

independent, he spent his new leisure, not in luxury but in hard

labour for the poor.

DA COSTA had come, from Amsterdam, into England, in the year 1704. His

struggling Hebrew compatriots were among the earliest sharers in his

bounty. But his heart was too large to suffer that bounty to be

limited by considerations either of race or of local neighbourhood. To

him, as to the Samaritan of old, distress made kinship. He was wont to

journey, from time to time, through thirty or forty parishes of Surrey

and of Kent, with the punctual diligence of a commercial traveller,

simply to succour the distressed by that best of all succour, the

provision of means through which, in time, self-help would be

developed and ensured. Provident loans, clothing-funds, the education

and apprenticeship of necessitous children, were the forms in which DA

COSTA’S benevolence delighted to invest not only his money, but his

personal exertion and his cordial sympathy. He devoted more than a

thousand pounds a year to the benefit of Christian Englishmen, besides

all that he gave to the poor of his own faith and race. And to both he

gave, without noise or ostentation.

He had, too, the breadth of view which enabled him to put, on their

true foot of equality, the claims of the necessitous mind, as well as

those of the necessitous body. Unlike many other men of genuine

beneficence, popular estimates of giving did not mislead him into

one-sidedness of aim.

Within a few years of DA COSTA’S arrival in England, probably about

the year 1720, and when, with youthful ardour, he was seeking to

acquire knowledge as well as to make money, he met, at a bookseller’s,

with a remarkable collection of Hebrew books, of choice editions and

in rich and uniform bindings. The collection had that sumptuousness of

aspect which invited inquiry into its origin. All that he could learn

on that score was the probability that some statesman or other of the

Commonwealth period, had collected them for a public but unfulfilled

purpose, and that they had fallen—with so much other spoil—into the

hands of CHARLES THE SECOND. By that King’s order they had received,

if not their rich binding, at least his crown and cypher as marks of

the royal appropriation, and then (in a truly Carolinian fashion) were

left in the hands of the King’s stationer for lack of payment of the

charge of what—whether binding or mere decoration—had been done to the

books by the royal command. DA COSTA prized them as among his chief

treasures, but directly he heard of the foundation of a great

repository of learning, the emotions of the Jewish broker were such as

might have been felt by ‘broad-browed VERULAM,’ could he have lived to

see that day; save only that BACON would first have scanned the

evidence about the origin of the institution, and would have

discriminated the praise.

DA COSTA wrote a letter to the Trustees. The generous heart is facile

in ascribing generosity. ‘A most stately monument’ said DA COSTA,

‘hath been lately erected and endowed, by the wisdom and munificence

of the British Legislature,’ and he accompanied his eulogy with a

prayer that the Almighty would ‘render unto them a recompense,

according to the work of their hands.’ [Sidenote: Da Costa to the

Trustees of the Brit. Museum, ‘5th of Sivan, 5519’ [1759]]. He brought

his mite of contribution, he added, not only as proof of sympathy with

the work in progress, ‘but as a thanksgiving offering, in part, for

the generous protection and numberless blessings which I have enjoyed

under the British Government.’

The gift embraced several Biblical Manuscripts of value, and a still

choicer series of early printed books, one hundred and eighty in

number. The giver has a merited place in the roll of our public

benefactors; and his devout prayer for the new Museum, ‘May it

increase and multiply ... to the benefit of the people of these

nations and of the whole earth,’ has had a more conspicuous fulfilment

than could, in 1759, have been imagined by the most sanguine of

bystanders.

[Sidenote: GIFT OF THE THOMASON COLLECTION OF ENGLISH BOOKS OF

1641–1662, BY GEORGE III.]

Three years afterwards, and soon after his accession to the throne,

King GEORGE THE THIRD gave to the Nation that most curious assemblage

of nearly the whole English literature of two and twenty eventful

years of Civil War,—open or furtive,—which is known to the Public as

the ‘Thomason Collection,’ though its technical name within the Museum

walls continues, as of old, to be ‘the King’s Tracts.’

That name is the less appropriate from its tendency to give an

inaccurate idea of the contents of the King’s gift, as well as from

its disregard of the origin of the Collection. The ‘tracts’ include

the most ponderous theological quartos that ever came from an English

press as well as the tiniest handbill, or the fugitive circular which

called together a ‘Committee of Sequestrators’ at Wallingford House.

[Sidenote: GEORGE THOMASON AND HIS LABOURS.]

George THOMASON, its collector, was an eminent London bookseller, of

royalist sympathies, who watched intensely the progress of the great

struggle between King and Parliament, Cavalier and Roundhead, and who

had noted with professional keenness how strikingly the printing press

was made to mirror, almost from day to day, the strife of senators in

council, as well as that of soldiers in the field. He had seized, in

1641, the idea of helping posterity the better to realize every phase

of the great conflict, the oncoming of which many men had long

foreseen, by gathering everything which came out in print—as far as

vigilant industry could do so—whether belonging to literature, and to

the obvious materials of history, or merely subserving the most

trivial need of the passing moment. He failed, of course, to secure

everything; but his endeavour was wonderfully successful, on the

whole. He also gathered many manuscripts which no printer in England

dared to put into type. And he obtained a large number of political

and historical pieces, bearing on English affairs, which had issued

from foreign presses; their authors being sometimes foreign observers

of the struggle, but more frequently British refugees.

CHARLES THE FIRST congratulated THOMASON on the utility of his idea.

More than once the King was able to gratify his curiosity by borrowing

some tract or other which only our collector was known to possess. The

Parliament, meanwhile, was far from exhibiting any literary sympathies

in the undertaking. Some of its leaders loved freedom of the press

when it was seen to be a channel for urging forward their peculiar

doctrines and aims, but had the gravest doubts about its policy when

it manifestly helped their opponents and gave back blow for blow. The

‘Thomason Collection’ came to be viewed, at length, much in the light

in which soldiers view an enemy’s battery. If it could be captured and

carried off, some of the pieces might be turned against the enemy. If

the attempt at complete capture should miscarry, a sudden sally might

at least enable the assailants to destroy what they had failed to

secure.

Hence it was that the poor Collector came to be in such alarm about

the possible fate of his treasures that he had them repeatedly packed

into cases, and, as the successes of the war veered to and fro, sent

them, at one time, far to the south of London; at another time, as far

to the east; now, smuggled them, concealed between the real and false

tops of tables, into a city warehouse; and anon made a colourable sale

of them to the University of Oxford.

When the King enjoyed his own again, the Collection was offered, as

fit to be made a royal one. It contained more than thirty-three

thousand separate publications—bound in about 2,200 volumes—issued

between 1640 and 1662 inclusive. But CHARLES THE SECOND was busied

with pursuits having little to do with any kind of learning, and was

ill inclined, as we have seen already, to burden his Treasury for the

enrichment of his Library. Sir Thomas BODLEY’S Trustees at Oxford

refused the offer, in their turn, under a very different but scarcely

less obstructive pressure. Their excellent founder had formed peculiar

and stringent views about the literature worthy of a great University.

He had warned them against stuffing his library with ‘mere baggage

books.’ And so future Bodleian curators had, in another age, to buy

with large bank notes many things which their predecessors could have

bought with small silver coins;—just as in the ancient story.

The unfortunate Collection went a-begging. The books passed from hand

to hand, somewhat, it would seem, by way of pledge or mortgage. They

had cost a large sum of money, and a larger amount of toil. When his

expectations were at their best the first owner, it is said, refused

several thousands of pounds for them. [Sidenote: THE ACQUIREMENT OF

THE THOMASON COLLECTION BY GEORGE III.] His ultimate successors in the

possession were glad, in 1762, to accept, at the hands of King GEORGE

THE THIRD, three hundred pounds. The purchase was recommended to him

by Thomas HOLLIS, and also by Lord BUTE, as a serviceable addition to

the newly founded Museum. [Sidenote: 1762.] As all readers now know,

it has largely subserved our history already. It is not less certain

that the ‘Thomason Collection’ embodies a store of information yet

unused.

[Sidenote: THE BRANDER FOSSILS.]

[Sidenote: 1766.]

The next augmentor of the Museum was one of its Trustees, Gustavus

BRANDER, distinguished as a promoter of natural science, and more

especially of mineralogy and palæontology in the early stages of their

study in England. A remarkable collection of fossils found in

Hampshire, in the London Clay, was given by Mr. BRANDER to the Public,

after having been, at his cost, carefully examined and described by

Dr. SOLANDER. It was the first notable contribution to the grand

series of specimens in palæontology which, in their combination, have

made the British Museum the most important of all repositories in that

department of science.

To the Zoological Collections, the additions made, whether by gift or

by purchase—save as the result, more or less direct, of ‘Voyages of

Discovery,’ which will be noticed presently—were for many years very

unimportant. The first purchase worthy of record was a collection of

stuffed birds, formed in Holland, and acquired, in 1769, for four

hundred and sixty pounds. This purchase was made by the Trust.

The reign of GEORGE THE THIRD is marked by very few characteristics

which are more honourable, both to King and people, than is its long

series of expeditions to remote countries made expressly, or mainly,

for purposes of geographical and scientific discovery, and extending

over almost the whole of the reign.

[Sidenote: ACCESSIONS ACCRUING FROM VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY. 1760–1820.]

Scarcely one voyage of the long series failed to bring, directly or

indirectly, some valuable accession or other to the Collection of

Natural History. Sometimes such accessions came to the Museum as the

gifts of the navigators and explorers themselves. In this class of

donors the name of Captain James COOK,[56] and that of Archibald

MENZIES, occur both early and frequently. Sometimes they came as the

gifts of the Board of Admiralty. Sometimes, again,—and not

infrequently—as those of the King, who, in his best days, took a keen

interest in enterprise of this kind, and delighted in talking with the

captains of the discovery ships about their adventures, and about the

marvels of the far-off lands they had been among the first to see. Nor

did the King stand alone in his active encouragement of remote

explorations. Many of the great and wealthy nobles gave generous

furtherance to them, and were equally ready to make available for

scientific study the new specimens which the ships brought home. In

this way, for example, the Marquess of ROCKINGHAM gave to the Museum a

curious collection of reptiles gathered in Surinam.

In the same manner was furnished that minor, but very popular and

instructive, collection illustrating the rude arts and modes of life

of the newly explored countries, which some yet among us can remember

as occupying the ‘South Sea Room’ of the old house. In the course of

years it came to be eclipsed by much better collections of the same

kind elsewhere, and so to wear a meagre and somewhat obsolete aspect.

But it had rendered good service in its day, and was the germ of what

will become, it may be hoped, in due time, an ethnological collection

worthy of a seafaring people.

[Sidenote: EPOCHS IN THE GROWTH OF THE NATURAL HISTORY COLLECTIONS.]

As regards the Natural History Collections, the growth of the Museum

may be said to have been mainly dependent on the Voyages of Discovery

for more than forty years. That source of improvement seems to mark,

distinctively, the first epoch in the history of those collections.

Then came a second epoch, marked by some approach to systematic

improvement, in all branches, by means of the purchase of entire

private collections as opportunity offered. A third period may be

dated from the acquisition of the botanical and other gatherings of

Sir Joseph BANKS in 1827. Sir Joseph’s splendid gift was soon followed

by so many other gifts—sometimes as donations, more frequently as

bequests—that for many years the liberality of benefactors quite

eclipsed the liberality of Parliament. Only of late years can it be

said that the public support of the Natural History Collections has

been worthy, either of the Nation or of their own intrinsic importance

to it. By degrees, statesmen have become convinced that such

collections are much more than the implements of a knot of professed

naturalists, and the toys of the public at large. Slowly, but surely,

the economic and commercial value of a great museum of natural

history, as well as its educational value, have come saliently into

view. And a wise enlargement of the contributions from national funds

has had the excellent result of stimulating, instead of checking, the

benefactions of individuals.

Some of the particular steps by which so conspicuous an improvement

has been gradually brought about will claim our notice hereafter, in

their due order.

If, for a long series of years, the degree of liberality with which

these varied collections were shown to the Public at large scarcely

accorded, either with their origin, or with the purpose for which they

had been avowedly combined, it should be borne in mind that ‘the

Public’ of 1759 was a very different body from the Public of a century

later. It is only by degrees that indiscriminate admission to museums

has come to be either very useful or quite feasible. There was a good

deal of warrant in 1759 for the opinion recorded by one of the

Trustees when the Rules were first under discussion. [Sidenote: MS.

ADDIT., 6179, f. 61.] ‘A general liberty,’ said Dr. John WARD, the

eminent Gresham Professor, ‘to ordinary people of all ranks and

denominations, is not to be kept within bounds. Many irregularities

will be committed that cannot be prevented by a few librarians who

will soon be insulted by such people [as commit abuses], if they offer

to control or contradict them.’ But, after all, the inadequate

strength of the staff was the main cause of such of the restrictions

as were chiefly complained of.

The original regulations, with but small change, remained in force for

about forty-five years. How they worked will be best and most briefly

shown by citing the experiences of two or three notable visitors, at

various periods, during the last century.

[Sidenote: GROSLEY’S ACCOUNT OF THE MUSEUM IN 1765.]

In 1765, Peter John GROSLEY, an accomplished and keen-eyed

Frenchman, familiar with the Museums of Italy as well as with those

of his own country, visited the new Museum, and recorded his

impressions of it. With the building he was charmed. He had already

seen many parts of England, but nowhere any house that he thought

worthy to be compared with Montagu House. He calls it ‘the largest,

the most stately, the best arranged, and most richly decorated’

structure of its kind in all England. He made repeated visits. What

chiefly arrested his attention in the Natural History rooms were the

beauty of the papillonacea—comprising, he thought, ‘all that either

the old world or the new can supply in this kind’—and the

strangeness of some mineral specimens brought from the Giant’s

Causeway in Ireland. The Printed Books he thought to be ‘the weakest

part of this vast collection.’ In one of the principal rooms, ‘I

saw,’ he continues, ‘not without astonishment, a very fine bust of

Oliver CROMWELL, occupying a distinguished place!’ He praises the

courtesy with which Drs. MATY and MORTON discharged, by turns, the

duty of exhibition. ‘They show,’ he says, ‘the most obliging

readiness to explain things to the visitor, but,’ he adds, with

obvious truth, ‘their very courtesy is wont to make a stranger

content himself with hasty and unsatisfactory glances, that he may

not trespass on their politeness.’ And then he makes a wise

practical suggestion, which was carried into effect, almost half a

century afterwards.

‘In order really to carry out the intentions of Parliament,’ writes

GROSLEY, in 1765, ‘it is to be wished that the Public should be

admitted more liberally, and more easily, by placing a warder in every

room, to be continually present during the public hours.’

Ten years afterwards, the difficulty on this score had so increased

that a notification to the following effect was circulated: ‘British

Museum, 9th August, 1776. The Applicants of the middle of April are

not yet satisfied. [Sidenote: MS. ADDIT., 10,555, fol. 14.] Persons

applying are requested to send weekly to the porter to know how near

they are upon the List.’

[Sidenote: VISIT OF C. P. MORITZ IN 1782.]

In 1782, the plan had so far improved that instead of waiting from

April until August, a visitor could usually get admission within a

fortnight or so after applying for a ticket. We have an intelligent

and amusing account of a visit then made. This time the narrator is a

German,—Charles MORITZ, of Berlin. ‘In general,’ writes MORITZ, ‘you

must give in your name a fortnight before you can be admitted. But, by

the kindness of Mr. WOIDE’—a countryman of the traveller, and, at that

time, an Assistant-Librarian in the Museum,—‘I got admission

earlier.... Yet, after all, I am sorry to say that it was the room,

the glass-cases, the shelves, ... which I saw; not the Museum itself,

so rapidly were we hurried on through the departments. The company who

saw it when I did, and in like manner, was variously composed. They

were of all sorts, and some, as I believe, of the very lowest classes

of the people of both sexes, for, as it is, the property of the

Nation, every one has the same ‘right’—I use the term of the

country—to see it that another has. [Sidenote: WENDEBORN’S ACCOUNT OF

THE MUSEUM. 1780–90.] I had Mr. WENDEBORN’S book in my pocket, and it,

at least, enabled me to take more particular notice of some of the

principal things.’

The book thus referred to by MORITZ is the German original of that

account of English society and institutions which WENDEBORN himself

translated, a few years afterwards, into English, and published at

London, under the title of _A View of England_.

Its author had settled in London as the Minister of a German

Congregation. He was himself a studious frequenter of the Museum, and

says of it: ‘The whole is costly, worth seeing, and honourable to the

Nation; when taken altogether it has not its equal. When considered in

its separate branches, almost each of them singly may be surpassed by

some other collection even in England itself.’ But the only collection

which he specifies as, in this sense, superior, are the Hunterian

Museum, and that which had been formed by Sir Ashton LEVER, and which,

when the _View of England_ was written, belonged to Mr. PARKINSON.

[Sidenote: Wendeborn, _A View of England_, vol. i, 323–325.] Of the

Museum Library, WENDEBORN says, ‘though a numerous and valuable

collection, it is yet, in many respects, very deficient, and as to its

use, much circumscribed.’

When the German visitor of 1782 pulled Mr. WENDEBORN’S book from his

pocket, as he was hurried through the Museum, the action attracted the

attention of the other visitors. The more intelligent of them pressed

round him to see if the book could be made to yield any information

for their behoof also. And the stranger gratified their curiosity by

translating a passage or two in explanation of the objects they were

passing. Then came an exquisite bit of sub-officialism.

‘The gentleman who conducted us’ observes MORITZ, ‘took little pains

to conceal the contempt which he felt for my communications when he

found it was only a German description of the British Museum which I

had.’ ‘So rapid a passage,’ he continues, ‘through a vast suite of

rooms, in little more than one hour of time, with opportunity to cast

but one poor longing look of astonishment on all the vast treasures of

nature, antiquity, and literature, in the examination of which one

might profitably spend years, confuses, stuns, and overpowers the

visitor.’

Two years later, we have a similar account of the experiences of an

inquisitive Englishman, and of one who is much more outspoken in his

complaint. [Sidenote: WILLIAM HUTTON’S VISIT IN 1784.] William HUTTON,

the historian of Birmingham, came to London in December, 1784. ‘I was

unwilling to quit it,’ he writes, ‘without seeing what I had, many

years, wished to see. But how to accomplish it was the question. I had

not one relative in that vast metropolis to direct me.... By good

fortune, I stumbled upon a person possessing a ticket for the next

day, which he valued less than two shillings. We struck a bargain in a

moment and were both pleased.... I was not likely to forget Tuesday,

December 7th, at eleven.’ HUTTON, shrewd as he was, did not suspect

the real nature of his ‘bargain.’ He had met with a professional

dealer in Museum tickets; one of several who, on a humbler scale,

followed in the steps of Peter LEHEUP, but were lucky enough not to

excite the anger of the House of Commons.

He was taken through the rooms in company with about ten other

persons, at a very rapid rate. He asked their conductor for some

information about the curiosities. The reply, he says, so humbled him

that he could not utter another word. ‘The company seemed influenced.

They made haste and were silent. No voice was heard but in whispers.

If a man spends two minutes in a room, in which a thousand things

demand his attention, he cannot bestow on them a glance apiece.... It

grieved me to think how much I lost for want of a little information.

In about thirty minutes we finished our silent journey through the

princely mansion, which would well have taken thirty days.... I had

laid more stress on the British Museum, than on anything else which I

should see in London. It was the only sight which disgusted me....

[Sidenote: Hutton, _A Journey to London_, pp. 187–196.] Government

purchased this rare collection at a vast expense, and exhibits it as a

national honour.... How far it answers the end proposed this account

will testify.’

Better days were at hand. But it was not until 1805 that the rules of

admission were even so far effectively revised as to abolish the

traffic in tickets. Nor was any ‘Synopsis’ of the contents of the

Museum provided until 1808. In that year admission tickets were

abolished wholly.

Straitened means of maintenance have, at all times, had far more to do

with any inadequate provision for public usefulness of which (in days

long past) there may have been well-grounded cause of complaint, than

had neglect or oversight on the part of any officer.

The officers, too, were, for a very long period after the

establishment of the Museum, engaged, and remunerated, only for an

attendance, in rotation, for two hours daily, on alternate days. A

largely increased provision by Parliament was the essential condition

of any large increase in the accessibility of the institution.

As early as in 1776 the necessary expenditure in salaries and wages

alone (at a very low scale of payment), exceeded the annual income

(£900) accruing from the original endowment fund. After Parliament had

made an additional provision—first introduced in a clause of what was

then called a ‘hotch-potch Act’—averaging £1000 yearly, the total

annual income was still but £2448, including the yearly three hundred

pounds accruing from the ‘EDWARDS Fund,’ and the £248, paid, under the

grant of GEORGE THE SECOND, as the net yearly salary of the ‘King’s

Librarian.’ For a considerable period, the sums expended in

purchases—for all the departments collectively—had not amounted, in

any one year, to one hundred pounds.

[Sidenote: THE CAREER OF DR. MATTHEW MATY.]

On the decease of the first Principal Librarian, Dr. Gowin KNIGHT, in

1772, Dr. Matthew MATY was appointed to that office. He was born at,

or in the neighbourhood of Utrecht, in 1718, and was educated in the

University of Leyden, where he took his degrees in 1740, the subject

of his inaugural dissertation, for that of M.A. and Doctor of

Philosophy, being ‘custom,’ and its wide results and influence social

and political. His essay was published (under the title _Dissertatio

philosophica inauguralis de Usu_,) in 1740. For the degree of Doctor

in Medicine, he treated of the effects of habit and custom upon the

human frame (_De Consuetudinis efficacia in corpus humanum_). This

medical dissertation was also published at Leyden, in the usual form,

in the same year. Both essays showed much ability, along with many

faults and crudities. Some of these became matters of conversation and

correspondence between the author and his friends. The subject was

less hacknied than that of the majority of academical essays, and MATY

was induced to reconsider it. He republished the result of his

thoughts, in a greatly improved form, in the following year at

Utrecht, and, to gain a wider audience, wrote in French. The _Essai

sur l’Usage_ attracted much attention, and served to pave the way for

the establishment by its author, eight years afterwards, of the

periodical entitled, _Journal Britannique_, as editor of which he is

now best remembered. He came to England in 1741, practised as a

physician, attained considerable reputation, and distinguished himself

more especially by following in the path of Sir Hans SLOANE, and

others, as an earnest supporter of the practice of inoculation. In

this field he was able to render good service, both by his

professional influence and by his pen. In the sharp controversies

which soon, and for a time, impeded the new practice, he took a large

share, and his publications on the subject are distinguished from many

others by their union of moderation of tone with vigour of advocacy.

MATY’S predilections, however, pointed to a literary rather than to a

medical career. He had early taken that ply, and it was not easily

effaced. Within six years (1750–1756) he published eighteen volumes of

the _Journal Britannique_—edited in London but printed at the Hague—in

the toils of which he was, according to GIBBON, almost unaided.

GIBBON, too, bears testimony to the amiability of the man, as well as

to the industry of the writer. His own first and youthful achievement

in literature had MATY’S encouragement and active aid. [Sidenote:

_Memoirs of Gibbon_, p. 107.] When the _Essai sur l’Etude de la

Littérature_ was, after much filing and polishing, given to the

Public, a preliminary letter from MATY’S pen accompanied it, and by

him the essay was carried through the press.

When he succeeded Dr. Gowin KNIGHT, as Principal Librarian in 1772,

his health was already failing. He occupied the post during less than

four years. To the last, his pen was busily employed. He was a

contributor to several foreign journals, as well as to the

_Philosophical Transactions_, some volumes of which he edited, or

assisted to edit, in his capacity as one of the Secretaries of the

Royal Society, to which office he had been appointed in 1765. Among

his minor literary publications are a life of BOERHAAVE, in French,

and one of Dr. Richard MEAD, in English. At the time of his death he

was working on the _Life of Lord Chesterfield_, afterwards prefixed to

the collective edition of the Earl’s _Miscellaneous Works_. Dr. MATY

died in 1776, and was succeeded in his Librarianship by his colleague,

Dr. Charles MORTON, who had had, from the beginning, the charge of the

department of Manuscripts, and had also acted as Secretary to the

Trustees.

[Sidenote: NOTICE OF DR. CHARLES MORTON, THIRD PRINCIPAL LIBRARIAN.]

Dr. MORTON was a native of Westmoreland, and was born in 1716. Until

the year 1750 he had practised as a physician at Kendal. In 1751 he

became a Licentiate of the College of Physicians, and in the following

year a Fellow of the Royal Society. His service in the British Museum

lasted from 1756 to 1799. There are several testimonies to the

courtesy with which he treated such visitors and students as came

under his personal notice, but his long term of superior office was

certainly not marked by any striking improvement in the public economy

of the Museum. And how much room for improvement existed there the

reader has seen. Dr. MORTON, like his predecessor, was one of the

Secretaries of the Royal Society. He filled that office from the year

1760 to 1774. He contributed several papers to the _Philosophical

Transactions_, as well on antiquarian subjects as on topics of

physical science, and he was the first editor of Bulstrode

WHITELOCKE’S remarkable narrative of his embassy to Sweden during the

Protectorate. MORTON’S writings are not remarkable either for vigour

or for originality, but, on more topics than one, they had the useful

result of setting abler men awork. He was three times married: (1) to

Mary BERKELEY, the niece of SWIFT’S frequent correspondent Lady

Elizabeth GERMAINE; (2) to Lady SAVILE; (3) to Mrs. Elizabeth PRATT.

He died on the 10th February, 1799.

Of his successors in the office of Principal Librarian some account

will be found in the Introductory Chapter of Book III.

CHAPTER II.

A GROUP OF CLASSICAL ARCHÆOLOGISTS AND EXPLORERS.

‘The Archæologist cannot, like the Scholar, carry on his researches

in his own Library, independent of outward circumstances. For _his_

work of reference and collation he must travel, excavate, collect,

arrange, delineate, transcribe, before he can place his whole

subject before his mind....

‘A Museum of Antiquities is to the Archæologist what a Botanic

Garden is to the Botanist. It presents his subject compendiously,

synoptically, suggestively, not in the desultory and accidental

order in which he would otherwise be brought into contact with its

details.’—

C. T. NEWTON, _On the Study of Archæology_, p. 26.

_Sir William_ HAMILTON _and his Pursuits and Employments in

Italy.—The Acquisitions of the French Institute of Egypt, and

the capture of part of them at Alexandria.—Charles_ TOWNELEY

_and his Collection of Antiquities.—The Researches of the Earl

of_ ELGIN _in Greece.—The Collections and Writings of Richard_

PAYNE KNIGHT.

[Sidenote: BOOK II, Chap. II. CLASSICAL ARCHÆOLOGISTS AND EXPLORERS.]

To the comparatively small assemblage of antiquities which originally

formed part of the Museum of COURTEN and of SLOANE, several additions

had been made—besides the coins, medals, and bronzes of Sir Robert

COTTON—prior to the opening of the British Museum to the Public in

1759. Some of those additions were the gift, severally, of three

members of the LETHIEULLIER family. Others were the gift of Thomas

HOLLIS, who became a constant benefactor to the Museum almost from the

day of Sir Hans SLOANE’S death to that of his own.

The LETHIEULLIER antiquities had been chiefly gathered in Egypt.

[Sidenote: THE EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES OF THE LETHIEULLIERS.] The first

gift was made by the Will of Colonel William LETHIEULLIER, dated 23rd

July, 1755. [Sidenote: MS. ADDIT., 6179, f. 29.] And the first

catalogue of any kind which was prepared for the British Museum, after

its acquisition by Parliament, was a list of these antiquities drawn

up by Dr. John WARD, one of the Trustees. And here it may deserve

remark that for many years after the foundation not a few of the

Trustees took a large share in the actual work of preparing the Museum

for public use, as well as in the ordinary duties of control and

administration.

To the gift of Colonel William LETHIEULLIER, his cousin, Smart

LETHIEULLIER, and his nephew, Pitt LETHIEULLIER, made several

additions between the years 1756 and 1770. The last-named of these

gentlemen, when receiving, as executor of his uncle, the personal

thanks of a Committee of the Trustees (February, 1756), for the

bequest so made, took the opportunity of augmenting it by the gift of

some antiquities which he had himself collected during his residence

at Grand Cairo.

But the first large and comprehensive addition in the archæological

department was that made in 1772 by the purchase, by means of a

Parliamentary grant, of the Museum of Antiquities, which had been

formed during seven years’ researches in Italy by Sir William

HAMILTON, our Ambassador at Naples.

[Sidenote: SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND HIS CAREER AT NAPLES.]

Sir William HAMILTON was among the earliest of British diplomatists

who, by a voluntary choice, turned to good account, in the interests

of learning and of the public, the opportunities which diplomatic life

so frequently offers for amassing treasures of literature and science,

and (in many cases) for saving them from peril of destruction. In that

path Frenchmen had showed the way many generations earlier.

As far, indeed, as regards a public and national care for matters of

the intellect, France is far better entitled to claim a priority in

the proud distinction of ‘teaching the nations how to live,’ than is

any other country in the world. It is to her immortal honour that from

a very early period, and even in times of sore trouble, her sovereigns

and her statesmen have known how to turn public resources to the

promotion of public culture, as well as of national power. A man may

read in French diplomatic letters of instruction of the sixteenth

century orders to collect manuscripts and antiquities, as implements

of public education, such as he would look for in vain in parallel

British documents of any century at all,—inclusive of the

present;—although it is certain that the omission has by no means

arisen from the engrossment of our diplomatists in weightier concerns.

In Sir William HAMILTON’S case the liberal tastes and the mental

energy of the individual supplied the defect of his instructions. He

set an example which not a few of our ambassadors have voluntarily

followed with like public spirit, and with results not less

conspicuous.

William HAMILTON was the fourth son of Lord Archibald HAMILTON,

youngest son of James, third Duke of HAMILTON, K.G. His mother, Lady

Jane HAMILTON, was of that illustrious family by birth, as well as by

marriage, being the daughter of James, sixth Earl of ABERCORN. He was

born in the year 1730.

Towards the close of his career, Sir William would sometimes say to

his intimates, when conversation turned upon the battle of life: ‘I

had to begin the world with a great name, and one thousand pounds for

all my fortune.’ But the world never used him very roughly. Whilst

still a young man (1755) he married Miss BARLOW, the wealthy heiress

of Hugh BARLOW, of Laurenny Hall, in Pembrokeshire. She brought him an

estate, in the neighbourhood of Swansea, worth nearly five thousand

pounds a year; but it was his happy lot to have married a true wife,

not a bag of money. DUCLOS, who saw much of the HAMILTONS in their

family circle at Naples in after years, was wont to say, ‘They are the

happiest couple I ever saw.’

[Sidenote: 1764–1800.]

Mr. HAMILTON was sent to the Court of Naples in 1764. The post, in

that day, was not overburdened with business. And for some years to

come the new Ambassador found the Neapolitan society little to his

taste. He was intellectual, and, in the truest sense, an English

gentleman. The tone of society at that time in Naples was both

frivolous and dissolute. He had to form, by slow degrees, a circle in

which a man of cultivated tastes might enjoy social life. The public

duties of the embassy could employ but a small portion of his time,

and the temper of the man made employment to him a necessary of life.

He threw his energies into hard study. And he possessed that happiest

of mental characteristics, an equal love of the natural sciences, and

of the world of art and of books. He could pore, with like enjoyment,

on the deep things of Nature, and on the secrets of ‘the antiquary

times.’ And in both paths, he knew how to make his personal enjoyments

teem with public good.

His first labours were given to the exhaustive research of volcanic

phenomena. He amazed the fine gentlemen of Naples by setting to work

as though he had to win his bread by the sweat of his brow. He

laboured harder on the slopes of Vesuvius than an exceptionally

diligent craftsman would labour in a factory—had Naples possessed any.

Within four years he ascended the famous mountain twenty-two times.

More than one of these ascents was made at the risk of his life. He

made, and caused to be made, innumerable drawings of all the phenomena

that he observed, showing the volcanic eruption in all its stages, and

under every kind of meteorological condition. He formed too a complete

collection of volcanic products, and of the earths and minerals of the

volcanic district. When he had studied Vesuvius under every possible

aspect, he went to Etna.

The results of these elaborate investigations were sent, from time to

time, to the Royal Society (of which Mr. HAMILTON was made a Fellow,

after the reading of the first of his papers in 1766), and they were

published in the _Philosophical Transactions_, between the years 1766

and 1780. They were afterwards collected, and improved, in the two

beautiful volumes entitled _Campi Phlegræi_, and were lavishly

illustrated from the drawings of F. A. FABRIS, who had been trained by

HAMILTON to the work.[57] The collection of volcanic geology and

products was given to the British Museum in 1767.

[Sidenote: THE HAMILTON MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES.]

These geological labours had been diversified, at intervals, by the

collection of a rich archæological museum, and by the establishment of

a systematic correspondence on antiquarian subjects with men of

learning in various parts of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This

correspondence had for its object, not merely the enrichment of his

own Museum, but the awakening of local attention throughout the

country to its antiquities and history; matters which had theretofore

been but too much neglected—in the Neapolitan fashion.

One of the earliest and choicest acquisitions made by HAMILTON in the

early years of his residence at Naples was a collection of vases

belonging to the senatorial family of PORCINARI, many of which had

been gathered from sepulchres and excavations in Magna Græcia. This

purchase, made in 1766 and afterwards largely increased, may be

regarded as the substantial beginning of the noble series of vases now

so prominent a part of our National Museum.

Thus had been formed, by degrees, at Naples, a museum which, at the

beginning of the year 1772, included seven hundred and thirty fictile

vases; a hundred and seventy-five terra-cottas; about three hundred

specimens of ancient glass (including three of the most perfect

cinerary urns known, at that time, to have been discovered); six

hundred and twenty-seven bronzes, of which nearly one-half illustrated

the arms and armour of the ancients; more than two hundred specimens

of sacrificial, domestic, and architectonic, instruments and

implements; fourteen bassi-relievi, busts, masques, and inscribed

tablets; about a hundred and fifty miscellaneous pieces of ancient

ivory, including a curious series of tessaræ; a hundred and forty-nine

gems, chiefly scarabæi; a hundred and forty-three personal ornaments,

of various kinds, in gold; a hundred and fifty-two fibulæ in various

materials; and more than six thousand coins and medals, comprising a

considerable series from the towns of Magna Græcia.

The first fruits of this noble collection was the publication,

commenced in the year 1766, of the work entitled _Antiquités

Etrusques_, &c., with admirable illustrations, and with a descriptive

text, written in French by D’HANCARVILLE. [Sidenote: PUBLICATION OF

THE ‘ANTIQUITÉS ETRUSQUES.’] The first edition of this costly book was

issued at Naples. It naturally attracted great attention. No such

collection of fictile vases—in their combination of number and

beauty—had been theretofore known.

The two volumes published at Sir William’s cost in 1766, were followed

by two other volumes in 1767. All of them were executed with great

care and with lavish expenditure. But the later edition, printed at

Florence—long afterwards—is in many points superior.[58]

Whilst the volumes were still incomplete, Mr. HAMILTON circulated

proof plates of the work with great liberality. Some of these proofs

were lent to our famous English potter, Josiah WEDGWOOD, and gave a

strong impulse to his taste and artistic zeal. [Sidenote: Meteyard,

_Life of Josiah Wedgwood_, vol. ii, p. 72.] But they excited an eager

longing for access to the vases themselves, as the only satisfactory

models.

[Sidenote: Wedgwood to Bentley, 10 May, 1770.]

When WEDGWOOD wrote to his friend and partner, BENTLEY;—‘Mr.

HAMBLETON, you know, has flattered the old pot-painters very much,’

one feels that for the moment that excellent man’s prepossessions had

been rubbed a little, against the grain. But he shows directly that

there is no real intent to impeach the Editor’s honesty in the matter.

‘He has, no doubt,’ adds WEDGWOOD, ‘taken his designs from the very

best vases extant,’ which was precisely what it was his duty to do,

since selection was the task in hand, not the publication of seven

hundred specimens.

This Collection—far more remarkable than any, of its kind, which had

yet come to England—was brought over in 1772, and offered to the

Trustees of the British Museum. An appeal was made to Parliament, and

the first grant of public money, worthy of mention, was now made in

order to its acquisition. The sum given to Mr. HAMILTON was eight

thousand four hundred pounds.

How soon one of the incidental results of the acquisition returned to

the Public much more than its cost—leaving out of account altogether

the best returns which accrue from such Collections—is among the

familiar annals of our commerce. Josiah WEDGWOOD told a Committee of

the House of Commons that, within two years, he had himself brought

into England, by his imitations of the Hamilton vases in his

manufactory at Etruria, about three times the sum which the Collection

had cost to the country.

[Sidenote: THE EXPLORATIONS AT POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM.]

At the beginning of the year 1772 Mr. HAMILTON was made a Knight of

the Bath. He returned to Naples soon after the transfer of his

antiquities to the Museum, and ere long he was busily engaged in new

explorations at Pompeii and at Herculaneum. He sent to the Society of

Antiquaries, in 1777, an interesting account of the discoveries at

Pompeii, which is printed in the fourth volume of the _Archæologia_.

At Herculaneum he employed, during many years, Father Antonio PIAGGI

to superintend excavations and make drawings, and gave him an annual

salary equal to a hundred pounds sterling, after vainly

endeavouring—at that time—to urge on the Neapolitan Government its own

duty to carry on the task in an adequate manner for the honour of the

nation, and to publish the results of the explorations for the general

benefit of learning.

Sir William’s services as an ambassador were rendered with zeal and

with credit, as opportunity offered. But the opportunity, in his

earlier period, was comparatively rare. It was, perhaps, despite the

proverb, not altogether a happy thing for Naples that its annals were

tiresome. The rust of inactivity showed itself there, as so often

elsewhere, to be much more fatal than the exhaustion of strife.

Certainly, to the ambassador, it was a personal misfortune that, when

the affairs of Naples became really momentous to Englishmen, the

vigour and the will of earlier days were then departing from the man

whose energies were at length to be put to the test in the proper

sphere of his profession. Meanwhile, and in his prime, he had but—from

time to time—to make routine memorials as to matters of individual

wrong; to heal breaches between one Bourbon and another; and to secure

the neutrality of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies during the war which

grew out of the struggle in America. Such matters made no great inroad

upon the pursuits of the naturalist and the antiquarian.

Labour on the mountains, in the excavations, and in the study, had

been, now for many years, relieved by congenial friendships. There had

been an improvement in the tone of Neapolitan Society since HAMILTON’S

first appearance. And all that was best in Naples had gathered round

him. To English travellers his hospitalities were splendid and

unremitting. But in 1782 the circle lost its mistress. Seven years

before, Sir William and Lady HAMILTON had been bereaved of a

daughter—their only child. In 1783 occurred the dreadful earthquake in

Calabria, the greatest calamity of the century save that at Lisbon.

Among the scientific correspondents in England with whom Sir William

HAMILTON kept up an intercourse was Sir Joseph BANKS, then the

President of the Royal Society. To him was sent the fullest account

that was attainable of the sad event of 1783.

It had chanced that just before the news reached Naples, Sir Joseph

had written to HAMILTON about some experiments and discoveries on the

composition and transmutation of water. He had said, jestingly: ‘In

future we philosophers shall rejoice when an eruption, which may

swallow up a few towns, affords subsistence for as many nations of

animals and vegetables.’ This letter HAMILTON was about to answer when

he received the intelligence from Calabria.

‘We have had here,’ he writes, ‘some shocks of an earthquake which, in

Calabria Ultra, has swallowed up or destroyed almost every town,

together with some towns in Sicily.... Every hour brings in accounts

of fresh disasters. [Sidenote: 1783. Feb. 18.] Some thousands of

people will perish with hunger before the provisions sent from hence

can reach them. This, I believe, will prove to have been the greatest

calamity that has happened in this century. An end is put to the

Carnival. [Sidenote: Hamilton to Banks, MS. ADDIT., 8967, ff. 34,

seqq.] The theatres are shut. I suppose Saint Januarius will be

brought out.’ There had been no exaggeration in these first reports.

It was found that at Terranova, not only were all the buildings

destroyed, but the very ground on which they stood sunk to such a

depth as to form a sort of gulf. In that district alone 3043 people

lost their lives. At Seminara 1328 persons were buried beneath the

ruins. In other and adjacent districts more than 3300 persons

perished.

In 1784 the ambassador visited England. His stay was brief. But an

incident which occurred during this visit gave its colour to the rest

of his life.

In 1791 Sir William HAMILTON was made a Privy Councillor, and in the

same year (nine years after the death of his first wife) he married

Emma HARTE, whom he had first met in the house of his nephew, Colonel

GREVILLE, in 1784. In September, 1793, his eventful acquaintance with

NELSON was formed.

[Sidenote: HAMILTON’S FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH NELSON.]

In that month, NELSON had been sent to Naples with despatches from

Admiral Lord HOOD, in which Sir William HAMILTON was pressed to

procure the sending of some Neapolitan troops to Toulon. After his

first interview with Lord HOOD’S messenger, he is said to have

remarked to his wife: ‘I have a little man to introduce to you who

will become one of the greatest men England has ever had.’ The

favourable impression was reciprocal, it seems. The ambassador gave

such good furtherance to the object of NELSON’S mission, that the

messenger, we are told, said to him, ‘You are a man after my heart.

[Sidenote: Clarke and McArthur, _Life, &c., of Nelson_, vol. i, p.

133; and Nicolas, vol. i, p. 326.] I’m only a captain, but, if I live,

I shall get to the top of the tree;’ while, of the too-fascinating

lady into whose social circle he was presently brought, NELSON wrote

to his wife, ‘She is a young woman of amiable manners, who does honour

to the station to which she is raised.’ Several years, however, were

yet to intervene before the events of the naval war and the political

circumstances of Naples itself brought about a close connexion in

public transactions between the great seaman and the British

ambassador, whose long diplomatic career was drawing to its close.

HAMILTON, after the manner of Collectors, had scarcely parted with the

fine Museum, which he had sold to the Public in 1772, before he began

to form another. The explorations of the buried cities gave some

favourable opportunities near home, and his researches were spread far

and wide. In amassing vases he was especially fortunate. And, in that

particular, his second Collection came to surpass the first. He became

anxious to ensure its preservation in integrity. With that view he

offered it to the King of Prussia.

[Sidenote: THE SECOND HAMILTON COLLECTION OF VASES.]

‘I think,’ he wrote to the Countess of LICHTENAU, in May, 1796, ‘my

object will be attained by placing my Collection, with my name

attached to it, at Berlin. And I am persuaded that, in a very few

years, the profit which the arts will derive from such models will

greatly exceed the price of the Collection. The King’s [porcelain]

manufactory would do well to profit by it.... For a long time past I

have had an unlimited commission from the Grand Duke of Russia

[afterwards PAUL THE FIRST], but, between ourselves, I should think my

Collection lost in Russia; whilst, at Berlin, it would be in the midst

of men of learning and of literary academies.

‘There are more,’ he continues, ‘than a thousand vases, and one half

of them figured. If the King listens to your proposal, he may be

assured of having the whole Collection, and I would further undertake

to go, at the end of the war, to Berlin to arrange them. [Sidenote:

Sir W. Hamilton to the Countess of Lichtenau, 3 May, 1796.] On

reckoning up my accounts,—I must speak frankly (_il faut que je dise

la vérité_),—I find that I shall needs be a loser, unless I receive

seven thousand pounds sterling for this Collection. That is exactly

the sum I received from the English Parliament for my first

Collection....[59] As respects Vases, the second is far more beautiful

and complete than the series in London, but the latter included also

bronzes, gems, and medals.’ But the negotiation thus opened led to no

result. And some of the choicest contents of this second Museum were

eventually lost by shipwreck.

When the correspondence with Berlin occurred, the Collector’s health

was rapidly failing him. The political horizon was getting darker and

darker. Victorious France was putting its pressure upon the Neapolitan

Government to accept terms of peace which should exact the exclusion

of British ships from the Neapolitan ports. The ambassador needed now

all the energies for which, but a few years before, there had been no

worthy political employment. They were fast vanishing; but, to the

last, Sir William exerted himself to the best of his ability. It was

his misfortune that he had now to work, too often, by deputy.

[Sidenote: THE LATER EVENTS AT NAPLES, 1796–1799.]

Lady HAMILTON’S ambitious nature, and her appetite for political

intrigue, when combined with some real ability and a good deal of

reckless unscrupulousness as to the path by which the object in view

might be reached, were dangerous qualities in such a Court as that of

Naples. If, more than once, they contributed to the attainment of ends

which were eagerly sought by the Government at home, and were of

advantage to the movements of the British fleet, they cost—as is but

too well known—an excessive price at last. The blame fairly attachable

to Sir William HAMILTON is that of suffering himself to be kept at a

post for which the infirmities of age were rapidly unfitting him. But

there he was to remain during yet four eventful years; quitting his

embassy only when, to all appearance, he was at the door of death.

Between the September of 1793 and that of 1798 NELSON and Sir William

HAMILTON met more than once; but their chief communication was, of

course, by letter. When, in October, 1796, after two victories in

quick succession, NELSON lost his hard-won prizes, and narrowly

escaped being taken into a Spanish port, it was to HAMILTON that he

wrote for a certificate of his conduct. And one of the ambassador’s

latest diplomatic achievements was his procuring access for British

ships to Neapolitan ports before the Battle of the Nile was won.

On the very night of that famous first of August, 1798, Sir

William—whilst the distant battle was yet raging—told NELSON of the

disappointment which had followed the rumours, current during many

days at Naples, of a defeat given to the French fleet in the Bay of

Alexandretta, and assured him of his own confidence that the rumours,

though then unfounded, would come true at last. Five weeks afterwards,

he had the satisfaction of sending to London the first official

account of the great victory which he had seen before with the eye of

faith.

At Naples the authentic news was received with a joy which worked like

frenzy. When the ambassador first saw the Queen, after its arrival,

she was rushing up and down the room of audience, and embracing every

person who entered it—man, woman, or child. [Sidenote: Sir W. Hamilton

to Nelson; Nicolas, vol. iii, p. 72.] He sent to NELSON an account of

the universal joy. ‘You have now, indeed, made yourself immortal,’ was

his own greeting. On the 22nd they again met, on board the _Vanguard_,

in the Bay. On the 21st of the following December Sir William HAMILTON

accompanied the King and Court of Naples in their flight to Palermo.

The events of 1799 belong rather to history than to biography. Sir

William HAMILTON’S chief share in them lay in his exertions to obtain

for NELSON the large powers which the King of NAPLES vested in the

English Admiral—with results so mingled. On the 21st of June he

embarked with NELSON on board the _Foudroyant_, and sailed with the

squadron to Naples. In the stormy interview between NELSON and

Cardinal RUFFO, Sir William acted as interpreter. In all that

followed, he seems to have been rather a spectator than an actor. At

the close of the year he joined with NELSON in the vain endeavour to

induce the King to return to Naples, while that course was yet open to

him.

[Sidenote: DEPARTURE FROM NAPLES.]

On the 10th of June, 1800, Sir William took his final leave of Naples,

which had been his home for thirty-six years, and where he had mingled

in a departed world. In company with the Queen and three princesses,

the HAMILTONS sailed in the _Foudroyant_ for Leghorn, on their way to

Vienna. A few days after the embarkation, a fellow-passenger writes

thus: ‘Sir William HAMILTON appears broken, distressed, and harassed.

[Sidenote: Miss Knight to Lady Berry, July 2, 1800.] He says that he

shall die by the way, and he looks so ill that I should not be

surprised if he did.’ When the Admiral struck his flag (13th July) at

Leghorn, the party set out for Vienna. Between Leghorn and Florence,

Sir William’s carriage met with an overturn, which increased his

malady. At Trieste the physicians were inclined to despair of his

life. But he rallied sufficiently to reach England at last, and the

change from turmoil to rest prolonged his life for two years to come.

[Sidenote: SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON’S LAST DAYS.]

During the long interval between the acquisition of the first Hamilton

Museum and the return of its Collector to his country, he had marked

his interest in the national Collection by repeated and valuable

gifts. To make yet one gift more—trivial, but possessing an historical

interest—was one of his last acts. On the 12th of February, 1803, he

sent to the British Museum a Commission given by the famous fisherman

of Amalfi to one of his insurrectionary captains. On the 6th of April

Sir William HAMILTON died, in London. He was buried at Milford Haven.

The kindly heart had left many memorials of its quality at Naples. The

ambassador had lost a part of his fortune. But many poor dependants,

in his old home, enjoyed pensions from his liberality.

NELSON, when writing to the Queen of the Two Sicilies upon the death

of their common friend, made this remark on his testamentary

arrangements:—‘The good Sir William did not leave Lady HAMILTON in

such comfortable circumstances as his fortune would have allowed. He

has given it amongst his relations. [Sidenote: Nelson to the Queen of

Naples (Nicolas, vol. iv, p. 84).] But she will do honour to his

memory, although every one else of his friends calls loudly against

him on that account.’ This comment, however, expresses rather a

temporary feeling than a wise judgment. Sir William had settled a

jointure of seven hundred pounds a year upon his widow.

During the few months of life that yet remained to the great seaman

himself, the highest encomium known to his vocabulary was to say,

‘So-and-so was a great friend of Sir William HAMILTON.’

[Sidenote: THE ‘INSTITUTE OF EGYPT;’ AND ITS RESEARCHES AND

ACQUISITIONS.]

As the British Museum owes one choice portion of its archæological

treasures to the man who was NELSON’S type of friendship, so also it

owes—indirectly—another portion of them to the man who was NELSON’S

favourite aversion, and whose very name, in the Admiral’s mind, served

to sum up all that was most detestable. The Battle of the Nile, and

the military operations which followed it in the after years, would

have counted no antiquarian riches amongst their trophies, but for

that ardent love of science in NAPOLEON which prompted him to plan the

‘Institute of Egypt’ as an essential part of the Campaign of Egypt.

The intention with which the Institute of Egypt was founded embraced

every kind of study and research. The scholars of whom it was composed

included within their number men of the most varied powers. What they

effected was fragmentary, and yet their researches, directly or

indirectly, bore much fruit.

In the end, the harvest was to France herself none the less abundant

from the fact that NELSON’S achievement, and what grew thereout, set

Englishmen and Germans to work with increased vigour in the same

field, and divided some of the tools.

Scarcely had General BONAPARTE established the military power of the

French Republic in Egypt, before he was employed in organizing the

Institute at Cairo. [Sidenote: 1798–1801.] Its declared object was

twofold: (1) the increase and diffusion of learning in Egypt itself;

(2) the examination, study, and publication, of the monuments of its

history and of its natural phenomena, together with the elucidation

and improvement of the natural and industrial capabilities of the

country. [Sidenote: _Mémoires sur l’Egypt_, passim.] The Institute was

composed of thirty-six members, and was divided into four sections.

The section with which alone we are here concerned—that of Literature,

Arts, and History—was headed by DENON, and amongst its other members

were DUTERTRE, PARSEVAL, and RIPAULT. Its labours began in 1798, and

were continued, with almost unparalleled activity, until the summer of

1801, when the defeat of BELLIARD near Cairo, and the capitulation of

MENOU at Alexandria, placed that part of the collections of the

Institute which had not been already sent to France at the disposal of

Lord HUTCHINSON.

DENON, on his return from Upper Egypt to Cairo, said, with French

vivacity, that if the active movements of the Mamelukes now and then

forced an antiquary to become, in self-defence, a soldier, the

antiquary was enabled, by way of balance and through the good nature

and docility of the French troops, to turn a good many soldiers into

antiquaries. Had it not been for this general sympathy and readiness,

one can hardly conceive that so much could have been accomplished,

even under the eye of NAPOLEON, amidst perils so incessant. The

_Description de l’Egypte_ is for France at large, no less than for

NAPOLEON and the men whom he set to work, a monument which might well

obliterate the momentary mortification attendant on the transfer to

London of a part of the treasures of the Institute. History, ancient

or modern, scarcely offers a parallel instance in which war was made

to contribute results so splendid, both for the progress of science

and for the eventual improvement of the invaded country. To the

labours initiated by NAPOLEON, and partially carried out by the

‘Institute of Egypt,’ the ablest of the recent rulers of that land owe

some of their best and latest inspirations. Nor is it a whit less true

that the most successful of our English Egyptologists have followed

the track in which Frenchmen led the way. Such results, indeed, can

never suffice to justify an unprovoked invasion. But they illustrate,

in a marvellous way, how temporary evil is wrought into enduring good.

By the sixteenth article of the Capitulation of Alexandria, it was

provided that the Members of the Institute of Egypt might carry back

with them all instruments of science and art which they had brought

from France, but that all collections of marbles, manuscripts, and

other antiquities, together with the specimens of natural history and

the drawings, then in the possession of the French, should be regarded

as public property, and become subject to the disposal of the generals

of the allied army.

[Sidenote: THE CONVENTION OF ALEXANDRIA.]

The Convention was made between General MENOU and General HOPE, on the

31st of August, 1801. [Sidenote: 1801, August.] Against this sixteenth

article MENOU made the strongest remonstrances, but General HOPE

declined to modify it, otherwise than by agreeing to make a reference,

as to the precise extent to which it should be carried into actual

effect, to Lord HUTCHINSON, as Commander-in-Chief.

Between MENOU and HUTCHINSON there was a long correspondence. The

French General declared that the Collections, both scientific and

archæological, were private, not public property. The since famous

‘Rosetta stone,’ for example, belonged, he said, to himself. Various

members of the Institute claimed other precious objects; some alleged,

with obvious force of argument, that the care bestowed on specimens of

natural history made them the property of the collectors and

preservers; others threatened to prefer the destruction or defacement

of their collections, by their own hands, to the giving of them up to

the English army.

[Sidenote: THE NEGOTIATIONS AND SERVICES OF COLONEL TURNER.]

The correspondence was followed by several personal conferences

between MENOU and Colonel (afterwards General) TURNER, in order to a

compromise. TURNER, who was himself a man of distinguished knowledge

and accomplishments, advised Lord HUTCHINSON to insist on the transfer

of the Marbles and Manuscripts, and to yield the natural history

specimens, with some minor objects, to the possessors. The astute

Capitan Pasha had contrived to place himself in ‘possession’ of one of

the most precious of the marbles—the famous sarcophagus which Dr.

CLARKE so strenuously contended to be nothing less than the tomb of

ALEXANDER—by seizing the ship on board of which the French had placed

it, and he gave Colonel TURNER almost as much trouble as MENOU himself

had given.

The French soldiers were, as was natural, deeply mortified when they

heard that the captors of Alexandria were to have the antiquities.

Every man of them who had had to do with their excavation or transport

had vindicated DENON’S eulogy by his pains to protect the sculptures

from harm. Now, their excessive zeal and their national pride led to

an unworthy result. The Rosetta stone was stripped of the soft cotton

cloth and the thick matting in which it had been sedulously wrapped,

and was thrown upon its face. Other choice antiquities were deprived

of their wooden cases. [Sidenote: CAPTURE OF THE ROSETTA STONE;] When

TURNER, with a detachment of artillerymen and a strong tumbril, went

to the French head-quarters to receive the Rosetta stone, he had to

pass through a lane of angry Frenchmen who crowded the narrow streets

of Alexandria, and were not sparing in their epithets and sarcasms.

Those artillerymen, too, were the first English soldiers who entered

the city. When Colonel TURNER had gotten safely into his hands the

stone destined to mark an era in philology, he returned good for evil.

He permitted some members of the Institute of Egypt to take a cast of

it, which they sent to Paris in lieu of the original.

The Rosetta inscription had been found, by the French explorers, among

the ruins of a fortification near the mouth of the Rosetta branch of

the Nile. When they discovered it the stone was already broken, both

at the top and at the right side. Of its triple inscription,

commemorative of the beginning of the actual and personal reign of

PTOLEMY EPIPHANES—and therefore cut nearly two hundred years before

the Christian era—that in the hieroglyphic or sacred character had

suffered most. The second or enchorial inscription was also mutilated

in its upper portion. The Greek version was almost entire.

The scarcely less famous Alexandrian sarcophagus was found by the

French in the court-yard of a mosque called the ‘Mosque of St.

Athanasius.’ [Sidenote: AND OF THE SARCOPHAGUS SOMETIMES CALLED ‘TOMB

OF ALEXANDER.’] Of its discovery and state when found, the following

account is given in the _Description de l’Egypte_:—A small octagonal

building, covered with a cupola, had been constructed by the Moslems

for their ablutions, and in this they had placed the sarcophagus to be

used as a bath; piercing it for that purpose with large holes, but not

otherwise injuring it. The sarcophagus is a monolith of dark-coloured

breccia—such as the Italians call _breccia verde d’Egitto_—and is

completely covered with hieroglyphics. [Sidenote: _Description de

l’Egypte_, vol. v, pp. 373, seqq.; Plates and Append. (8vo edit.),

1829.] Their number, according to the French artist by whom

impressions in sulphur were taken of the whole, exceeds 21,700. Dr.

CLARKE’S identification of this monument as the tomb of Alexander has

not been supported by later Egyptologists.

This sarcophagus, with most of the other antiquities, was sent on

board the flagship _Madras_. [Sidenote: LIST OF THE EGYPTIAN

ANTIQUITIES EMBARKED AT ALEXANDRIA.] The Rosetta inscription, Colonel

TURNER embarked, with himself, in the frigate _Egyptienne_. His own

list of the antiquities thus brought, in safety, to England runs

thus:—(1) An Egyptian sarcophagus, of green breccia; (2) another, of

black granite, from Cairo; (3) another, of basalt, from Menouf; (4)

the hand of a colossal statue—supposed to be Vulcan—found in the ruins

of Memphis; (5) five fragments of lion-headed statues, of black

granite, from Thebes; (6) a mutilated kneeling statue, of black

granite; (7) two statues, of white marble, from Alexandria—Septimus

Severus and Marcus Aurelius; (8) the Rosetta stone; (9) a lion-headed

statue, from Upper Egypt; (10) two fragments of lions’ heads, of black

granite; (11) a small kneeling figure, of black granite; (12) five

fragments of lion-headed statues, of black granite; (13) a fragment of

a sarcophagus, of black granite, from Upper Egypt; (14) two small

obelisks, of basalt, with hieroglyphics; (15) a colossal ram’s head.

Nos. 10 to 15 inclusive were all brought from Upper Egypt. (16) A

statue of a woman, sitting, with a model of the capital of a column of

the Temple of Isis at Dendera, between her feet; (17) a fragment of a

lion-headed statue, of black granite, from Upper Egypt; (18) a chest

of Oriental Manuscripts—sixty-two in number—in Coptic, Arabic, and

Turkish.

I have given the more careful detail to this notice of the

archæological results of the capitulation of Alexandria, inasmuch as a

very inaccurate statement of the matter has found its way into an able

and deservedly accredited book. [Sidenote: See the _History of

Europe_, vol. v, p. 596 (last edition).] Sir Archibald ALISON, in his

_History of Europe_ (probably from some misconception of the

compromise effected between General TURNER and the French

Commander-in-Chief), writes thus:—‘General HUTCHINSON, with a generous

regard for the interests of science and the feelings of these

distinguished persons [the Members of the Institute of Egypt], agreed

to depart from the stipulation and allow these treasures of art to be

forwarded to France. The sarcophagus of ALEXANDER, now in the British

Museum, was, however, retained by the British, and formed the glorious

trophy of their memorable triumph.’

General TURNER’S conspicuous service on this occasion did not end with

the transport into England of the Alexandrian Collections. Before the

Rosetta inscription was, by the King’s command, placed, together with

its companions, in the British Museum, as their permanent abode,

General TURNER obtained Lord BUCKINGHAMSHIRE’S assent to the temporary

deposit of the stone from Rosetta in the custody of the Society of

Antiquaries, by whose care copies of the inscriptions were sent to the

chief scholars and academies of the Continent, in order that combined

study might be brought to bear, immediately, upon the contents. This

circumstance makes it all the more honourable to our countryman, Dr.

Thomas YOUNG, that by his labours upon the stone a strong impulse was

first given to the progress of hieroglyphical discovery.

The accessions from Alexandria served, also, to initiate another

improvement. When, in 1802, they reached the Museum, its contents had

so increased that the old house afforded no adequate space for their

reception. They had, like some famous sculptures of much later

acquisition, to be placed in sheds which scarcely preserved them from

bad weather, and were even less adapted to facilitate their study.

[Sidenote: 1804, July 2.] [Sidenote: _Parliamentary Debates_, vol. ii,

col. 901, seqq.] The Trustees made their first application to

Parliament for the enlargement of the Museum Building, ‘in order to

provide suitable room for the preservation of invaluable monuments of

antiquity which had been acquired by the valour, intrepidity, and

skill of our troops in an expedition seldom equalled in the annals of

the country.’ And before presenting their petition they determined

that increased facilities should be given for the admission of the

Public, as soon as they should be enabled to make an adequate increase

in the staff of the establishment.

When the extension of the British Museum came first to be discussed in

the House of Commons (somewhat grudgingly and captiously it must, in

truth, be acknowledged), upon the application of the Trustees, some of

their number were already aware that an accession was likely soon to

accrue through the munificence of a fellow-trustee, which would make a

new and extensive building indispensable. Charles TOWNELEY had already

made a Will in virtue of which—as it stood in 1804—the Towneley

Marbles were devised in trust for the British Museum, on condition

that the Trustees thereof should, ‘within two years from the time of

the testator’s decease, set apart a room or rooms sufficiently

spacious and elegant to exhibit these antiquities most advantageously

to the Public,—such rooms to be exclusively set apart for the

reception and future exhibition of the antiquities aforesaid.’

Circumstances not foreseen in 1802, when Colonel TOWNELEY’S Will had

been first made, led afterwards to a change in the mode in which his

noble Collection was to be received by the Public. But its

preservation and public accessibility, in one way or other, had long

been resolved upon.

The TOWNELEYS, of Towneley, rank among the most ancient and

distinguished commoners of Lancashire. They can trace an honourable

descent to a period antecedent to the Conquest. They have been seated

at Towneley from the twelfth century. Several of them have given good

service to England, in various ways, in spite of the obstacles and

discouragements which, for many generations, clave to almost every man

whose convictions obliged him to adhere to the Roman Catholic Church,

and so to incur the pains and disabilities of recusancy. Of these they

had their full share. One TOWNELEY had been mulcted in fines amounting

to more than five thousand pounds, simply for remaining true to his

belief, and had been, for that cause, sent (with an ingenuity of

torment one is almost tempted to call diabolic) from prison to prison

across the breadth of England, and back again.[60] Another TOWNELEY

was driven into an exile which lasted so long that when he returned

into Lancashire everybody had forgotten his features and his voice,

except his dog. But neither fine, imprisonment, nor banishment, had

converted them to Protestantism. Hence it was that Charles TOWNELEY,

the Collector of the Marbles, received his education at Douay, and

contracted all the strong formative impressions of early life and

habit on the Continent.

He was born, in the old seat of the family at Towneley Hall, on the

1st of October, 1737. [Sidenote: LIFE OF CHARLES TOWNELEY.] His

father, William TOWNELEY, had married Cecilia, sole daughter and heir

of Richard STANDISH, by his wife Lady Philippa HOWARD, daughter of

Henry, Duke of NORFOLK. The hall—which has not yet lost all its

venerable aspect—was built in part by a Sir John TOWNELEY in the reign

of HENRY VIII, and its older portions (turrets, gateway, chapel, and

library) suit well the fine position of the building, and the noble

woods which back it. Of the founder two things still remain in local

tradition and memory. He took the changes made under the rule of

HENRY—or rather of Thomas CROMWELL—so much in dudgeon, that when

Lancaster Herald came to Towneley, upon his Visitation, he refused to

admit him, saying, ‘Do not trouble thyself. There are no more

gentlemen left in Lancashire now than my Lord of DERBY, and my Lord

MONTEAGLE.’ The other tradition of this same Sir John is, that he

enclosed a common pasture called Horelaw, and so made the peasantry as

angry with his innovations as he was with CROMWELL’S. Some of their

descendants may yet chance to assure the inquisitive stranger, that

his ghost still haunts the park, crying aloud in the dead of night—

‘Lay out! lay out![61]

Horelaw and Hollingley Clough!’

At Douay Charles TOWNELEY received a careful education, moulded, of

course, under the conditions and the memories of that celebrated

College. When he left its good priests he was already the owner of the

family estates—his father having died prematurely in 1742—and he was

plunged, at once, into the gaieties and temptations of Paris. All the

Mentorship he had was that of a great uncle who had become

sufficiently naturalised to win the friendship of VOLTAIRE, and to be

able to turn _Hudibras_ into excellent French. The dissipations of the

Capital overpowered, for a time, the real love of classical studies

which had been excited in the provincial college. But the seed had

been sown in a good soil. The study of art and of classical

archæology, in particular, presently reasserted its claims and renewed

its attractions. It was a fortunate circumstance, too, that family

affairs required the presence of Mr. TOWNELEY in England on the

attainment of his majority.

He had left Towneley very young. He came back to it with more of the

foreigner than of the Englishman in his ways of life and manners. But

he was able to win the genuine regard of his neighbours, and to take

his fair share in their pursuits and sports, although he could

never—at least in his own estimation—succeed in expressing his

thoughts with as much ease and readiness in English as in French. Late

in life, he would speak of this conscious inability with regret.

Whether needfully or not, the feeling, no doubt, prevented Mr.

TOWNELEY from turning to literary account his large acquirements.

What he had seen of the Continent had given him a desire to see more

of it, and the bias of his youthful studies pointed in the same

direction. In 1765, after a short stay in France, he went into Italy,

and there he passed almost eight years. They were passed in a very

different way from that in which he had passed the interval between

Douay and Towneley. That long residence abroad enabled him to become a

very conspicuous benefactor to his country.

He visited Naples, Florence, and Rome, and from time to time made many

excursions into various parts of Magna Græcia and of Sicily. At Naples

he formed the acquaintance of Sir William HAMILTON and of

D’HANCARVILLE. [Sidenote: TOWNELEY’S ARTISTIC RESEARCHES IN ITALY.]

[Sidenote: 1765–1778.] At Rome he became acquainted with three

Englishmen, James BYRES, Gavin HAMILTON, and Thomas JENKINS, all of

whom had first gone thither as artists, and step by step had come to

be almost exclusively engrossed in the search after works of ancient

art. The success and fame of Sir William HAMILTON’S researches in the

Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and of those, still earlier, of Thomas

COKE of Holkham (afterwards Earl of Leicester), had given a strong

impulse to like researches in other parts of Italy. TOWNELEY caught

the contagion, and was backed by large resources to aid him in the

pursuit.

His first important purchase was made in 1768. It was that of a work

already famous, and which for more than a century had been one of the

ornaments of the Barberini Palace at Rome. This statue of a boy

playing at the game of tali, or ‘osselets’ (figured in _Ancient

Marbles in the British Museum_, part ii, plate 31), was found among

the ruins of the Baths of Titus, during the Pontificate of URBAN THE

EIGHTH. During the same year, 1768, Mr. TOWNELEY acquired, from the

Collection of Victor AMADEI, at Rome, the circular urn with figures in

high relief—which is figured in the first volume of Piranesi’s

_Raccolta di Vasi Antichi_—and also the statue of a _Nymph of Diana_,

seated on the ground. This statue was found in 1766 at the Villa

Verospi in Rome.

[Sidenote: FORMATION OF THE TOWNELEY GALLERY.]

Two years afterwards, several important acquisitions were made of

marbles which were discovered in the course of the excavations

undertaken by BYRES, Gavin HAMILTON, and JENKINS, amidst the ruins of

Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli. The joint-stock system, by means of which

the diggings were effected, no less than the conditions which

accompanied the papal concessions that authorised them, necessitated a

wide diffusion of the spoil. But whenever the making of a desirable

acquisition rested merely upon liberality of purse or a just

discrimination of merit, Mr. TOWNELEY was not easily outstripped in

the quest. Amongst these additions of 1769–71 were the noble Head of

_Hercules_, the Head said, conjecturally, to be that of _Menelaus_,

and the ‘_Castor_’ in low relief (all of which are figured in the

second part of _Ancient Marbles_).

Two terminal heads of the bearded _Bacchus_—both of them of remarkable

beauty—were obtained in 1771 from the site of Baiæ. These were found

by labourers who were digging a deep trench for the renewal of a

vineyard, and were seen by Mr. ADAIR, who was then making an excursion

from Naples. In the same year the statue of _Ceres_ and that of a

_Faun_ (_A. M._, ii, 24) were purchased from the Collection in the

Macarani Palace at Rome. In 1772 the _Diana Venatrix_ and the _Bacchus

and Ampelus_ were found near La Storta. It was by no fault of

TOWNELEY’S that the _Diana_ was in part ‘restored,’ and that

blunderingly. He thought restoration to be, in some cases,

permissible; but never deceptively; never when doubt existed about the

missing part. In art, as in life, he clave to his heraldic motto

‘_Tenez le vrai_.’

In 1771, also, the famous ‘_Clytie_’—doubtfully so called—was

purchased from the Laurenzano Collection at Naples.

The curious scenic figure on a plinth (_A. M._, part x) together with

many minor pieces of sculpture, were found in the Fonseca Villa on the

Cælian Hill in 1773. In the same year many purchases were made from

the Mattei Collection at Rome. Amongst these are the heads of _Marcus

Aurelius_ and of _Lucius Verus_. And it was at this period that Gavin

HAMILTON began his productive researches amidst the ruins of the villa

of Antoninus Pius at Monte Cagnolo, near the ancient Lanuvium. This is

a spot both memorable and beautiful. The hill lies on the road between

Genzano and Civita Lavinia. It commands a wide view over Velletri and

the sea. To HAMILTON and his associates it proved one of the richest

mines of ancient art which they had the good fortune to light upon.

Mr. TOWNELEY’S share in the spoil of Monte Cagnolo comprised the group

of _Victory sacrificing a Bull_; the _Actæon_; a _Faun_; a

Bacchanalian vase illustrative of the _Dionysia_; and several other

works of great beauty. The undraped _Venus_ was found—also by Gavin

HAMILTON—at Ostia, in 1775.

[Sidenote: THE ACQUISITION OF THE ‘TOWNELEY VENUS.’]

In the next year, 1776, Mr. TOWNELEY acquired one of the chiefest

glories of his gallery, the _Venus_ with drapery. This also was found

at Ostia, in the ruins of the Baths of Claudius. But that superb

statue would not have left Rome had not its happy purchaser made, for

once, a venial deflection from the honourable motto just adverted to.

The figure was found in two severed portions, and care was taken to

show them, quite separately, to the authorities concerned in granting

facilities for their removal. The same excavation yielded to the

Towneley Collection the statue of _Thalia_. From the Villa Casali on

the Esquiline were obtained the terminal head of _Epicurus_, and the

bust thought to be that of _Domitia_. The bust of _Sophocles_ was

found near Genzano; that of _Trajan_, in the Campagna; that of

_Septimius Severus_, on the Palatine, and that of _Caracalla_ on the

Esquiline. A curious cylindrical fountain (figured in _A. M._, i, §

10) was found between Tivoli and Præneste, and the fine representation

in low relief of a _Bacchanalian procession_ (_Ib._, part ii) at

Civita Vecchia. All these accessions to the Towneley Gallery accrued

in 1775 or 1776.

Of the date of the Collector’s first return to England with his

treasures I have found no record. [Sidenote: THE TOWNELEY GALLERY IN

ENGLAND.] But it would seem that nearly all the marbles hitherto

enumerated were brought to England in or before the year 1777. The

house, in London, in which they were first placed was found to be

inadequate to their proper arrangement. Mr. TOWNELEY either built or

adapted another house, in Park street, Westminster, expressly for

their reception. Here they were seen under favourable circumstances as

to light and due ordering. They were made accessible to students with

genuine liberality. And few things gave their owner more pleasure than

to put his store of knowledge, as well as his store of antiquities, at

the service of those who wished to profit by them. He did so genially,

unostentatiously, and with the discriminating tact which marked the

high-bred gentleman, as well as the enthusiastic Collector.

A contemporary critic, very competent to give an opinion on such a

matter, said of Mr. TOWNELEY: ‘His learning and sagacity in explaining

works of ancient art was equal to his taste and judgment in selecting

them.’[62] If, in any point, that eulogy is now open to some

modification, the exception arises from the circumstance that early in

life, or, at least, early in his collectorship, he had imbibed from

his intercourse with D’HANCARVILLE somewhat of that writer’s love for

mystical and supersubtle expositions of the symbolism of the Grecian

and Egyptian artists. To D’HANCARVILLE, the least obvious of any two

possible expositions of a subject was always the preferable one. Now

and then TOWNELEY would fall into the same vein of recondite

elaboration; as, for example, when he described his figure of an

Egyptian ‘tumbler’ raising himself, upon his arms, from the back of a

tame crocodile, as the ‘Genius of Production.’

During the riots of 1780, the Towneley Gallery (like the National

Museum of which it was afterwards to become a part) was, for some

time, in imminent peril. The Collector himself could have no enemies

but those who were infuriated against his religious faith. Fanaticism

and ignorance are meet allies, little likely to discriminate between a

Towneley Venus and the tawdriest of Madonnas. Threats to destroy the

house in Park Street were heard and reported. Mr. TOWNELEY put his

gems and medals in a place of safety, together with a few other

portable works of art. Then, taking ‘Clytie’ in his arms—with the

words ‘I must take care of my wife’—he left his house, casting one

last, longing, look at the marbles which, as he feared, would never

charm his eyes again. But, happily, both the Towneley house and the

British Museum escaped injury, amid the destruction of buildings, and

of works of art and literature, in the close neighbourhood of both of

them.

[Sidenote: THE SCULPTURES ACQUIRED FROM THE VILLA MONTALTO AT ROME;]