It has made wonderful strides in the last fifty years; the family has grown to be very large, and is split into botanists, mineralogists, zoologists, entomologists, palæontologists, ornithologists, geologists, and other ologists. These eaglets, while young and unfledged, agreed well in one aerie; but, on waxing strong, became pugnacious, clamorous for independence, and inclined to pull the old nest to pieces, to build new ones for themselves with the materials.

So many of our readers will remember the British Museum in its primitive state, that we may pass by the heavy porte-cochère of the prison-like exterior, the begrimed painted staircase and ceilings of the interior, the admired disorder of fish, flesh, and fowl, set out-so said the frondeurs-less to instruct than to amuse by a raree-show of varieties of cats and mice, rats and rabbits, blue butterflies, black beetles, green parrots, Robin Redbreasts, and such small deer.' Suffice it to say that the edifice itself had been planned for a private residence, not for a public repository; and chance, not design, presided over this cradle of the infant Museum. Montague House was built by a Monsieur Puget, and happening to be then in the market, was purchased by the trustees from Lord Halifax for 10,2501. Fortunately it was surrounded by a considerable court and garden, whereby sufficient space, now so difficult to obtain in an accessible situation, has been afforded for the rebuildings contemplated in 1823. The old house soon became too small for the plethora of collections, increasing and bursting into the streets-insomuch that the trustees began to consider most accessions as incumbrances; and previous donors and their descendants beheld with pious horror their gifts cribbed, cabined, and confined in cases unpacked and unopened,' or consigned to the 'basement,' anglicè, vaults-tombs of the Capulets-after the fashion of our National Records and the Vernon Gallery. There the sure workings of neglect, damp, and decay, partially remedied the evil, by diminishing the accumulation of buried talents,' dried butterflies and ephemerids, perishable commodities at best; nor was the more expeditious auto-de-fè neglected. Dr. Shaw, the then Keeper, used to have his periodical cremations' of rubbishand the neighbours threatened actions because moths - brands from the official burnings-were thereby introduced into their houses. Meantime, while this wholesale and unwholesome destruction was going on, and was justified to the public by alleged want of accommodation, fifty-six light and salubrious rooms, capable of containing everything, were occupied by the resident officers; the principal librarian, the chief custos and curator of public property, having naturally taken for his private comforts the greatest number of apartments. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Yet the national collections were deserving of a better fate; to

the

the original nucleus, victory had offered, as spolia opima, the matchless assemblage of antiquities gathered, as if on purpose, by the French armies in Egypt, and cropped to make a garland for English crests. Between 1805 and 1816 were added the choice statues and antiques of Mr. Townley, the Lansdowne MSS., the Greville minerals, the law library of Hargrave, the Phigalean, and, last not least, the Elgin marbles. A dark side, we own, was not wanting to this picture; great opportunities, and such as only occur once, were lost for want of room and funds, through apathy or ignorance; thus the Dodwell Greek vases were let slip, while Belzoni's unique alabaster sarcophagus passed to Sir John Soane; the Ægina marbles, discovered chiefly by Mr. C. R. Cockerell, were allowed to be purchased by Bavaria. The Nayler heraldica, rejected by the trustees at a moderate price, were sold by public auction for a much greater sum. Mr. Haworth's extraordinary insects, the Millingen vases, the Battle Abbey muniments, shared the same sad destiny; and, worse than all, the incomparable ancient drawings of Sir Thomas Lawrence, offered by him in his will to the nation for one-third of their original cost, were-to the eternal disgrace of our Ministers and R.A.s-refused, and have since been sold piecemeal for double.

Nor was this all; the neglect shown, and the sale of duplicate books, disgusted many persons of sound and disposing mind, who, if things had been better managed, as in France,' would have bequeathed their stores to the national institution. To cherish what he has created, to desire to secure the intact preservation of these love-labours of his life, is natural to man; nor is the ambition to make a name-non omnis moriar-by making the public the heir to private treasures, an unpardonable or unpatriotic pride. Here this yearning has been chilled rather than fostered: can it be wondered that Lord Fitzwilliam (obiit 1816), who intended to have bequeathed his collections to the Museum, should, on learning they were liable to be sold or lost, hand them over to the better taste and custody of Cambridge; or that mediæval Douce, testy and capricious, and his compeer 'Northern Saxon' Gough, should select the Bodleian for the asylum of their precious accumulations? So Soane steered clear of the careless triton of Great Russell-street, in order to found his minnow Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields; so Kirby the entomologist, fearful of basements,' took especial care that his beloved specimens should escape slow putrefaction and rapid cremation. While offers to GIVE were snubbed, proposals TO SELL were not welcomed by the trustees; indeed, so great was the difficulty in dealing with this corporation, that one of our most eminent booksellers gave up all idea of it—he having on one

occasion

occasion offered a MS. to the trustees for thirty-five guineas, which they refused, and three years afterwards purchased at an auction for fifty! Thus a modern reality was given to the old myth of the Sibyl's books. Rare books are not to be got by being simply ordered in when wanted, like chaldrons of coals.

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Public attention was still more attracted to the Museum in 1828, on the reception of the fine library formed by George III., who, immediately on his accession, being of opinion (unlike his grandfather) that the King of England should have a library, began by purchasing, for 10,000l., the books of Mr. Smith, our consul at Venice, and next sent a good hand to the continent to procure others. It was on that occasion that Dr. Johnson wrote the remarkable letter, printed in the preface of the catalogue of this library, explanatory of the principles on which a good one ought to be made. By the steady expenditure of 20007. a year, from 1762 to 1822, upwards of 65,000 volumes had been purchased, and it was then announced that George IV. had presented the whole to the public. A select committee of the House of Commons reported, April 18, 1823, that a new 'fire-proof' building ought to be raised to receive the royal library, and expressed the strongest gratitude' to the reigning Prince for this act of munificent liberality, and his Majesty's disposition to promote the science and literature of the country.' The secret history we believe to have been this. King George IV., having some pressing call for money, did not decline a proposition for selling the library in question to the Emperor of Russia. Mr. Heber, having ascertained that the books were actually booked for the Baltic, went to Lord Sidmouth, then Home Secretary, and stated the case, observing what a shame it would be that such a collection should go out of the country;' to which Lord Sidmouth replied, Mr. Heber, it shall not;' and it did not. On the remonstrance of Lord Sidmouth, of whose manly and straightforward character George IV. was very properly in awe, the last of the Grand Monarques presented the books to the Museum-on the condition that the value of the rubles they were to have fetched should be somehow or other made good to him by Ministers in pounds sterling. This was done out of the surplus of certain funds furnished by France for the compensation of losses by the Revolution. But his Ministers, on a hint from the House of Commons that it was necessary to refund these monies, had recourse, we are told, to the droits of the Admiralty.

The eyes of mankind were much turned to Bloomsbury; and the non-contents, headed, as we said, by the Naturalists, availed themselves of the opportunity. The present,' cried Sir Humphrey Davy-himself an instance of as yet unhackneyed honours

granted

granted to science- is the best moment for attempting a radical and fundamental change in everything belonging to this ancient, misapplied, I may almost say useless, institution.' So Dr. Davy states, in his biography of his renowned brother. After volleys of paper pellets of the brain from daily and weekly sheets, the heavy breaching artillery was opened in May, 1823, by our respected colleagues of the Edinburgh Review; although many marks were cleverly hit, the northern discharge was found, when evidence was examined, to be overloaded; nevertheless, the blue and buff signal of war to the knife was repeated by the Westminster and Retrospective Reviews-and by pamphlets published by small people on Science without Head,' as well as by octavos written by great personages, Reflections on the Decline of Science in England,' &c. &c., a vast sensation was created. It was a mighty pretty quarrel as it stood; now all is forgottenrequiescat in pace. The deep-seated cause of all this festering and inflammation in the intellectual constitution of England lay in the antagonism between the aristocracy of talent and the aristocracy of birth. It reddened when the road to the honours of science was made a royal one by the election of the Duke of Sussex to the presidency of the Royal Society. It led the centrifugal dissenters to establish, on a German model,* an opposition British Association for the advancement of science and men of science to whom, as their organs feelingly complained, with one exception or so in an age, no titles had been conceded; nay, to whom Westminster Abbey was utterly refused when they were defunct—a circumstance doubly aggravating, because Britannia had been comparatively liberal of stones to her dead poets, though she often denied them bread while in the flesh. The great Associated, advocates of the aurea mediocritas, were too lofty to speak out as to ribbons and monuments-but sticking to business, they manfully set forth the comfortable doctrine that they should, while living, find an asylum in the eldorado of the state,'-in short, have a fixed income paid quarterly out of the consolidated fund, and thus be able to devote their whole intellects to the public good. This feat remains to be accomplished. Science cannot be too much honoured: it may be too well paid. The poverty which compels genius to work, enriches mankind. How many gifted men have been found missing when bound by the golden links of Hymen! How many poets (and patriots) have been silenced by a pension! The first meeting was held at York in 1831, when, in the eloquent language of one of the illustrious

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*Berlin, Sept. 18, 1829, was graced by a congress of philosophers. Alexander von Humboldt presided: 850 persons dined; 1200 and odd drank tea and beer-the king, though no teatotaller, being one of them.

founders,

founders, Beauty, in the form of Minerva, took part in the orgies of Science.' Twenty summers have followed, made glorious by this sun of York and other provincial 'starrings' of peripatetic philosophers; vast the gaping of squires and bumpkins at sections, and lectures, and experiments-wondrous the enthusiasm of provincial bas-bleus-splendid the local contributions of venison and pine-apples-ultra-Ciceronian the interlaudations of the wise. We hope some real good has been done. It is certain that there has been a deal more talk than formerly about science, and that knighthood, under puff-courting administrations, has become common enough among our savans. It is also certain that a marked impulse has been given to the system of scientific or quasi-scientific associations ;-whence in London, as elsewhere, a fresh crop of rival museums-and of course a steadier purpose of overhauling the whole of the old concern in Bloomsbury.

To help the movement, moreover, just about the same epoch the small black cloud of radical-reform mania loomed in the horizon, and cast its coming shadow. The British Museum became too prominent a mark for nuisance-abaters and notorietyhunters, to be passed over by them in the higher walks of energy to which so many of their kidney had soon found access. Mr. Grey Bennet made sundry motions; but the angry humours were brought to a head by Mr. Benjamin Hawes, at that time a popular member, and a very different person from the full-blown Under-Secretary for the Colonies. Mr. Hawes became the cat'spaw of one Millard, who had been appointed, in 1824, a temporary assistant in the British Museum, but was discharged in 1833. Mr. Hawes, with a seer-like sympathy, rushed to the resuscitation of a drowning subaltern. Small causes, however, may produce good:-in 1835, a committee of the House of Commons was appointed-and a more excellent one could not well have been selected. The chair was happily given to Mr. Estcourt. The committee sat for two sessions. The Report and curious Evidence contained in the two folios which head our list, bear upon the trustees and their duties, the disputed points of election, the patronage, the heads of departments, the grievances of naturalists and readers; in the end parliament was induced to grant funds with greater liberality. Alas! however, the full benefits thereof were suicidally sacrificed by the trustees themselves. Heaven forefend that the past be prophet of the futurethat the changes for the better urged by the recent Commission should also be urged in vain! The public eye must not slumber twice.

From want of space we must be brief in our extracts from these two volumes. All who have read Sir Harris Nicolas-'On the State

VOL. LXXXVIII. NO. CLXXV.

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