In the November number of the "Metropolitan " I devoted an article to the Reading Room and Library of the British Museum. In order to complete the subject of that great National Institution, I propose in the present article to make some observations, and to communicate some facts, which are not generally known, respecting the rooms which are appropriated to the wonders of nature and art.

The building itself is one of great magnitude. On entering the gate, a spacious quadrangle presents itself. On the south side is an Ionic colonnade. Directly before you is the main building, while the two wings on either hand, between the gate and the entrance to the principal building, are appropriated as dwelling-places for the officers of the institution. The main edifice was originally the museum of the Duke of Montagu, and was erected by Peter Puget, a native of Marseilles, who was brought over from Paris for the purpose. This was towards the close of the seventeenth century. The property, which was called Montagu House, was purchased in 1754 by the trustees of the British Museum from the heirs of the Duke of Montagu, with the view of fitting it up for the reception and exhibition of the valuable library, manuscripts, and collection of curiosities in nature, art, and science, which had the year before been bequeathed to government by Sir Hans Sloane, for the benefit of the nation, on the payment of 20,000l. to his heirs and successors. The library and museum of Sir Hans Sloane, which were thus given to the public on the condition of 20,0007. being paid in return to his heirs, were supposed to have been worth nearly 100,000l. He had purchased the various books, manuscripts, and curiosities at the cheapest possible rate, as occasion offered during the long period he practised as physician in Chelsea, and he stated some time before his death that they had cost him considerably upwards of 50,000l. The price paid for Montagu House was 10,0007.

But capacious as this mansion was, it was soon found far too small for the additions which, year after year, were made to the Museum. Repeated enlargements have, from time to time, been consequently made, by erections, chiefly at the back part of the building. Within the last twelve or fourteen years nearly one half more space has been provided by additions to the numerous buildings. The magnitude of these may be inferred from the fact, that the expense has been little short of 300,0007.

Soon after the British Museum had been duly recognised as a national institution, Parliament having obtained possession of the museum which had been collected by Sir Robert Cotton in the reign Sept. 1838.-VOL. XXIII.—NO. LXXXIX.

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of Queen Elizabeth, and had been greatly increased by his son,passed an act transferring his collection of books, curiosities, &c., to the British Museum, for the benefit of the nation. Independently of a library of printed books and manuscripts, including books of prints and drawings, the Cottonian collection consists of the following articles :

Manuscript catalogues of the whole Museum, thirty-eight volumes folio, and eight volumes quarto.

I have referred thus minutely to the Sloanian and Cottonian collections, because they form the basis of the splendid museum which is now exhibited to the public, and which, though defective in certain departments, is regarded, as a whole, with the admiration of men of all nations; and, as will be inferred from the statements I am about to make, it is worthy of all the admiration with which it is regarded.

Along with the Cottonian library and museum, Parliament, at the same time, had at its disposal 2,000 volumes of books which had been appended to the Cottonian library by Major Arthur, of St. George's, Hanover Square, together with the reversion of 7,000l. for . the purpose of erecting a suitable place as a public library. This was also given by the legislature to the British Museum, and therefore became part of the new Cottonian foundation. Some time after this, Parliament purchased for the British Museum the entire collection of Harleian manuscripts. The collection was, at the time, the property of the Countess of Oxford, and the sum paid was 10,000l. In this collection there were no fewer than 40,000 original rolls, charters, and other instruments, many of which are of great antiquity, while nearly the whole relate to the political, parliamentary, and ecclesiastical history of Great Britain.

To meet the various sums thus expended in providing a National Museum, and to secure a permanent fund for its support, Parliament resolved to raise 100,000l. by way of lottery. This having been

done, a balance of 28,6637. remained after liquidating the debts incurred by purchases and repairs of the building. This sum was laid out in the purchase of 30,000l. three per cent. reduced annuities, in order to constitute a permanent fund for the maintenance of the institution. This was three or four years after the purchase of Montagu House. In 1759, the repairs of the building having been completed, and the various articles being properly arranged, the Museum was for the first time opened to the public for the purposes of study and inspection.

Since this time, a great many presents of books have been made to the Museum, and several small libraries have been purchased for and added to it, to which it is unnecessary to refer in detail. Various sums of money and private collections of curiosities have also been bequeathed to it, while other collections have been purchased by Parliament. Among the gifts may be mentioned that of Sir Joseph Banks to the trustees of the British Museum. It consisted of a great number of very valuable natural and artificial curiosities, collected in the then newly-discovered South Sea Islands. Some idea of the number and variety of the articles* contained in the British Museum will be found in an after part of this paper. What the entire sum is, which must, from first to last, have been paid for the contents of this Institution, is a point which I cannot determine; and it is one which I suppose no one else could, as I believe regular accounts of the money expended in the purchase of articles have not always been kept. If I may hazard a conjecture on the subject, I should say the entire sum must be considerably above half a million.

On entering the British Museum, the mind is completely overpowered by the variety and multiplicity of the objects which present themselves to the eye. There is, if I may so speak, a competition among them as to which has a preferable claim to the visiter's attention. The result is, that many persons are so confounded with what they see around them, that they come away without any very definite notions of the place and its multifarious contents. Every one has heard of individuals having a great variety of objects set before them, and, on being asked to make a selection for themselves, have felt unable to decide, from the very number and nearly equal value of those objects. It is the same in the British Museum. The productions of nature and art which are here exhibited are so varied, and are all so wonderful of their respective kinds, that one literally feels it next to impossible to give his undivided attention for any time to any particular object. I need not add, that on one short visit it very rarely happens that any one object is fully examined, or that the visiter receives that pleasure from inspecting it, which, under other circumstances, he could not fail to have derived from it. Indeed it is quite common to see visiters passing on from one room to another as rapidly as if there were nothing but the bare walls before them. To see the British Museum to advantage, it is necessary that repeated visits be paid to it. When one visits it two or three times, the

* I here exclude, as a matter of course, the books, manuscripts, &c., in the library of this Institution, having devoted a previous chapter to them.

distracting gloss of novelty in some measure wears off; the party feels his attention less distracted by the number and variety of the objects around him, and is enabled to examine everything which presents itself to his eye with some measure of attention.

On entering the ground-floor of the Museum, the objects which present themselves to the visiter's eye are not very numerous; but some of them are very interesting. Perhaps the most curious and generally attractive of these is one of the originals of Magna Charta, which is exhibited in the first room. It belongs to the Cottonian library, and is protected from the action of the atmosphere or the touch of visiters by being placed in a glazed frame. Parts of it are considerably defaced, but other parts are as legible as if it had been the production of yesterday. The ground-floor consists of sixteen rooms; but as these are appropriated to the books, strangers are not admitted into them.

Proceeding up stairs, you are struck, on reaching the first landingplace, with a lama from South America. On the second landing-place are a musk-ox from Melville Island, and a Polar bear; both of which are objects of interest. On the upper landing-place are a male and female giraffe, or cameleopard, and a hippopotamus, or river-horse. In any situation these animals would have a striking appearance; in the situation in which they stand in the Museum their appearance is peculiarly striking.

The first room on the upper floor contains a great variety of most curious objects. Among the most interesting of these are the Esquimaux dresses; specimens of cloth from the Sandwich Islands, formed of the bark of the paper mulberry; spears, bows, arrows, and other warlike instruments used by the natives of various savage countries; and a number of small carved deities from the South Sea Islands. Who can look on the latter objects, and think that any portion of our fellow creatures should fall down before them, and worship them as gods, without blushing for the ignorance, and superstition, and credulity of the human mind, when it has not been brought within the agency of Christianity?

The second, third, and fourth rooms on the first floor are chiefly devoted to a collection of dried plants. When it is remembered that the number of plants of one kind or other, which are not known, is under 80,000, the number in the British Museum must be regarded as very large. What the exact number is, I have not the means of ascertaining; but it is above rather than under 45,000. These plants chiefly consist of the collection made by Sir Joseph Banks. Sir Joseph's collection amounted to no fewer than 30,000. Since then a large and valuable donation of Indian plants has been made by the directors of the East India Company; not to mention additions which are being daily made by the donations of, and purchases from, private individuals. The collection of plants in our National Museum is by far the most extensive and most valuable in the world, with the single exception of that in the Jardin du Roi at Paris.

The fifth, the sixth, and the seventh rooms are principally occupied with Sir Joseph Banks's library.

The eighth apartment is exceedingly miscellaneous in its contents.

Impressions of ancient seals, vases, and vessels of every kind; busts of men, animals, and inanimate things; statues, armoury, &c., are among the productions of art which are here exhibited.

Next comes the saloon, in which the collection of quadrupeds or mammalia, to adopt the technical term in the nomenclature of naturalists, is placed. In this department of zoology, the British Museum is, I am sorry to say, very deficient. The number of species perfectly well known to naturalists, and fully and accurately described, is 1,200; while in our great national institution the number is only 400. This deficiency is the more to be regretted, and the less to be excused, as a collection of quadrupeds worthy of this country might be formed with great ease, and in a very short time. Nor would the expense be very serious; for though the stuffing and putting up particular quadrupeds might be as high as 50%.* or even 60l., yet this would occur in extremely few cases, while, on an average, the expense would not be above fifteen or twenty shillings; and what would 1,2007. or 1,5007. be, in such a case, to a country like Great Britain? In the ninth room the upper cases, containing various quadrupeds, are intended as supplementary to the mammalia exhibited in the saloon. The other cases of this apartment are occupied by various specimens of crustacea, amphibia, invertebrated animals in spirits, insects, corals, reptiles, &c. To the curious this apartment presents a great variety of exceedingly interesting objects.

The collection of insects is very imperfect. It is altogether unworthy of a National Museum. Though the number of species which are known, classified, and described by entomologists be upwards of 150,000, there are only 25,000 in the British Museum; and they are very badly arranged. The Paris Museum contains specimens of upwards of 100,000 species, and the Berlin Museum boasts of about 90,000.

No man whose mind is rightly constituted can look on the specimens of the insect creation which are exhibited in the British Museum, though not so numerous as in those institutions I have mentioned, without feeling his thoughts ascend towards the Creator. Many of them are exceedingly small, and unenlightened man would be apt to regard them as so insignificant as to be unworthy of a moment's thought. With far other feelings will they be regarded by the man who has learned to take a more comprehensive view of the relation which subsists between the Source of all existence and his works. He will find that the most diminutive insect in this vast collection derived its being as much from the universal Maker, and on Him, when alive, was as much dependent for its continued existence, as man himself. It is true that man is destined by the Supreme Being to fulfil purposes in the divine economy peculiar to himself, and is consequently, in that respect, immeasurably superior to the lower creation. Still there is not an insect, nor a creature of any kind, whose being or preservation was the result of chance. Every creature under heaven was made for some

* The most expensive case of stuffing and putting up an animal of which I have ever heard, is that mentioned by Mr. Vigors, the member of Parliament. That gentleman states that the expense of stuffing and putting up the giraffe in the Regent's Park Zoological Gardens was no less than 1501.