special, though to us unknown, purpose. And the philosophic observer will discover, in the structure of the smallest and meanest insect, the clearest proofs of the wonderful wisdom by which it was created. I have heard of atheists being converted by a careful and enlightened examination of the fearful and wonderful manner in which insects are formed. Intelligence, design, and wisdom were so manifestly displayed, that there was no resisting the conviction that it must be the work of a Divine Being.

The tenth room contains the general collection of reptiles in spirits. Of these the specimens are at once numerous and curious. To the mere naked eye many of them appear most odious; but he who can look upwards to the Source whence they all derived their being, can regard them with feelings of a very different description.

In the eleventh room is contained the general collection of fish and corals. The species of fish of which specimens are to be seen in the British Museum is 1,300. This is a goodly number. It is greater than the number contained in any other museum in the world, with the single exception of that of Paris, which is singularly rich in its specimens of the finny tribe: it contains no fewer than 4,700 species. Who can reflect on this vast number-even supposing there were no more-of inhabitants of the watery element, without thinking of the little that mankind generally know of the variety of creatures by which the world of waters is peopled?

In the twelfth and thirteenth apartments is contained the collection of British birds and British shells, together with a small collection of birds' eggs. The ornithological department of the British Museum is, as a whole, worthy of the nation. Ornithologists have not been able, hitherto, to discover more than 4,500 species of the feathered tribe, though, of course, our knowledge on this subject is as yet but exceedingly limited, owing to vast tracts of Africa and Asia, especially China, being yet unexplored by European ornithologists. Of the 4,500 species of birds which are described and classified, the British Museum contains 2,500 species, and the number is increasing every day. In regard to British birds, the collection in the Museum immeasurably surpasses that of any other institution in the world. Some men evince a very unbecoming disposition to depreciate everything English, and to magnify the merits of everything foreign. A namesake of my own, Dr. Grant, of the London University, represented, before a select committee of the House of Commons, in 1835, the whole natural history department of our National Museum as being in a most deplorable state, though the fact is manifestly the reverse; and Mr. Vigors, the member of Parliament for Carlow, stated before the same committee, that so deficient was the ornithological department of the Museum, that the collection of birds might easily be increased by two-thirds in the short space of six months. The honourable gentleman forgets that, according to our present knowledge of ornithology, this would be an arithmetical impossibility; for, as already mentioned, the number of species known of the feathered creation is only 4,500; while, at the time he made his extraordinary statement, the number of species contained in the British Museum was 2,300 !

In the department of shells there is a very great deficiency. The

assortment is so limited, and possesses so little value, that one could almost wish it were not exhibited to the public. Many private individuals, curious in such matters, have collections four or five times more extensive and valuable; Mr. Bowerbank's amounts to 1,200, and that of Mr. Wood, of Suffolk, to upwards of 1,000.

Next comes the long gallery, one of the most magnificent rooms ever perhaps witnessed; its length is three hundred and sixty feet, and it is appropriated to the collections of minerals and secondary fossils. The objects in this apartment are at once numerous and varied, and are displayed to the best advantage. It is incomparably the most valuable and extensive in the world, and is daily increasing. The greater portion of the minerals was collected by the Right Hon. Charles Greville, and were bought, in 1810, from his family, for the sum of 13,797; that being the value at which they were estimated in a committee of the House of Commons, guided by the opinions and advice of several of the most distinguished mineralogists in Europe.

Returning to the grand entrance, you turn to the left, and proceed through a narrow and dark passage, or rather through several small apartments, filled with old books-to the gallery of antiquities. Five rooms (the first four and the sixth) are occupied by Greek and Roman sculptures, which almost exclusively consist of those collected by the late Mr. Charles Townley, or which formed part of the museum of Sir Hans Sloane. Mr. Townley's most valuable collections were added to the Museum in 1805, having been that year purchased by Parliament for 20,000l. The collection was still further enriched, in 1814, by a number of valuable antiquities, partly of the same class, which were ascertained to be in the Townley family, and for which the legislature paid 8,200. The fifth room is appropriated to Greek and Roman sepulchral antiquities, of which there is a goodly number, of great interest and value. The seventh room contains British antiquities. The number of these is not great, being under twenty; but most of them are exceedingly curious. The eighth apartment is devoted to Egyptian antiquities. The articles in the ninth, or anteroom, which is up stairs, are few in number, and of a miscellaneous character, though all coming under the category of antiquities. The tenth room is devoted to bronzes, vases, gems, &c., all of which belonged to the celebrated Sir William Hamilton, for many years the British envoy at Naples. This collection, which is exceedingly valuable and varied, was added to the Museum so far back as 1772, having been then purchased from Sir William by Parliament for the sum of 8,4007. In the eleventh room there are about sixty antiquities, many of them singularly curious, and all coming under the general designation of Greek and Roman sculptures. The same class of antiquities is contained in the twelfth room, chiefly forming a part of the collection of Sir William Hamilton. In the grand central room, which is the next apartment as the visiter proceeds in his examination, are various antiquities; but none of them are of a nature to require a special reference to them. Adjoining this apartment is the Egyptian Saloon, appropriated, as the name implies, to the exhibition of the antiquities of Egypt. It contains nearly two hundred fragments or memorials of

that country, when renowned above all the other nations of the world for its learning, its science, and its knowledge of the arts. Amidst all these exceedingly curious objects, perhaps there is not one of less antiquity than two thousand five hundred years; while most of them were the productions of men who lived three or four thousand years ago. Many of the articles contained in this magnificent collection were recovered from the ravages of time by the French, when Napoleon took possession of Egypt, and came into the possession of the English army on the capitulation of Alexandria in 1801. A considerable number belonged to the collection of the late Mr. Henry Salt, while others have been presented to the Museum at different times by various travellers.

The Phigalian Saloon next claims the visiter's attention. It is filled with a large and valuable collection of marble sculptures, the frieze of a temple which had been dug up at Phigaleia in Arcadia. They represent, in two sets, the combats between the Centaurs and the Lapithæ, and between the Greeks and the Amazons. They are generally supposed to have been executed under the eye of Phidias himself; and all are agreed that, if not executed under his own special superintendence, they are undoubtedly the genuine productions of his school. They were purchased, in 1815, by George IV., then Prince Regent, and were by him given to the Museum. They cost that prince, in one way or other, very nearly 20,0007.

Next there is the Elgin Saloon, so named because it is the part of the Museum set apart for the famous collection of Greek sculpture made by Thomas Earl of Elgin. This is by far the most valuable and extensive collection of Grecian antiquities in the world. The number of articles is nearly four hundred. The collection was made by his lordship during the time he was ambassador at Constantinople. "It exhibits," to use the words of a writer who was well acquainted with the subject," a great part of the exquisite sculptures that still remained in the Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, in the Acropolis of Athens, which, if not brought away by his lordship, would indubitably have fallen into the hands of the French, or been wholly defaced by the barbarous indifference or superstitious prejudices of the Turks." For this splendid addition to the treasures of the British Museum, which was made in 1816, the sum of 35,000l. was voted by Parliament.

The Egyptian antiquities and Greek and Roman sculpture departments of the British Museum have been, and still are, of incalculable service to the interests of the fine arts in this country. The genius of the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans of a former period, lives in these remains of their productions which have been recovered from the ruins of those places which were their most celebrated seats of art and science; and they are exhibited as models for our artists. It is gratifying to find that our young artists, and amateurs also, duly appreciate and take advantage of the opportunities which are thus afforded them of cultivating a taste for the fine arts. Artists come from all parts of the country to take drawings of the beautiful specimens of sculpture with which the antiquities department of the Museum abounds. Not a day passes without fifteen or

twenty persons being found engaged for hours in the way I have mentioned.

No man accustomed to reflection can look on the various memorials of remote ages, with which this part of the British Museum abounds, without a deep and hallowed interest. His thoughts at once go back to the eventful periods to which those memorials point. He is struck with the advanced state in which the kindred arts of sculpture and architecture must have been in those days, compared with their state in this enlightened or "march-of-intellect age. The Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans were immeasurably superior to us in all that pertains to the arts in question. Not only do we see innumerable traces of the highly cultivated minds of the architects and artists of those times, in the designs which everywhere, in this part of the Museum, meet our gaze; but, even in a mechanical point of view, we are mere pigmies compared with them. Supposing, in other words, that we possessed the same genius, or that our taste in these matters was equally cultivated with theirs, and that we were consequently capable of conceiving those designs which they carried into execution, we have not the implements by which we could execute such designs. We know of no implements which could make the slightest impression on those extremely hard stones on which they were wont to carve, with admirable taste, such an infinite variety of figures. Fragments of Egyptian monuments surround us while we stand in this room: the architects or scientific men of the present day know of no mechanical power by which the immense blocks of stone, of which these are parts, could have been raised in the air. This is, no doubt, mortifying to our vanity; but still the fact, we fear, must be admitted.

But the unbounded admiration with which we cannot help regarding the singularly cultivated taste of the ancients in sculpture and architecture, is not unmingled with feelings of regret that their minds should have been so deplorably debased in other respects. What could be more humiliating to the human mind, than to think that men whose attainments in the respects to which I have referred were so splendid, should yet have had such erroneous ideas on the most momentous of all matters-the matters, namely, which relate to the government of the world, and the great interests of futurity? In this respect the Egyptians, and Greeks, and Romans, in the most brilliant eras of their history, were not a whit above the most savage or the most ignorant heathen nations of the present day. Who can survey the ruins of the magnificent temples of ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, or gaze on the fragments of their triumphs in the art of sculpture, which are scattered about in our National Museum, without feeling the deepest pain? Who can help blushing for poor human nature, when he recollects that the gifted individuals who could conceive and execute such designs, should be devout believers in all the absurdities of their preposterous mythology-should acknowledge from 30,000 to 40,000 gods, and should fall down and worship as deities, birds, beasts, onions, and almost every vegetable or inanimate object which crossed their path? Yet so it was. Such was, in their case, the results to which the light of nature, so much boasted of and magnified

in the present day, conducted them. And so it now is, and so it ever will be, in every country and clime unblessed with the light of revelation.

No one can look on the antiquities in the British Museum, without feeling a train of reflections arise in his mind as to the changes which have taken place in the world since the periods to which these antiquities point us back. I look on a block of stone richly carved with Egyptian hieroglyphics, and I think of the moral and political vicissitudes, which not only nations, but whole continents, have experienced since the hand that executed those figures was laid in the dust. I look on a fragment of exquisite sculpture, and I think of the numerous events of unutterable importance which have taken place since the bosom of him who formed it ceased to beat. The most momentous of all the transactions the universe ever witnessed, the death of the Redeemer, is one of those events which occurred since that time. What vast and mighty empires have crumbled into dust, leaving no trace of their fame, glory, and power! And nations, which were then sunk to the lowest depths of degradation, being not many removes in point of intelligence above the brute creation, are now the most civilised and powerful on the face of the earth. The Greek and Roman empires, then so glorious and powerful, have for numerous ages been among the things that were; and France and Great Britain, then scarcely known among the countries of the world, may now be said to be the mistresses of the world. And not only have new powers of great moral and political importance since that period started into existence, but we have now an entire world, (America,) then unknown and undreamed of. This, however, is a topic on which I may not dwell.

I have thus glanced at the leading departments into which the productions of nature and art contained in the British Museum are sectioned. We see in many of those productions of art remarkable proofs of human ingenuity; but how shall we express ourselves in speaking of the productions of nature, or rather of nature's God, with which the Museum so richly abounds! If the man of devout and intelligent mind cannot walk abroad among the fields-cannot survey inanimate creation, without, as Burns happily expresses it, looking

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through nature up to nature's God," how much more impossible were it to behold the vast variety of the Deity's animated works which are exhibited in our National Museum, without being lost in adoration of that Intelligent Power by which they were called into being! What displays of divine wisdom, power, and goodness, are there made! Let the reader only fancy, what in the British Museum he would find to be matter of fact, that he is surrounded with fifty or sixty thousand different species of creatures, all fearfully and wonderfully made, and for every one of whose continued existence due provision was made by the same Providence who breathed into them the breath of life; let the reader only imagine this, and then say, whether the thought be not calculated to overpower every intelligent and virtuous mind. The more scientific and better informed a man is, the more will he see to admire in the structure of every creature before him. It is a touching and deeply affecting though de