JOHN BULL'S TREASURES.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 154, 10 March 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

JOHN BULL'S TREASURES.

A. PEEL' AT SOME OF BRITAIN'S MOST PRIZED POSSESSIONS. Although John Buil has never posed as a collector of valuables he has contrived to accumulate during the centuries an array of costly posses-ions which may challenge comparison with the treasures of any other nation of Europe. If ho were disposed to part with a few of them, he could easily add millions to his exchequer; while a few are so unique and invaluable that the combined wealth of Andrew Carnegie and John 1). Rockefeller would never purchase them. Under a glass case in the Record Office you may any day look on a coupl'j of ancient volumes, bound in massive boards covered iviin parchment, their pages covered with writing in a beau tiful c'erkly hand, as fresh and egible to-day as when the letters were traced more than eight centuries ago. To tin casual ami uninformed eye these Jeal-

ou<]y-<iuard«>tl volumes would be dear at a few shilling; and yet no man's million* could tempt .John to part with them, for they are the Domesday Book, containing the results of the great survey of England made by the Cmouci'or in IOSo-86. A mile's walk or so will take you to Westminster Abbey, where you may see, under a chair, an oblong rough stone, so valueless that it would not s'vni north the trouble of carrying away. And yet on this unattractive lump of stone every one of our sovereigns since Edward E has been crowned; it has been the Coronation "Chair" of a long line of earlier Scottish Kings; and, according to legend, was originally brought to Ireland !>/ the prophet Jeremiah himself, h. g after it Had served as pillow for Jacob, son of Isaac- and Rebekah. MAGNA CHARTA. Another mjle or so away, in the British Museum you may see another priceless treasure in tho form of an old parchment enclosed within a glass frame. Centuries have paled the ink on it until the writing is almost illegible; a fragment of a seal hangs from it: and it bears the signatures of King John and several of his Barons. Time was, if we are to believe tradition, when this parchment was bought for fourpence by a Eondon tai'or, fro™ whose hands it was rescued just as he was about to cut it up for measures; to-day no go'd could buy it, for it 's the Groat Charter of our liberties to which John attached his signature on the field of Runnymede. Such are three of Britain's greatest treasures, intrinsically worth a few shillings, but actually more valuable than aTI the gold in the world's mines. But before wandering further in our search let us exp'ore this wonderful Museum, whose contents alone are worth many millions. Here, to begin with, are four modest-looking volumes, from which many pages are missing; and yet they are so valuable that, if it were possible to sell them, they would fetch at least £300,000. This book is, in fact, the famous Codex Alexandrinus —the Old and New Testaments transcribed in Greek some sixteen centuries ago. Brought from Alexandria in early Stuart days, it came into the hands of Charts 1., and was the chief ornament of the Royal library until, in 1753, it was presented to the Museum, to be preserved I'r ever as a national treasure. FAMOUS BIBLES. And the Codex (almost priceless a> it is, is jn no unworthy company; for among its neighbours are a copy of tho Mazarin Bible, issued from the Press of Gothenburg about _ the year 14.j0 and a copy of the Eatin Psalter, print. o:l only two years later—two insignificant volumes which arc worth at least £IO,OOO. Hero,oo, you may pick up a handful of Caxtons, worth more gold than you could raise from the ground; you may handle volumes which havo been thumbed by our Kings as fax back a* the sixth Edward; the verj Bib'es which Luther and Coverdala read daily; and you may revel among a sinsile collection of books, bequeathed by the Right Hon. Thomas Gren ville to the Museum, which cannot be valued at less than £IOO,OOO to-day. Turning our backs reluctantly on these treasures of books, our attention is drawn to a circular block of what appears to be black slate, about a yard in diameter, on which are inscribed tho words "Rosetta Stone." Like the Abbey stone to which we have referred, its' intrinsic value is next to nothing, and vet it is actually worth its weight in gold at the very least; for the Hieroglyphics inscribed on it two thousanl vears or iuo v a;-'o supply the key ii» invaluable Egyptian writings which oherwise would never ha\c been deciphered. A few steps now take us to a collection of ancient sculptures which or.co adorned certain buildings on the *^ c '" ropolis of Athens —many of them cesigned and executed by Phidias, the greatest of all Greek sculptors, neailj five centuries before Christ was bom. These are the world-famous Elgin marbles. sent from Greece to England by Lord Elgin, our Ambassador to Turkev a little more than a century ago at a cost of £<4,000. Many of them were conveved in a vessel which foundered in the Bay of Cerjgo, and lav for three years at the bottom of the sea until they were rescued to become one of our most prized art possessions —a treasure valued at £'200,000.

MADE BEFORE ROME WAS FOUNDED. Here close bv, We see the famous Bulls which kept their silent watch and ward at the gates of the Kings of Nineveh before ever Borne was founded or Homer was cradled. Nineveh itself was destroyed more than 2,0 0 vears aw, and these guardian bulls which look down on us to-day. with their weird equipment of wings and human heads, slept unseen through the lon* centuries until they were at last restored to the light of day by a French explorer seventy-four years jv-o These resurrected bulls are said to be worth £40.000. which is lew than a quarter of the value of the relics in our National Museum. From these leviathans of sculpture we turn to a vase of exquisite beauty, so small—it is only ten in-Vs high--that von can hold it on ihc palm ° r your hand, but so valuable that it would be eagerly snapped up for Clo.ooo or more. It is of dark-blue glass, on which, in relief, are figures in white opaque glass. Tn 230 A.D. this vase, holding, so it is said, the ashes of the Roman Emperor Severus, was deposited in a sepulchre on the outskirts of Rome, where it remained for 1,400 vears until it was dug up by Pope Frban VIII. For a century and -.\ half more it was preserved at the Barborini Palace. Borne, and was ultimatelv purchased by the Duke of Portland and deposited in the British Museum. Some fiftv vears later a drunken mechanic named William Lloyd, hurled a stone at the peerless vase, literallv smashing it into a thousand pieces; but

with such skill wad it reconstructed, piece by pece that to-day scarcely u blemish can be detected in it. Thus, within tike Museum walls, we see treasure after treasure which John Hull has quietly garnered ii.rough the centuries. We have littlc„fim e left to do more than glance at a single cabinet of Egyptian pottery which alone is valued at a quarter of a million pounds; and at the " King's Cup," for which £S,OOO was paid in lc!!2. This cup, of enamelled goid, was made for Charles V. of France, and adorned the table of ten of our Sovereigns until the first James gave it to a Spanish sjraii'Jee in IGO4. For two later eenturn-s ii found a home in a Bruges nu before it drifted again to England, V'd finally to the British Museum. PRICi'L/ESS PICTURES. Such are Mil n very few of the endless treasures in this wonderful Museum, which is only one of John Bull's repositories. If we extend our tour to the National Gnlllery we shall find many more —a bewildering choice of them, with an aggregate value of at least £2,000,000. For one picture alone, Raphael's "Ansidei Madonna," prohahlv the most valuable in the world, the nation r >. ul *.70,000 —a sum equal to L'l-I for every square inch of it. For a portrait of Charles I. by Vandyke the Duke of Marlborough received £17,500; and the "Famdv of Darius." "the most precious Paul Veronese in the world," according to Ruskin, cost £13,650, a sum which by no means represents its actual value. Many of the National Gallery pictures are, for their size, of almost fabulous value. Thus Terburg's "Peace of Minister" was bought by th,o Marquis of Hertford for a sum which represented £24 for every square inch; and for Correggio's " Yierge au Pan'.er" t!ie price paid would cover it with sovereigns twenty-seven times over. I Among many other cost'y canvases are three by Velasquez, purchased for £•">.5,000; and three by Holbein, which ai'o probably worth much more than the £3").000 naid for them.

The South Kensington Museum n another storehouse ot treasures, a description of which would fill a sul>stantial volume. We have, however, only space to glance at two of thorn—first, a coliect'on of seven cartoons by Raphael, said to he beyond price, so valuable are they. Drawn with chalk on sheets of strong paper pieced together, they are the original designs for tapestrios to adorn the wal's of the Sistine Chapel. For long years they remained neglected in an Arras warehouse before they were rescued and sold to Cromwell for £300; and it was only after another lang period of oblivion in a Whitehall lumber room that they found a worthy home at Hampton Court by order of Wiliam 111. Another South Kensington treasure we must just not'ee—the marvellous collection of furniture gathered from all parts of Europe at a fabulous cost, and bequeathed to the nation by the collector, Mr. Jones, a self-made millionaire, a generation ago. In this collection of hundreds of pieces of the most exquisite furniture in the world, valued at a quarter of a million pounds, the most beautiful and costly is a Mario Antoiaotte toilet table, inlaid with flowers and a landscape, which alone would easily fetch £2O 000 or more to-day at Christie's aue-ic.n rooms.