LUCK OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 82, 3 May 1909, Page 4

LUCK OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

Like most of the great institutions and achievements in which our race takes pride, like the Empire and the Constitution themselves, the British Museum owes much to what apparently was luck or accident, but which in the after-event looks like the half-conscious work of a slowly maturing destiny, its present completeness ami ordered ! equipment, our national museum might seem, were its history known, the embodiment of a logically formulated idea, like some more recent collections elsewhere; yet it has grown in its own ! way, much a* our English oaks have done, spreading out into spontaneous, vigorous branches; and in spite oi British haphazardry. and in spite of. occasional blighting winds from the Treasury, the full growth ha* attained u rich organic unity. Ah most people -know, the museum had its origin in th e will of Sir Hans Sloanc. who died at a great old age iu January. 175J1. Sloanc, an Irishman of Scotch descent, was a distinguished physician, with a keen interest in and gift for natural science. He was made a baronet by (leorge I.; lie became President of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society. But in his younger days he had spent two years in Jamaica, ICB7TCS!), and had, with welldirected energy, formed a fine collection illustrative of the natural history of the island.

To tin* collection he was always adding during the rest oi his long career; and the splendid bequest of a muehtravelled friend, Charleston, very greatly enhanced its value. Long before his death he conceived a strong idea that his collection should be kept together and put to public use. In 1739 he made ci will, subsequently" modified by codicils, embodying hie intention. At one time lie designed that the collections should he kept iu his Chelsea manorhouse; but in the end the house was left to his daughters. Iu its final form the will directed that the collections should be offered, for the comparatively small sum of £20,01)0. to the King, and, failing him, to Parliament. The King look* cd askance at the offer, and the matter was brought Ijefore the House of Commons. Here, too, was hesitation. Chance, however, or destiny was working for the scheme of a national museum.

ft happened that another famous collection, intended tor public use and access, was without a resting place or home of its own. This was the library, ehiefiy of manuscripts, which had been formed in the sixteenth and .seventeenth centuries by Sir Robert Cotton. Jt had been housed in various temporary quarter?. and while at Ashburnbam House. Westminster, liad been partly destroyed by fire. Sloane's offer gave practical emphasis to the question of housing the Col lonian library, the neglect of which had become n «candal A group of members of Parliament, with Onslow, the Speaker, at their head, conceived the. idea of combining th<» two collection!?, and. furthermore, of purchasing for the nation the splendid collection of Manuscripts made liy Robert llarley. Queen Anne's Minister, and his son." Parliament was brought to approve of the plan, and the British Museum became an accomplished iact.

It was certainly a piece of good fortune that these two libraries were added to Sloane's collection, not only because of their great value, but because they gave the museum a more comprehensive character. Sloane's collection was mainly, though by no means entirely, a natural history collection. With all its admirable usee, a museum dominated bv this character docs not wholly fulfil its function as a Temple of the Muses.

It was fortunate, therefore, that from the outset our museum represented other needs besides ; those of natural science. At it grew, it was to become more and morn an embodiment of the fullest and finest conception of a museum. a home or ;, tli ( » humanities"; n kind of .silent university, admitting all who cured to Usmr, a storehouse not only of the wonders of nature, but of the many inventions of man. ft is odd to think that the means chosen by Parliament for raisins the necessary funds was a lottery: but so it was. Then arose the question of honking the collection*. Purkingham House was available; and it is only by accident thai the museum does not now occupy th,, sitc of the King's Palace. Put the prior* asked was thought too hiiih. and it wiu finally decided to purchase Montagu House in "Bloomsbury. How delightful a site this must have N'cn in the mid-eighteenth centaury! ' Hie well-proportioned house of ruddy j brick and white stone had a spacious garden at its back, with green fields in prospect stretching up -to the hills of highcafe. P»v degrees this garden was enclosed with loti<* galleries; then in the. 'forties or tlm last century Montagu House was finally* to disappear and make room fur the great stonv front of I he present ( ] av . A hundred and fiftv rears °n ■lannarv 15, Ithp British museum was officially opened. Its history henceforth is one of continual aeeretions, for which the existing buildings were flffftin and again to prove too small, as indeed is the me at the present day.. Early In the W-fcuTy came tVe

Elgin Marbles, for which more than anything cist* the museum is famed throughout tin* world. Tin. 1 sculptures were condemned, it is almost incredible to think, by the leading connoisseurs of th r day as inferior late work; and it was chielly owing to the determined advocacy of'the unfortunate painter liny* don Unit they were Inst to the nation. The possesion of works of art of paramount beauty.enriched tile museum on another aide than that of learning and science; and the effect of these sculptures and taste was almost a revolution. For long they were exhibited hi a temporary gallery, little better than a shed. The nucleus of the famous Egvptian collections, the antiquities captured from the French by the English army in Egypt, including the Rosetta Stone, had already been deposited I in the museum iu 1802.

Th,. long {pillory housing the library of George 111., presented by his son, and still known ns flip King's Library, was completed in 1827. But the great increase in the department of printed books dates from the passing of the Copyright Act of 18-12, under -which a copy of every British Eook has to be deposited in tbe museum. Till 1852 what was left'of the old garden at Montagu House, within the quadrangle of gallories which had gradually grown up around it. remained unoccupied. f;i that year Pnnizzl, afterwards principal librarian, proposed that this space should be used for tbe extension of the library. People who climb the dome of St. Raid's are often surprised by tbe. appari- j tion of another bug,, dome against the western sky which tbey have never noticed from the London streets. Tt is the dome of tbe great reading room, considerably larger, indeed, than (bat of St. Paul's itself, though it makes little impression in its own neighborhood, being mostly bidden from view. Round this are tbe galleries of ironwork, filling tbe rectangular space with tbeir miles of book shelves. This extension was completed in 1557. Still the museum grew apace. liesides the remarkable Assyrian collections. the second half of the nineteenth century saw endless precious additions in all' the various departments. The natural history department became absurdly overcrowded, cramped in a single section of the Bloomslmry building, whereas now the huge museum at South Kensington, erected in 18RA-83. seems none too ample for them. Even ibis removal, the building of a new wing on the east., the white wing, in 1884. ami tbe recent transference of provincial newspapers to TTendon have not prevented the collections from again becoming overcrowded, though tbe new buildings now in course of slow erection will afford relief for a time. Who knows what another century will see?— Home paper.