Chapter II (1)

A GROUP OF CLASSICAL ARCHÆOLOGISTS AND EXPLORERS.

‘The Archæologist cannot, like the Scholar, carry on his researches
in his own Library, independent of outward circumstances. For _his_
work of reference and collation he must travel, excavate, collect,
arrange, delineate, transcribe, before he can place his whole
subject before his mind....

‘A Museum of Antiquities is to the Archæologist what a Botanic
Garden is to the Botanist. It presents his subject compendiously,
synoptically, suggestively, not in the desultory and accidental
order in which he would otherwise be brought into contact with its
details.’—

C. T. NEWTON, _On the Study of Archæology_, p. 26.

_Sir William_ HAMILTON _and his Pursuits and Employments in
Italy.—The Acquisitions of the French Institute of Egypt, and
the capture of part of them at Alexandria.—Charles_ TOWNELEY
_and his Collection of Antiquities.—The Researches of the Earl
of_ ELGIN _in Greece.—The Collections and Writings of Richard_
PAYNE KNIGHT.

[Sidenote: BOOK II, Chap. II. CLASSICAL ARCHÆOLOGISTS AND EXPLORERS.]

To the comparatively small assemblage of antiquities which originally formed part of the Museum of COURTEN and of SLOANE, several additions had been made—besides the coins, medals, and bronzes of Sir Robert COTTON—prior to the opening of the British Museum to the Public in 1759. Some of those additions were the gift, severally, of three members of the LETHIEULLIER family. Others were the gift of Thomas HOLLIS, who became a constant benefactor to the Museum almost from the day of Sir Hans SLOANE’S death to that of his own.

The LETHIEULLIER antiquities had been chiefly gathered in Egypt. [Sidenote: THE EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES OF THE LETHIEULLIERS.] The first gift was made by the Will of Colonel William LETHIEULLIER, dated 23rd July, 1755. [Sidenote: MS. ADDIT., 6179, f. 29.] And the first catalogue of any kind which was prepared for the British Museum, after its acquisition by Parliament, was a list of these antiquities drawn up by Dr. John WARD, one of the Trustees. And here it may deserve remark that for many years after the foundation not a few of the Trustees took a large share in the actual work of preparing the Museum for public use, as well as in the ordinary duties of control and administration.

To the gift of Colonel William LETHIEULLIER, his cousin, Smart LETHIEULLIER, and his nephew, Pitt LETHIEULLIER, made several additions between the years 1756 and 1770. The last-named of these gentlemen, when receiving, as executor of his uncle, the personal thanks of a Committee of the Trustees (February, 1756), for the bequest so made, took the opportunity of augmenting it by the gift of some antiquities which he had himself collected during his residence at Grand Cairo.

But the first large and comprehensive addition in the archæological department was that made in 1772 by the purchase, by means of a Parliamentary grant, of the Museum of Antiquities, which had been formed during seven years’ researches in Italy by Sir William HAMILTON, our Ambassador at Naples.

[Sidenote: SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND HIS CAREER AT NAPLES.]

Sir William HAMILTON was among the earliest of British diplomatists who, by a voluntary choice, turned to good account, in the interests of learning and of the public, the opportunities which diplomatic life so frequently offers for amassing treasures of literature and science, and (in many cases) for saving them from peril of destruction. In that path Frenchmen had showed the way many generations earlier.

As far, indeed, as regards a public and national care for matters of the intellect, France is far better entitled to claim a priority in the proud distinction of ‘teaching the nations how to live,’ than is any other country in the world. It is to her immortal honour that from a very early period, and even in times of sore trouble, her sovereigns and her statesmen have known how to turn public resources to the promotion of public culture, as well as of national power. A man may read in French diplomatic letters of instruction of the sixteenth century orders to collect manuscripts and antiquities, as implements of public education, such as he would look for in vain in parallel British documents of any century at all,—inclusive of the present;—although it is certain that the omission has by no means arisen from the engrossment of our diplomatists in weightier concerns.

In Sir William HAMILTON’S case the liberal tastes and the mental energy of the individual supplied the defect of his instructions. He set an example which not a few of our ambassadors have voluntarily followed with like public spirit, and with results not less conspicuous.

William HAMILTON was the fourth son of Lord Archibald HAMILTON, youngest son of James, third Duke of HAMILTON, K.G. His mother, Lady Jane HAMILTON, was of that illustrious family by birth, as well as by marriage, being the daughter of James, sixth Earl of ABERCORN. He was born in the year 1730.

Towards the close of his career, Sir William would sometimes say to his intimates, when conversation turned upon the battle of life: ‘I had to begin the world with a great name, and one thousand pounds for all my fortune.’ But the world never used him very roughly. Whilst still a young man (1755) he married Miss BARLOW, the wealthy heiress of Hugh BARLOW, of Laurenny Hall, in Pembrokeshire. She brought him an estate, in the neighbourhood of Swansea, worth nearly five thousand pounds a year; but it was his happy lot to have married a true wife, not a bag of money. DUCLOS, who saw much of the HAMILTONS in their family circle at Naples in after years, was wont to say, ‘They are the happiest couple I ever saw.’

[Sidenote: 1764–1800.]

Mr. HAMILTON was sent to the Court of Naples in 1764. The post, in that day, was not overburdened with business. And for some years to come the new Ambassador found the Neapolitan society little to his taste. He was intellectual, and, in the truest sense, an English gentleman. The tone of society at that time in Naples was both frivolous and dissolute. He had to form, by slow degrees, a circle in which a man of cultivated tastes might enjoy social life. The public duties of the embassy could employ but a small portion of his time, and the temper of the man made employment to him a necessary of life. He threw his energies into hard study. And he possessed that happiest of mental characteristics, an equal love of the natural sciences, and of the world of art and of books. He could pore, with like enjoyment, on the deep things of Nature, and on the secrets of ‘the antiquary times.’ And in both paths, he knew how to make his personal enjoyments teem with public good.

His first labours were given to the exhaustive research of volcanic phenomena. He amazed the fine gentlemen of Naples by setting to work as though he had to win his bread by the sweat of his brow. He laboured harder on the slopes of Vesuvius than an exceptionally diligent craftsman would labour in a factory—had Naples possessed any. Within four years he ascended the famous mountain twenty-two times. More than one of these ascents was made at the risk of his life. He made, and caused to be made, innumerable drawings of all the phenomena that he observed, showing the volcanic eruption in all its stages, and under every kind of meteorological condition. He formed too a complete collection of volcanic products, and of the earths and minerals of the volcanic district. When he had studied Vesuvius under every possible aspect, he went to Etna.

The results of these elaborate investigations were sent, from time to time, to the Royal Society (of which Mr. HAMILTON was made a Fellow, after the reading of the first of his papers in 1766), and they were published in the _Philosophical Transactions_, between the years 1766 and 1780. They were afterwards collected, and improved, in the two beautiful volumes entitled _Campi Phlegræi_, and were lavishly illustrated from the drawings of F. A. FABRIS, who had been trained by HAMILTON to the work.[57] The collection of volcanic geology and products was given to the British Museum in 1767.

[Sidenote: THE HAMILTON MUSEUM OF ANTIQUITIES.]

These geological labours had been diversified, at intervals, by the collection of a rich archæological museum, and by the establishment of a systematic correspondence on antiquarian subjects with men of learning in various parts of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. This correspondence had for its object, not merely the enrichment of his own Museum, but the awakening of local attention throughout the country to its antiquities and history; matters which had theretofore been but too much neglected—in the Neapolitan fashion.

One of the earliest and choicest acquisitions made by HAMILTON in the early years of his residence at Naples was a collection of vases belonging to the senatorial family of PORCINARI, many of which had been gathered from sepulchres and excavations in Magna Græcia. This purchase, made in 1766 and afterwards largely increased, may be regarded as the substantial beginning of the noble series of vases now so prominent a part of our National Museum.

Thus had been formed, by degrees, at Naples, a museum which, at the beginning of the year 1772, included seven hundred and thirty fictile vases; a hundred and seventy-five terra-cottas; about three hundred specimens of ancient glass (including three of the most perfect cinerary urns known, at that time, to have been discovered); six hundred and twenty-seven bronzes, of which nearly one-half illustrated the arms and armour of the ancients; more than two hundred specimens of sacrificial, domestic, and architectonic, instruments and implements; fourteen bassi-relievi, busts, masques, and inscribed tablets; about a hundred and fifty miscellaneous pieces of ancient ivory, including a curious series of tessaræ; a hundred and forty-nine gems, chiefly scarabæi; a hundred and forty-three personal ornaments, of various kinds, in gold; a hundred and fifty-two fibulæ in various materials; and more than six thousand coins and medals, comprising a considerable series from the towns of Magna Græcia.

The first fruits of this noble collection was the publication, commenced in the year 1766, of the work entitled _Antiquités Etrusques_, &c., with admirable illustrations, and with a descriptive text, written in French by D’HANCARVILLE. [Sidenote: PUBLICATION OF THE ‘ANTIQUITÉS ETRUSQUES.’] The first edition of this costly book was issued at Naples. It naturally attracted great attention. No such collection of fictile vases—in their combination of number and beauty—had been theretofore known.

The two volumes published at Sir William’s cost in 1766, were followed by two other volumes in 1767. All of them were executed with great care and with lavish expenditure. But the later edition, printed at Florence—long afterwards—is in many points superior.[58]

Whilst the volumes were still incomplete, Mr. HAMILTON circulated proof plates of the work with great liberality. Some of these proofs were lent to our famous English potter, Josiah WEDGWOOD, and gave a strong impulse to his taste and artistic zeal. [Sidenote: Meteyard, _Life of Josiah Wedgwood_, vol. ii, p. 72.] But they excited an eager longing for access to the vases themselves, as the only satisfactory models.

[Sidenote: Wedgwood to Bentley, 10 May, 1770.]

When WEDGWOOD wrote to his friend and partner, BENTLEY;—‘Mr. HAMBLETON, you know, has flattered the old pot-painters very much,’ one feels that for the moment that excellent man’s prepossessions had been rubbed a little, against the grain. But he shows directly that there is no real intent to impeach the Editor’s honesty in the matter. ‘He has, no doubt,’ adds WEDGWOOD, ‘taken his designs from the very best vases extant,’ which was precisely what it was his duty to do, since selection was the task in hand, not the publication of seven hundred specimens.

This Collection—far more remarkable than any, of its kind, which had yet come to England—was brought over in 1772, and offered to the Trustees of the British Museum. An appeal was made to Parliament, and the first grant of public money, worthy of mention, was now made in order to its acquisition. The sum given to Mr. HAMILTON was eight thousand four hundred pounds.

How soon one of the incidental results of the acquisition returned to the Public much more than its cost—leaving out of account altogether the best returns which accrue from such Collections—is among the familiar annals of our commerce. Josiah WEDGWOOD told a Committee of the House of Commons that, within two years, he had himself brought into England, by his imitations of the Hamilton vases in his manufactory at Etruria, about three times the sum which the Collection had cost to the country.

[Sidenote: THE EXPLORATIONS AT POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM.]

At the beginning of the year 1772 Mr. HAMILTON was made a Knight of the Bath. He returned to Naples soon after the transfer of his antiquities to the Museum, and ere long he was busily engaged in new explorations at Pompeii and at Herculaneum. He sent to the Society of Antiquaries, in 1777, an interesting account of the discoveries at Pompeii, which is printed in the fourth volume of the _Archæologia_. At Herculaneum he employed, during many years, Father Antonio PIAGGI to superintend excavations and make drawings, and gave him an annual salary equal to a hundred pounds sterling, after vainly endeavouring—at that time—to urge on the Neapolitan Government its own duty to carry on the task in an adequate manner for the honour of the nation, and to publish the results of the explorations for the general benefit of learning.

Sir William’s services as an ambassador were rendered with zeal and with credit, as opportunity offered. But the opportunity, in his earlier period, was comparatively rare. It was, perhaps, despite the proverb, not altogether a happy thing for Naples that its annals were tiresome. The rust of inactivity showed itself there, as so often elsewhere, to be much more fatal than the exhaustion of strife. Certainly, to the ambassador, it was a personal misfortune that, when the affairs of Naples became really momentous to Englishmen, the vigour and the will of earlier days were then departing from the man whose energies were at length to be put to the test in the proper sphere of his profession. Meanwhile, and in his prime, he had but—from time to time—to make routine memorials as to matters of individual wrong; to heal breaches between one Bourbon and another; and to secure the neutrality of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies during the war which grew out of the struggle in America. Such matters made no great inroad upon the pursuits of the naturalist and the antiquarian.

Labour on the mountains, in the excavations, and in the study, had been, now for many years, relieved by congenial friendships. There had been an improvement in the tone of Neapolitan Society since HAMILTON’S first appearance. And all that was best in Naples had gathered round him. To English travellers his hospitalities were splendid and unremitting. But in 1782 the circle lost its mistress. Seven years before, Sir William and Lady HAMILTON had been bereaved of a daughter—their only child. In 1783 occurred the dreadful earthquake in Calabria, the greatest calamity of the century save that at Lisbon.

Among the scientific correspondents in England with whom Sir William HAMILTON kept up an intercourse was Sir Joseph BANKS, then the President of the Royal Society. To him was sent the fullest account that was attainable of the sad event of 1783.

It had chanced that just before the news reached Naples, Sir Joseph had written to HAMILTON about some experiments and discoveries on the composition and transmutation of water. He had said, jestingly: ‘In future we philosophers shall rejoice when an eruption, which may swallow up a few towns, affords subsistence for as many nations of animals and vegetables.’ This letter HAMILTON was about to answer when he received the intelligence from Calabria.

‘We have had here,’ he writes, ‘some shocks of an earthquake which, in Calabria Ultra, has swallowed up or destroyed almost every town, together with some towns in Sicily.... Every hour brings in accounts of fresh disasters. [Sidenote: 1783. Feb. 18.] Some thousands of people will perish with hunger before the provisions sent from hence can reach them. This, I believe, will prove to have been the greatest calamity that has happened in this century. An end is put to the Carnival. [Sidenote: Hamilton to Banks, MS. ADDIT., 8967, ff. 34, seqq.] The theatres are shut. I suppose Saint Januarius will be brought out.’ There had been no exaggeration in these first reports. It was found that at Terranova, not only were all the buildings destroyed, but the very ground on which they stood sunk to such a depth as to form a sort of gulf. In that district alone 3043 people lost their lives. At Seminara 1328 persons were buried beneath the ruins. In other and adjacent districts more than 3300 persons perished.

In 1784 the ambassador visited England. His stay was brief. But an incident which occurred during this visit gave its colour to the rest of his life.

In 1791 Sir William HAMILTON was made a Privy Councillor, and in the same year (nine years after the death of his first wife) he married Emma HARTE, whom he had first met in the house of his nephew, Colonel GREVILLE, in 1784. In September, 1793, his eventful acquaintance with NELSON was formed.

[Sidenote: HAMILTON’S FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH NELSON.]

In that month, NELSON had been sent to Naples with despatches from Admiral Lord HOOD, in which Sir William HAMILTON was pressed to procure the sending of some Neapolitan troops to Toulon. After his first interview with Lord HOOD’S messenger, he is said to have remarked to his wife: ‘I have a little man to introduce to you who will become one of the greatest men England has ever had.’ The favourable impression was reciprocal, it seems. The ambassador gave such good furtherance to the object of NELSON’S mission, that the messenger, we are told, said to him, ‘You are a man after my heart. [Sidenote: Clarke and McArthur, _Life, &c., of Nelson_, vol. i, p. 133; and Nicolas, vol. i, p. 326.] I’m only a captain, but, if I live, I shall get to the top of the tree;’ while, of the too-fascinating lady into whose social circle he was presently brought, NELSON wrote to his wife, ‘She is a young woman of amiable manners, who does honour to the station to which she is raised.’ Several years, however, were yet to intervene before the events of the naval war and the political circumstances of Naples itself brought about a close connexion in public transactions between the great seaman and the British ambassador, whose long diplomatic career was drawing to its close.

HAMILTON, after the manner of Collectors, had scarcely parted with the fine Museum, which he had sold to the Public in 1772, before he began to form another. The explorations of the buried cities gave some favourable opportunities near home, and his researches were spread far and wide. In amassing vases he was especially fortunate. And, in that particular, his second Collection came to surpass the first. He became anxious to ensure its preservation in integrity. With that view he offered it to the King of Prussia.

[Sidenote: THE SECOND HAMILTON COLLECTION OF VASES.]

‘I think,’ he wrote to the Countess of LICHTENAU, in May, 1796, ‘my object will be attained by placing my Collection, with my name attached to it, at Berlin. And I am persuaded that, in a very few years, the profit which the arts will derive from such models will greatly exceed the price of the Collection. The King’s [porcelain] manufactory would do well to profit by it.... For a long time past I have had an unlimited commission from the Grand Duke of Russia [afterwards PAUL THE FIRST], but, between ourselves, I should think my Collection lost in Russia; whilst, at Berlin, it would be in the midst of men of learning and of literary academies.

‘There are more,’ he continues, ‘than a thousand vases, and one half of them figured. If the King listens to your proposal, he may be assured of having the whole Collection, and I would further undertake to go, at the end of the war, to Berlin to arrange them. [Sidenote: Sir W. Hamilton to the Countess of Lichtenau, 3 May, 1796.] On reckoning up my accounts,—I must speak frankly (_il faut que je dise la vérité_),—I find that I shall needs be a loser, unless I receive seven thousand pounds sterling for this Collection. That is exactly the sum I received from the English Parliament for my first Collection....[59] As respects Vases, the second is far more beautiful and complete than the series in London, but the latter included also bronzes, gems, and medals.’ But the negotiation thus opened led to no result. And some of the choicest contents of this second Museum were eventually lost by shipwreck.

When the correspondence with Berlin occurred, the Collector’s health was rapidly failing him. The political horizon was getting darker and darker. Victorious France was putting its pressure upon the Neapolitan Government to accept terms of peace which should exact the exclusion of British ships from the Neapolitan ports. The ambassador needed now all the energies for which, but a few years before, there had been no worthy political employment. They were fast vanishing; but, to the last, Sir William exerted himself to the best of his ability. It was his misfortune that he had now to work, too often, by deputy.

[Sidenote: THE LATER EVENTS AT NAPLES, 1796–1799.]

Lady HAMILTON’S ambitious nature, and her appetite for political intrigue, when combined with some real ability and a good deal of reckless unscrupulousness as to the path by which the object in view might be reached, were dangerous qualities in such a Court as that of Naples. If, more than once, they contributed to the attainment of ends which were eagerly sought by the Government at home, and were of advantage to the movements of the British fleet, they cost—as is but too well known—an excessive price at last. The blame fairly attachable to Sir William HAMILTON is that of suffering himself to be kept at a post for which the infirmities of age were rapidly unfitting him. But there he was to remain during yet four eventful years; quitting his embassy only when, to all appearance, he was at the door of death.

Between the September of 1793 and that of 1798 NELSON and Sir William HAMILTON met more than once; but their chief communication was, of course, by letter. When, in October, 1796, after two victories in quick succession, NELSON lost his hard-won prizes, and narrowly escaped being taken into a Spanish port, it was to HAMILTON that he wrote for a certificate of his conduct. And one of the ambassador’s latest diplomatic achievements was his procuring access for British ships to Neapolitan ports before the Battle of the Nile was won.

On the very night of that famous first of August, 1798, Sir William—whilst the distant battle was yet raging—told NELSON of the disappointment which had followed the rumours, current during many days at Naples, of a defeat given to the French fleet in the Bay of Alexandretta, and assured him of his own confidence that the rumours, though then unfounded, would come true at last. Five weeks afterwards, he had the satisfaction of sending to London the first official account of the great victory which he had seen before with the eye of faith.

At Naples the authentic news was received with a joy which worked like frenzy. When the ambassador first saw the Queen, after its arrival, she was rushing up and down the room of audience, and embracing every person who entered it—man, woman, or child. [Sidenote: Sir W. Hamilton to Nelson; Nicolas, vol. iii, p. 72.] He sent to NELSON an account of the universal joy. ‘You have now, indeed, made yourself immortal,’ was his own greeting. On the 22nd they again met, on board the _Vanguard_, in the Bay. On the 21st of the following December Sir William HAMILTON accompanied the King and Court of Naples in their flight to Palermo.

The events of 1799 belong rather to history than to biography. Sir William HAMILTON’S chief share in them lay in his exertions to obtain for NELSON the large powers which the King of NAPLES vested in the English Admiral—with results so mingled. On the 21st of June he embarked with NELSON on board the _Foudroyant_, and sailed with the squadron to Naples. In the stormy interview between NELSON and Cardinal RUFFO, Sir William acted as interpreter. In all that followed, he seems to have been rather a spectator than an actor. At the close of the year he joined with NELSON in the vain endeavour to induce the King to return to Naples, while that course was yet open to him.

[Sidenote: DEPARTURE FROM NAPLES.]

On the 10th of June, 1800, Sir William took his final leave of Naples, which had been his home for thirty-six years, and where he had mingled in a departed world. In company with the Queen and three princesses, the HAMILTONS sailed in the _Foudroyant_ for Leghorn, on their way to Vienna. A few days after the embarkation, a fellow-passenger writes thus: ‘Sir William HAMILTON appears broken, distressed, and harassed. [Sidenote: Miss Knight to Lady Berry, July 2, 1800.] He says that he shall die by the way, and he looks so ill that I should not be surprised if he did.’ When the Admiral struck his flag (13th July) at Leghorn, the party set out for Vienna. Between Leghorn and Florence, Sir William’s carriage met with an overturn, which increased his malady. At Trieste the physicians were inclined to despair of his life. But he rallied sufficiently to reach England at last, and the change from turmoil to rest prolonged his life for two years to come.

[Sidenote: SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON’S LAST DAYS.]

During the long interval between the acquisition of the first Hamilton Museum and the return of its Collector to his country, he had marked his interest in the national Collection by repeated and valuable gifts. To make yet one gift more—trivial, but possessing an historical interest—was one of his last acts. On the 12th of February, 1803, he sent to the British Museum a Commission given by the famous fisherman of Amalfi to one of his insurrectionary captains. On the 6th of April Sir William HAMILTON died, in London. He was buried at Milford Haven.

The kindly heart had left many memorials of its quality at Naples. The ambassador had lost a part of his fortune. But many poor dependants, in his old home, enjoyed pensions from his liberality.

NELSON, when writing to the Queen of the Two Sicilies upon the death of their common friend, made this remark on his testamentary arrangements:—‘The good Sir William did not leave Lady HAMILTON in such comfortable circumstances as his fortune would have allowed. He has given it amongst his relations. [Sidenote: Nelson to the Queen of Naples (Nicolas, vol. iv, p. 84).] But she will do honour to his memory, although every one else of his friends calls loudly against him on that account.’ This comment, however, expresses rather a temporary feeling than a wise judgment. Sir William had settled a jointure of seven hundred pounds a year upon his widow.

During the few months of life that yet remained to the great seaman himself, the highest encomium known to his vocabulary was to say, ‘So-and-so was a great friend of Sir William HAMILTON.’

[Sidenote: THE ‘INSTITUTE OF EGYPT;’ AND ITS RESEARCHES AND
ACQUISITIONS.]

As the British Museum owes one choice portion of its archæological treasures to the man who was NELSON’S type of friendship, so also it owes—indirectly—another portion of them to the man who was NELSON’S favourite aversion, and whose very name, in the Admiral’s mind, served to sum up all that was most detestable. The Battle of the Nile, and the military operations which followed it in the after years, would have counted no antiquarian riches amongst their trophies, but for that ardent love of science in NAPOLEON which prompted him to plan the ‘Institute of Egypt’ as an essential part of the Campaign of Egypt.

The intention with which the Institute of Egypt was founded embraced every kind of study and research. The scholars of whom it was composed included within their number men of the most varied powers. What they effected was fragmentary, and yet their researches, directly or indirectly, bore much fruit.

In the end, the harvest was to France herself none the less abundant from the fact that NELSON’S achievement, and what grew thereout, set Englishmen and Germans to work with increased vigour in the same field, and divided some of the tools.

Scarcely had General BONAPARTE established the military power of the French Republic in Egypt, before he was employed in organizing the Institute at Cairo. [Sidenote: 1798–1801.] Its declared object was twofold: (1) the increase and diffusion of learning in Egypt itself; (2) the examination, study, and publication, of the monuments of its history and of its natural phenomena, together with the elucidation and improvement of the natural and industrial capabilities of the country. [Sidenote: _Mémoires sur l’Egypt_, passim.] The Institute was composed of thirty-six members, and was divided into four sections. The section with which alone we are here concerned—that of Literature, Arts, and History—was headed by DENON, and amongst its other members were DUTERTRE, PARSEVAL, and RIPAULT. Its labours began in 1798, and were continued, with almost unparalleled activity, until the summer of 1801, when the defeat of BELLIARD near Cairo, and the capitulation of MENOU at Alexandria, placed that part of the collections of the Institute which had not been already sent to France at the disposal of Lord HUTCHINSON.

DENON, on his return from Upper Egypt to Cairo, said, with French vivacity, that if the active movements of the Mamelukes now and then forced an antiquary to become, in self-defence, a soldier, the antiquary was enabled, by way of balance and through the good nature and docility of the French troops, to turn a good many soldiers into antiquaries. Had it not been for this general sympathy and readiness, one can hardly conceive that so much could have been accomplished, even under the eye of NAPOLEON, amidst perils so incessant. The _Description de l’Egypte_ is for France at large, no less than for NAPOLEON and the men whom he set to work, a monument which might well obliterate the momentary mortification attendant on the transfer to London of a part of the treasures of the Institute. History, ancient or modern, scarcely offers a parallel instance in which war was made to contribute results so splendid, both for the progress of science and for the eventual improvement of the invaded country. To the labours initiated by NAPOLEON, and partially carried out by the ‘Institute of Egypt,’ the ablest of the recent rulers of that land owe some of their best and latest inspirations. Nor is it a whit less true that the most successful of our English Egyptologists have followed the track in which Frenchmen led the way. Such results, indeed, can never suffice to justify an unprovoked invasion. But they illustrate, in a marvellous way, how temporary evil is wrought into enduring good.

By the sixteenth article of the Capitulation of Alexandria, it was provided that the Members of the Institute of Egypt might carry back with them all instruments of science and art which they had brought from France, but that all collections of marbles, manuscripts, and other antiquities, together with the specimens of natural history and the drawings, then in the possession of the French, should be regarded as public property, and become subject to the disposal of the generals of the allied army.

[Sidenote: THE CONVENTION OF ALEXANDRIA.]

The Convention was made between General MENOU and General HOPE, on the 31st of August, 1801. [Sidenote: 1801, August.] Against this sixteenth article MENOU made the strongest remonstrances, but General HOPE declined to modify it, otherwise than by agreeing to make a reference, as to the precise extent to which it should be carried into actual effect, to Lord HUTCHINSON, as Commander-in-Chief.

Between MENOU and HUTCHINSON there was a long correspondence. The French General declared that the Collections, both scientific and archæological, were private, not public property. The since famous ‘Rosetta stone,’ for example, belonged, he said, to himself. Various members of the Institute claimed other precious objects; some alleged, with obvious force of argument, that the care bestowed on specimens of natural history made them the property of the collectors and preservers; others threatened to prefer the destruction or defacement of their collections, by their own hands, to the giving of them up to the English army.

[Sidenote: THE NEGOTIATIONS AND SERVICES OF COLONEL TURNER.]

The correspondence was followed by several personal conferences between MENOU and Colonel (afterwards General) TURNER, in order to a compromise. TURNER, who was himself a man of distinguished knowledge and accomplishments, advised Lord HUTCHINSON to insist on the transfer of the Marbles and Manuscripts, and to yield the natural history specimens, with some minor objects, to the possessors. The astute Capitan Pasha had contrived to place himself in ‘possession’ of one of the most precious of the marbles—the famous sarcophagus which Dr. CLARKE so strenuously contended to be nothing less than the tomb of ALEXANDER—by seizing the ship on board of which the French had placed it, and he gave Colonel TURNER almost as much trouble as MENOU himself had given.

The French soldiers were, as was natural, deeply mortified when they heard that the captors of Alexandria were to have the antiquities. Every man of them who had had to do with their excavation or transport had vindicated DENON’S eulogy by his pains to protect the sculptures from harm. Now, their excessive zeal and their national pride led to an unworthy result. The Rosetta stone was stripped of the soft cotton cloth and the thick matting in which it had been sedulously wrapped, and was thrown upon its face. Other choice antiquities were deprived of their wooden cases. [Sidenote: CAPTURE OF THE ROSETTA STONE;] When TURNER, with a detachment of artillerymen and a strong tumbril, went to the French head-quarters to receive the Rosetta stone, he had to pass through a lane of angry Frenchmen who crowded the narrow streets of Alexandria, and were not sparing in their epithets and sarcasms. Those artillerymen, too, were the first English soldiers who entered the city. When Colonel TURNER had gotten safely into his hands the stone destined to mark an era in philology, he returned good for evil. He permitted some members of the Institute of Egypt to take a cast of it, which they sent to Paris in lieu of the original.

The Rosetta inscription had been found, by the French explorers, among the ruins of a fortification near the mouth of the Rosetta branch of the Nile. When they discovered it the stone was already broken, both at the top and at the right side. Of its triple inscription, commemorative of the beginning of the actual and personal reign of PTOLEMY EPIPHANES—and therefore cut nearly two hundred years before the Christian era—that in the hieroglyphic or sacred character had suffered most. The second or enchorial inscription was also mutilated in its upper portion. The Greek version was almost entire.

The scarcely less famous Alexandrian sarcophagus was found by the French in the court-yard of a mosque called the ‘Mosque of St. Athanasius.’ [Sidenote: AND OF THE SARCOPHAGUS SOMETIMES CALLED ‘TOMB OF ALEXANDER.’] Of its discovery and state when found, the following account is given in the _Description de l’Egypte_:—A small octagonal building, covered with a cupola, had been constructed by the Moslems for their ablutions, and in this they had placed the sarcophagus to be used as a bath; piercing it for that purpose with large holes, but not otherwise injuring it. The sarcophagus is a monolith of dark-coloured breccia—such as the Italians call _breccia verde d’Egitto_—and is completely covered with hieroglyphics. [Sidenote: _Description de l’Egypte_, vol. v, pp. 373, seqq.; Plates and Append. (8vo edit.), 1829.] Their number, according to the French artist by whom impressions in sulphur were taken of the whole, exceeds 21,700. Dr. CLARKE’S identification of this monument as the tomb of Alexander has not been supported by later Egyptologists.

This sarcophagus, with most of the other antiquities, was sent on board the flagship _Madras_. [Sidenote: LIST OF THE EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES EMBARKED AT ALEXANDRIA.] The Rosetta inscription, Colonel TURNER embarked, with himself, in the frigate _Egyptienne_. His own list of the antiquities thus brought, in safety, to England runs thus:—(1) An Egyptian sarcophagus, of green breccia; (2) another, of black granite, from Cairo; (3) another, of basalt, from Menouf; (4) the hand of a colossal statue—supposed to be Vulcan—found in the ruins of Memphis; (5) five fragments of lion-headed statues, of black granite, from Thebes; (6) a mutilated kneeling statue, of black granite; (7) two statues, of white marble, from Alexandria—Septimus Severus and Marcus Aurelius; (8) the Rosetta stone; (9) a lion-headed statue, from Upper Egypt; (10) two fragments of lions’ heads, of black granite; (11) a small kneeling figure, of black granite; (12) five fragments of lion-headed statues, of black granite; (13) a fragment of a sarcophagus, of black granite, from Upper Egypt; (14) two small obelisks, of basalt, with hieroglyphics; (15) a colossal ram’s head. Nos. 10 to 15 inclusive were all brought from Upper Egypt. (16) A statue of a woman, sitting, with a model of the capital of a column of the Temple of Isis at Dendera, between her feet; (17) a fragment of a lion-headed statue, of black granite, from Upper Egypt; (18) a chest of Oriental Manuscripts—sixty-two in number—in Coptic, Arabic, and Turkish.

I have given the more careful detail to this notice of the archæological results of the capitulation of Alexandria, inasmuch as a very inaccurate statement of the matter has found its way into an able and deservedly accredited book. [Sidenote: See the _History of Europe_, vol. v, p. 596 (last edition).] Sir Archibald ALISON, in his _History of Europe_ (probably from some misconception of the compromise effected between General TURNER and the French Commander-in-Chief), writes thus:—‘General HUTCHINSON, with a generous regard for the interests of science and the feelings of these distinguished persons [the Members of the Institute of Egypt], agreed to depart from the stipulation and allow these treasures of art to be forwarded to France. The sarcophagus of ALEXANDER, now in the British Museum, was, however, retained by the British, and formed the glorious trophy of their memorable triumph.’

General TURNER’S conspicuous service on this occasion did not end with the transport into England of the Alexandrian Collections. Before the Rosetta inscription was, by the King’s command, placed, together with its companions, in the British Museum, as their permanent abode, General TURNER obtained Lord BUCKINGHAMSHIRE’S assent to the temporary deposit of the stone from Rosetta in the custody of the Society of Antiquaries, by whose care copies of the inscriptions were sent to the chief scholars and academies of the Continent, in order that combined study might be brought to bear, immediately, upon the contents. This circumstance makes it all the more honourable to our countryman, Dr. Thomas YOUNG, that by his labours upon the stone a strong impulse was first given to the progress of hieroglyphical discovery.

The accessions from Alexandria served, also, to initiate another improvement. When, in 1802, they reached the Museum, its contents had so increased that the old house afforded no adequate space for their reception. They had, like some famous sculptures of much later acquisition, to be placed in sheds which scarcely preserved them from bad weather, and were even less adapted to facilitate their study. [Sidenote: 1804, July 2.] [Sidenote: _Parliamentary Debates_, vol. ii, col. 901, seqq.] The Trustees made their first application to Parliament for the enlargement of the Museum Building, ‘in order to provide suitable room for the preservation of invaluable monuments of antiquity which had been acquired by the valour, intrepidity, and skill of our troops in an expedition seldom equalled in the annals of the country.’ And before presenting their petition they determined that increased facilities should be given for the admission of the Public, as soon as they should be enabled to make an adequate increase in the staff of the establishment.

When the extension of the British Museum came first to be discussed in the House of Commons (somewhat grudgingly and captiously it must, in truth, be acknowledged), upon the application of the Trustees, some of their number were already aware that an accession was likely soon to accrue through the munificence of a fellow-trustee, which would make a new and extensive building indispensable. Charles TOWNELEY had already made a Will in virtue of which—as it stood in 1804—the Towneley Marbles were devised in trust for the British Museum, on condition that the Trustees thereof should, ‘within two years from the time of the testator’s decease, set apart a room or rooms sufficiently spacious and elegant to exhibit these antiquities most advantageously to the Public,—such rooms to be exclusively set apart for the reception and future exhibition of the antiquities aforesaid.’ Circumstances not foreseen in 1802, when Colonel TOWNELEY’S Will had been first made, led afterwards to a change in the mode in which his noble Collection was to be received by the Public. But its preservation and public accessibility, in one way or other, had long been resolved upon.

The TOWNELEYS, of Towneley, rank among the most ancient and distinguished commoners of Lancashire. They can trace an honourable descent to a period antecedent to the Conquest. They have been seated at Towneley from the twelfth century. Several of them have given good service to England, in various ways, in spite of the obstacles and discouragements which, for many generations, clave to almost every man whose convictions obliged him to adhere to the Roman Catholic Church, and so to incur the pains and disabilities of recusancy. Of these they had their full share. One TOWNELEY had been mulcted in fines amounting to more than five thousand pounds, simply for remaining true to his belief, and had been, for that cause, sent (with an ingenuity of torment one is almost tempted to call diabolic) from prison to prison across the breadth of England, and back again.[60] Another TOWNELEY was driven into an exile which lasted so long that when he returned into Lancashire everybody had forgotten his features and his voice, except his dog. But neither fine, imprisonment, nor banishment, had converted them to Protestantism. Hence it was that Charles TOWNELEY, the Collector of the Marbles, received his education at Douay, and contracted all the strong formative impressions of early life and habit on the Continent.

He was born, in the old seat of the family at Towneley Hall, on the 1st of October, 1737. [Sidenote: LIFE OF CHARLES TOWNELEY.] His father, William TOWNELEY, had married Cecilia, sole daughter and heir of Richard STANDISH, by his wife Lady Philippa HOWARD, daughter of Henry, Duke of NORFOLK. The hall—which has not yet lost all its venerable aspect—was built in part by a Sir John TOWNELEY in the reign of HENRY VIII, and its older portions (turrets, gateway, chapel, and library) suit well the fine position of the building, and the noble woods which back it. Of the founder two things still remain in local tradition and memory. He took the changes made under the rule of HENRY—or rather of Thomas CROMWELL—so much in dudgeon, that when Lancaster Herald came to Towneley, upon his Visitation, he refused to admit him, saying, ‘Do not trouble thyself. There are no more gentlemen left in Lancashire now than my Lord of DERBY, and my Lord MONTEAGLE.’ The other tradition of this same Sir John is, that he enclosed a common pasture called Horelaw, and so made the peasantry as angry with his innovations as he was with CROMWELL’S. Some of their descendants may yet chance to assure the inquisitive stranger, that his ghost still haunts the park, crying aloud in the dead of night—

‘Lay out! lay out![61]
Horelaw and Hollingley Clough!’

At Douay Charles TOWNELEY received a careful education, moulded, of course, under the conditions and the memories of that celebrated College. When he left its good priests he was already the owner of the family estates—his father having died prematurely in 1742—and he was plunged, at once, into the gaieties and temptations of Paris. All the Mentorship he had was that of a great uncle who had become sufficiently naturalised to win the friendship of VOLTAIRE, and to be able to turn _Hudibras_ into excellent French. The dissipations of the Capital overpowered, for a time, the real love of classical studies which had been excited in the provincial college. But the seed had been sown in a good soil. The study of art and of classical archæology, in particular, presently reasserted its claims and renewed its attractions. It was a fortunate circumstance, too, that family affairs required the presence of Mr. TOWNELEY in England on the attainment of his majority.

He had left Towneley very young. He came back to it with more of the foreigner than of the Englishman in his ways of life and manners. But he was able to win the genuine regard of his neighbours, and to take his fair share in their pursuits and sports, although he could never—at least in his own estimation—succeed in expressing his thoughts with as much ease and readiness in English as in French. Late in life, he would speak of this conscious inability with regret. Whether needfully or not, the feeling, no doubt, prevented Mr. TOWNELEY from turning to literary account his large acquirements.

What he had seen of the Continent had given him a desire to see more of it, and the bias of his youthful studies pointed in the same direction. In 1765, after a short stay in France, he went into Italy, and there he passed almost eight years. They were passed in a very different way from that in which he had passed the interval between Douay and Towneley. That long residence abroad enabled him to become a very conspicuous benefactor to his country.

He visited Naples, Florence, and Rome, and from time to time made many excursions into various parts of Magna Græcia and of Sicily. At Naples he formed the acquaintance of Sir William HAMILTON and of D’HANCARVILLE. [Sidenote: TOWNELEY’S ARTISTIC RESEARCHES IN ITALY.] [Sidenote: 1765–1778.] At Rome he became acquainted with three Englishmen, James BYRES, Gavin HAMILTON, and Thomas JENKINS, all of whom had first gone thither as artists, and step by step had come to be almost exclusively engrossed in the search after works of ancient art. The success and fame of Sir William HAMILTON’S researches in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and of those, still earlier, of Thomas COKE of Holkham (afterwards Earl of Leicester), had given a strong impulse to like researches in other parts of Italy. TOWNELEY caught the contagion, and was backed by large resources to aid him in the pursuit.

His first important purchase was made in 1768. It was that of a work already famous, and which for more than a century had been one of the ornaments of the Barberini Palace at Rome. This statue of a boy playing at the game of tali, or ‘osselets’ (figured in _Ancient Marbles in the British Museum_, part ii, plate 31), was found among the ruins of the Baths of Titus, during the Pontificate of URBAN THE EIGHTH. During the same year, 1768, Mr. TOWNELEY acquired, from the Collection of Victor AMADEI, at Rome, the circular urn with figures in high relief—which is figured in the first volume of Piranesi’s _Raccolta di Vasi Antichi_—and also the statue of a _Nymph of Diana_, seated on the ground. This statue was found in 1766 at the Villa Verospi in Rome.

[Sidenote: FORMATION OF THE TOWNELEY GALLERY.]

Two years afterwards, several important acquisitions were made of marbles which were discovered in the course of the excavations undertaken by BYRES, Gavin HAMILTON, and JENKINS, amidst the ruins of Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli. The joint-stock system, by means of which the diggings were effected, no less than the conditions which accompanied the papal concessions that authorised them, necessitated a wide diffusion of the spoil. But whenever the making of a desirable acquisition rested merely upon liberality of purse or a just discrimination of merit, Mr. TOWNELEY was not easily outstripped in the quest. Amongst these additions of 1769–71 were the noble Head of _Hercules_, the Head said, conjecturally, to be that of _Menelaus_, and the ‘_Castor_’ in low relief (all of which are figured in the second part of _Ancient Marbles_).

Two terminal heads of the bearded _Bacchus_—both of them of remarkable beauty—were obtained in 1771 from the site of Baiæ. These were found by labourers who were digging a deep trench for the renewal of a vineyard, and were seen by Mr. ADAIR, who was then making an excursion from Naples. In the same year the statue of _Ceres_ and that of a _Faun_ (_A. M._, ii, 24) were purchased from the Collection in the Macarani Palace at Rome. In 1772 the _Diana Venatrix_ and the _Bacchus and Ampelus_ were found near La Storta. It was by no fault of TOWNELEY’S that the _Diana_ was in part ‘restored,’ and that blunderingly. He thought restoration to be, in some cases, permissible; but never deceptively; never when doubt existed about the missing part. In art, as in life, he clave to his heraldic motto ‘_Tenez le vrai_.’

In 1771, also, the famous ‘_Clytie_’—doubtfully so called—was purchased from the Laurenzano Collection at Naples.

The curious scenic figure on a plinth (_A. M._, part x) together with many minor pieces of sculpture, were found in the Fonseca Villa on the Cælian Hill in 1773. In the same year many purchases were made from the Mattei Collection at Rome. Amongst these are the heads of _Marcus Aurelius_ and of _Lucius Verus_. And it was at this period that Gavin HAMILTON began his productive researches amidst the ruins of the villa of Antoninus Pius at Monte Cagnolo, near the ancient Lanuvium. This is a spot both memorable and beautiful. The hill lies on the road between Genzano and Civita Lavinia. It commands a wide view over Velletri and the sea. To HAMILTON and his associates it proved one of the richest mines of ancient art which they had the good fortune to light upon. Mr. TOWNELEY’S share in the spoil of Monte Cagnolo comprised the group of _Victory sacrificing a Bull_; the _Actæon_; a _Faun_; a Bacchanalian vase illustrative of the _Dionysia_; and several other works of great beauty. The undraped _Venus_ was found—also by Gavin HAMILTON—at Ostia, in 1775.

[Sidenote: THE ACQUISITION OF THE ‘TOWNELEY VENUS.’]

In the next year, 1776, Mr. TOWNELEY acquired one of the chiefest glories of his gallery, the _Venus_ with drapery. This also was found at Ostia, in the ruins of the Baths of Claudius. But that superb statue would not have left Rome had not its happy purchaser made, for once, a venial deflection from the honourable motto just adverted to. The figure was found in two severed portions, and care was taken to show them, quite separately, to the authorities concerned in granting facilities for their removal. The same excavation yielded to the Towneley Collection the statue of _Thalia_. From the Villa Casali on the Esquiline were obtained the terminal head of _Epicurus_, and the bust thought to be that of _Domitia_. The bust of _Sophocles_ was found near Genzano; that of _Trajan_, in the Campagna; that of _Septimius Severus_, on the Palatine, and that of _Caracalla_ on the Esquiline. A curious cylindrical fountain (figured in _A. M._, i, § 10) was found between Tivoli and Præneste, and the fine representation in low relief of a _Bacchanalian procession_ (_Ib._, part ii) at Civita Vecchia. All these accessions to the Towneley Gallery accrued in 1775 or 1776.

Of the date of the Collector’s first return to England with his treasures I have found no record. [Sidenote: THE TOWNELEY GALLERY IN ENGLAND.] But it would seem that nearly all the marbles hitherto enumerated were brought to England in or before the year 1777. The house, in London, in which they were first placed was found to be inadequate to their proper arrangement. Mr. TOWNELEY either built or adapted another house, in Park street, Westminster, expressly for their reception. Here they were seen under favourable circumstances as to light and due ordering. They were made accessible to students with genuine liberality. And few things gave their owner more pleasure than to put his store of knowledge, as well as his store of antiquities, at the service of those who wished to profit by them. He did so genially, unostentatiously, and with the discriminating tact which marked the high-bred gentleman, as well as the enthusiastic Collector.