Chapter VII (3)

And it is even so; the national pride is so intense, that the Englishman, as a general thing, seems to care very little for anything that is not English; his estimate of anything as good or bad is based upon its approach to or retreat from the British standard of excellence; his national vanity leads him to care very little about the progress or decline of any other country, so long as it does not immediately affect his own "tight little island." Many have, apparently, pictured in their minds a map of the world like that of the Chinese topographer, which gave their own country four fifths of the space, carefully drawn, leaving the remainder a blank, as occupied by outside barbarians.

"But why," asked I of my good-natured friend, "does the Times give two columns of bets and horse-race matter, and only a dozen lines about the great Pacific Railroad?"

"Yaas, ah! the Darby, yah know,--British national sport--every Englishman knows about the Darby--couldn't make up a book without the Times, yah know. The Darby's right h'yar, and yah Pacific railway's three thousand miles off, yah know."

It is to be acknowledged there was a certain degree of force in this reasoning, but our American newspaper readers, who, from appearances, number as five to one compared with Englishmen, have been educated up to such a point of news-getting, that such an argument would fail to satisfy them. To hear some Englishmen talk, you would think the Times had been their swaddling-clothes in infancy, was their book of laws in manhood, and would be their winding-sheet at death.

And yet the Times, despite its great influence, is far exceeded in circulation by other papers in London--the London Telegraph, for instance, which, to an American, will seem in its general characteristics and enterprise the most like an American paper. It takes more pains to make itself a sheet for popular reading. Its editorials are not so heavy, either in subject or matter, as the Times, but more off-hand and easier digested. It seems to be _the_ paper of the middling classes. In nearly every railroad station I stopped at in England a handsomely-painted sign-board, sometimes three and sometimes six feet square, informed me that the London Telegraph had the largest circulation in the world; and immediately under it we were informed, upon another sign of the same size, but another color, that the Evening Standard was the largest paper in the world. Besides these announcements on signs, we found them on posters of the same size all over London, wherever bills were posted, and also posted in other English cities--a style of advertising rather expensive, but hardly so efficacious as the columns of the newspaper.

One is struck by the difference between the American and English as a newspaper-reading people. In America, newspapers are seen everywhere; boys hawk them at every corner; they are sold at news-stands in the entrance hall of every hotel; newsmen pass through the cars with armfuls, at intervals, on every railroad line; half a dozen are taken in every hair-dresser's shop for the use of customers; and the great hotels have a reading-room with files from all the leading cities, so that a daily newspaper may be had in America, and is at hand at any and all times when the reader may wish it; but here in London I found it comparatively a matter of difficulty always to obtain a daily paper. The hotel where I lodged, which had some thirty or forty guests, "took in" _one_ London Daily Times, a Manchester paper, and one other weekly. Of course the first person who got the Times never resigned it until he had read it through, and exhausted the patience of anybody else who undertook to wait for it. There was no news-stand near, nor in the hotel--"the porter could horder me a Times of the newsman, reg'lar, when he came round, if I wished it, as would be ready at breakfast."

Some of my English friends smiled, almost incredulously, at my assertion that our American business men very generally subscribed for from three to five daily papers, besides weeklies, and wondered "why they wanted to read the news over so many times," and were also astonished to know that American coachmen read newspapers while waiting for a fare, a porter while waiting for a job, or a handcart-man at his cart-stand, that they were always a prime necessity to passengers in cars and omnibuses, and were studied, conned, and perused at almost every interval of business, and occupied no small portion of the leisure hours of all classes of American citizens. The railroad stations in London are provided with good news-stands, where the traveller may always obtain the daily and weekly papers, and also a good supply of excellent light literature. My foreign experience, thus far, however, has strengthened my conviction that America is the land of newspapers.

Trying to give the British Museum a thorough examination is somewhat of a formidable undertaking; for it requires several visits to get even a superficial view of its valuable contents. The space of seven acres of ground is occupied by the buildings, which cost over a million pounds sterling, while the curiosities, relics, antiquities, and library cannot be estimated in a money value. As an indication, however, of the value, I may enumerate some of its purchases of collections, &c.: the Charles Townley collection of Roman sculpture, purchased by government in 1805 for twenty thousand pounds, including Discobolus, noble busts of Homer, Pericles, Sophocles, &c.; the Elgin Marbles, purchased of Lord Elgin for thirty-five thousand pounds; the Phygalian Marbles, which cost nineteen thousand pounds; Portland Vase, eighteen hundred guineas; prints, in the collection of prints and engravings, costing from two hundred to five hundred guineas each. The enormous library has swallowed up vast private collections, besides the valuable ones that have been given to it, among them that of Sir Thomas Grenville, which cost fifty-four thousand pounds; George III.'s library, which was given to the government, and cost one hundred and thirty thousand pounds--an exceedingly rich and rare collection; the valuable collection of manuscripts--the Cottonian Harleian, cost ten thousand pounds; Lansdowne, five thousand pounds; Burney, thirteen thousand pounds, &c. These are only a few of the prices of leading collections that I find set down in the different hand-books of the museum; but, as is well known, there are other articles of antiquity, historical relics, bibliographical curiosities, &c., for which perfectly fabulous prices have been paid, especially for any well-authenticated relics or manuscripts relating to the early history of the country. Sometimes articles of this description find their way into a public auction sale, and there is a struggle between some wealthy virtuoso and the museum agent for its possession. But he must be a bold buyer, with a deep purse, to contend successfully against the British Museum, when it is decided that any article offered for sale ought to be added to its collection. The museum is divided into eleven different departments, viz.: printed books and manuscripts, Oriental antiquities, Greek and Roman antiquities, British mediæval antiquities, coins and medals, botany, prints and drawings, zoölogy, palæontology, and mineralogy.

The library is that portion of the museum most read about by strangers, and the least seen by visitors, as they are only admitted into a very few of the rooms in which this enormous collection is contained. There are now seven hundred thousand volumes, and the number increases at the rate of about twenty thousand a year; and among some of the curiosities and literary treasures in this department, I will mention a few, which will give a faint indication of its incalculable value. There are seventeen hundred different editions of the Bible, some very rare and curious; an Arabic edition of the Koran, written in gold, eight hundred and sixty years ago; a collection of block books, printed from carved blocks of wood on one side of the leaf only, which was a style of bookmaking immediately preceding the art of printing.

We were shown specimens of the earliest productions of the printing press, some of which, for clearness and beauty of execution, are most remarkable. The Mazarine Bible, 1455, is very fine. Then we saw a copy of Cicero, printed by Fust and Schoeffer, in 1465. The first edition of the first Latin classic printed, and one of the two books in which Greek type was used;--the press work of this was excellent. A Psalter, in Latin, in 1457, by Fust and Schoeffer, on vellum, and the first book printed in colors, the typography clear, and beautifully executed. The first edition of Reynard the Fox, printed 1479. A splendid copy of Livy, printed on vellum, in 1469, for Pope Alexander VI., and the only copy on vellum known to exist;--this volume cost nine hundred pounds in 1815. The first edition of the first book printed in Greek characters, being a Greek Grammar, printed in Milan, in 1475. The first book in which catch-words were used. The first book in which the attempt was made to produce cheap books by compressing the matter, and reducing the size of the page, was a little copy of Virgil, issued in Venice in 1501; and the present price would be far from cheap. The first book printed in France, the first in Vienna, &c. "The Game and Playe of Chess," printed by Caxton, in Westminster Abbey, in 1474, and which was the first edition of the first book printed in England. Then there was the first edition of old Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, printed in 1476, by Caxton. Cauntyrburye was the way they spelled it in his time. Æsop's Fables, with curious old wood-cuts, printed by Caxton, in 1484. The first printed document relative to America, Columbus's letter, written eight months after his discovery, and printed in Rome in 1493. The first edition of Paradise Lost, and of Robinson Crusoe. And our eyes were made to ache by trying to read a "microscopic" edition of Horace, printed in the smallest type ever produced, and undecipherable except with a magnifying glass.

Besides these, and hundreds of other old books, enough to drive a bibliomaniac out of his remaining senses, were specimens of fine and sumptuous printing, some of which, in the fifteenth century, on vellum, were a little short of marvellous in execution, and unsurpassed by anything I ever saw in modern printing. An allegorical poem, in German, printed on the occasion of the marriage of Maximilian I., at Nuremberg, in 1517, was a perfect wonder of typographic art and beauty, and challenges the attention of every one, more especially those versed in typography, as a marvel of the art. I have not space for enumeration of any of the wondrous specimens of beautiful illuminated works, printed on vellum and parchment, in colors undimmed by hundreds of years, and which the printer of to-day labors in vain to surpass. The purple and gold, the rich crimson and emerald green, that absolutely flash out on the pages of those exquisite volumes known as Books of Hours, printed in 1488, 1493, and thereabouts, are the most prodigal luxury of the art I ever laid my eyes upon; and the patience, labor, time, and care required to bring out lines, spaces, and letters to such perfection must have been very great, to say nothing of the quality of ink that has held its brilliancy for more than three centuries and a half.

Next we have books tracing the rise and progress of illustration, and then a collection of books with autographs. In these last are some autographs worth having, as, for instance, the autograph of Martin Luther, in the first volume of a copy of the German Bible, which Bible was afterwards in the possession of Melanchthon, who wrote a long note on the fly-leaf of the second volume, signing it with his autograph; an autograph of Charles I. in a volume of almanacs for the year 1624; an autograph of Milton on a copy of Aratus's Phænomena; that of Lord Bacon on a copy of Fulgentius; autograph of Katherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII., in a French volume; and that of Ben Jonson in a presentation copy of his Volpone.

The library has an extensive collection of newspapers, the oldest being a Venetian Gazette, bearing the date of 1570.

The great reading-room of the library, where free admission to read is granted to any person over eighteen years of age who can procure a recommendation from a person of respectability, is a magnificent apartment. It is a great circular space, containing forty-eight thousand superficial feet, covered by a dome one hundred and forty feet in diameter, and one hundred and six feet high. This room is open from nine A. M. to five or six P. M., and is always well lighted and warmed, and contains thirty-seven reading tables, with two or three exclusively for ladies. The floor is covered with a material which deadens the sound of footsteps, and no loud talking is permitted; so that every opportunity is afforded for quiet study. Quite a number were busily engaged, some with a large heap of volumes about them, evidently looking up authorities; others slowly and patiently transcribing or translating from some ancient black-letter volume before them; and still others quietly and comfortably enjoying the last new novel. There is space afforded for three hundred readers, and in the centre of the room, on shelves, are catalogues of the books and manuscripts contained in the library. Close at hand, running round the apartment, are shelves containing books of reference, or "lifts of the lazy," such as dictionaries, encyclopædias, &c., which readers are allowed to take from the shelves themselves. These form of themselves a library of twenty thousand volumes. For other books the reader fills out a card, and hands it to one of the attendants, who sends for it by others, who fetch it from its near or distant shelf.

The catalogue of the library is not finished, and there is a saying that the man is not living who will see it finished, the regular additions and occasional bequests serving to keep it in a perpetually unfinished condition. The most noted of the bequests are those presented by Right Hon. Thomas Grenville and George III. The former donor, whose gift was twenty thousand two hundred and forty volumes, worth over fifty thousand pounds, bequeathed his library to the nation as an act of justice, saying in his will that the greater part of it had been purchased from the profits of a sinecure office, and he acknowledged the obligation to the public by giving it to the museum for public use. The library of George III. contained eighty thousand volumes, and is kept in a gallery built expressly to hold it.

The Egyptian Galleries contain an endless collection of antiquities from that ancient land. From Memphis there are old monuments, fragments of statues, slabs with innumerable hieroglyphics, while old Thebes, the capital of ancient Egypt, seems to have been ransacked to have furnished slabs, stones, carvings, fragments of monuments, hieroglyphical inscriptions, and sarcophagi. In these galleries we saw the granite statue of Rameses II., the colossal granite head and shoulders from the Memnonium at Thebes; the head of a colossal ram from an avenue of them which leads up to the gateway of one of the great palaces at Karnak; here were two granite lions from Nubia; a colossal head brought from Karnak by Belzoni; and heaps of carved plunder stolen from old Egypt by British travellers and the British government; mummies, articles taken from mummy pits, ornaments, vases, Egyptian papyri, monuments cut by chisels two thousand years before Christ; implements the very use of which can now only be surmised; carvings of scenes in domestic life that are guessed at, and of battles, feasts, sieges, and triumphs, of which no other record exists--a wonder to the curious, and a not yet solved problem to the scholar.

The Assyrian Galleries, with their wealth of antiquities from ancient Nineveh, brought principally by Mr. Layard, are very interesting. Here we may study the bass-relief from Sennacherib's palace, and the hieroglyphics on a monument to Sardanapalus, and bass-reliefs of the battles and sieges of his reign; the best specimens of Assyrian sculpture, glass, ivory, and bronze ornaments, mosaics, seals, obelisks, and statues, the dates of which are from seven to eight hundred years before the Christian era. Think of being shown a fragment of an inscription relating to Nebuchadnezzar, and another of Darius I., a bass-relief of Sardanapalus the Great, the writing implements of the ancient Egyptians, the harps, flutes, and cymbals, and the very dolls with which their children played three thousand years ago!

The lover of Roman and Grecian antiquities may enjoy himself to his heart's content in the Roman and Grecian Galleries, where ancient sculptures by artists whose names have perished, though their works still challenge admiration, will attract the attention. In these galleries the gods and goddesses of mythology are liberally represented--the Townley Venus, Discobolus (quoit-thrower), elegant bust of Apollo, heads and busts of noble Greeks and Romans, and the celebrated marble bust, Clytie; that exquisitely-cut head rising above the bust, which springs from a half-unfolded flower.

The Elgin Marbles are in two rooms, known as the Elgin Rooms. These marble sculptures were obtained by the Earl of Elgin, in 1802, while he was the British ambassador at Constantinople, the sultan granting him a firman to remove from Athens whatever monuments he might wish. He accordingly stripped from the Parthenon huge slabs of bass-reliefs, marble figures, and ornamental portions of that noble building.

Whatever may be said of this desecration of the Athenian temple, it is altogether probable that these world-renowned sculptures and most splendid specimens of Grecian art are better preserved here, and of more service to the world, than they would have been if suffered to remain in the ruin of the temple. The beauty of these sculptures, notwithstanding the dilapidated and shattered condition of some of them, shows in what perfection the art flourished when they were executed, and the figures are models yet unsurpassed among artists of our own time.

Besides these galleries, there is also a gallery of Anglo-Roman antiquities, found in Britain, another of British antiquities anterior to the Romans, embracing such remains as have been found of the period previous to the Roman conquest, known as the stone and bronze period among the antiquaries; also a collection of Anglo-Saxon antiquities, including Saxon swords, spear-heads, bronze ornaments, coins, &c.; then comes a mediæval collection, a vast array of enamelled work, vases, jewelry, armor, mosaic work, seals, earthen ware, and weapons of the middle ages; two great Vase Rooms, filled with Grecian, Italian, Roman, and other antique vases, found principally in tombs and ancient monuments, from the rudest to the most graceful of forms; the Bronze Room, where we revelled amid ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan bronzes, and found that the Bacchus, Mercury, and Jupiter, and the lions, dolphins, satyrs, and vases of antiquity, are still the most beautiful and graceful works of art extant, and that a large portion of those of our own time are but reproductions of these great originals of a former age.

If the visitor have a zoölogical taste, the four great galleries of zoölogical specimens--beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes--will engage his attention, in which all sorts and every kind of stuffed specimens are displayed; and in another gallery a splendid collection of fossils may be inspected, where are the remains of the gigantic iguanodon and megalosaurus, skeleton portions of an enormous bird, ten feet high, from New Zealand,--the unpronounceable Latin name of which I forgot to note down,--a splendid entire skeleton of the great Irish deer, fossil fish, imprints of bird tracks found in rocks, of skeletons of antediluvian animals, plants, and shells, and huge skeletons of the megatherium and mastodon, skeletons and fragments of gigantic reindeer, elk, oxen, ibex, turtles, and huge lizards and crocodiles now extinct. There are also halls and departments for botany and mineralogy, coin and medal room, which, besides its splendid numismatical collection, contains the celebrated Portland Vase, and some curious historical relics.

Apropos of historical relics; in a room not far from the entrance hall there are some most interesting historical and literary curiosities, over and about which I loitered with unabated interest, for here I looked upon the original deed of a house in Blackfriars, dated March 11, 1612, and signed William Shakespeare. Here we saw the original Magna Charta, the very piece of parchment that had been thumbed by the rebellious barons, and to which King John affixed his unwilling signature at Runnymede, June 15, 1215. This piece of discolored parchment, with the quaint, regular, clerkly old English handwriting, and the fragment of the tyrant's great seal hanging to it, is the instrument that we have read so much of, as the chief foundation of the constitutional liberties of the people of England, first executed over six centuries and a half ago, and confirmed since then by no less than thirty-eight solemn ratifications. It is certainly one of the most interesting English documents in existence, and we looked upon it with feelings something akin to veneration.

Displayed in glass cases, we read the original draft of the will of Mary, Queen of Scots, in her own handwriting, the original manuscript of Kenilworth in Walter Scott's handwriting, the original manuscript of Pope's translation of the Iliad, a tragedy in the handwriting of Tasso, the original manuscript of Macaulay's England, Sterne's Sentimental Journey in the author's handwriting, Nelson's own pen sketch of the battle of the Nile, Milton's original agreement for the sale of Paradise Lost, which was completed April 27, 1667, the author being then fifty-eight years of age. The terms of the sale, which was made to Samuel Symons, a bookseller, was five pounds down, with a promise of five pounds more when thirteen hundred copies of the first edition should have been sold, another five pounds more when thirteen hundred copies of the second edition should be sold, and so on for successive editions. It was not, however, till 1674, the year of his death, that the second edition was published; and in December, 1680, Milton's widow sold all her interest in the work for eight pounds, paid by Symons.

We saw here the little prayer book used by Lady Jane Grey on the scaffold, with her name, Jane Dudley, in her own handwriting on the fly-leaf; autographic letters from British sovereigns, including those of Richard III., Henry IV., Prince Hal, Edward the Black Prince, Henry VIII., and Queen Elizabeth, Bloody Mary, Charles II., Mary, Queen of Scots, and Oliver Cromwell. Nor were these all. Here were Hogarth's receipted bills for some of his pictures, the original Bull of Pope Leo X., conferring on Henry VIII. the title of Defender of the Faith (and a precious bull he made of it), autographic letters of Peter the Great, Martin Luther, Erasmus, Calvin, Sir Thomas More, Cardinal Wolsey, Archbishop Cranmer, John Knox, Robert, Earl of Essex, Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Francis Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton; then a batch of literary names, letters from Addison, Dryden, Spenser, Moliere, Corneille; papers signed by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Horatio Nelson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Francis I., Philip II., Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII. of Sweden, and so many fresh and interesting surprises greeted me that I verily believe that at last I should have copied down in the little note-book, from which I am writing out these memoranda, a despatch from Julius Cæsar, announcing that he yesterday passed the River Rubicon, or his "_Veni, Vidi, Vici_," with the feeling that it was quite correct that such a document should be there.