Part 81

The second room consists of similar objects. The third is devoted to the Lansdowne collection of manuscripts, which have been handsomely bound and lettered. In the fourth are the Sloanean and Birchean collections of manuscripts. The fifth contains part of the Harleian library of manuscripts, and the sixth, the first part of the same, and additions made since the establishment of the museum. The seventh is appropriated to the royal and Cottonian library of manuscripts. On a table, in a glazed frame, is the original of the Magna Charta, belonging to the Cottonian library. Against the press, number twenty-one, of the Cottonian collection, is the original of the articles preparatory to the signing of the great charter, perfect, with the seal. The magnificent saloon is filled with the Greville collection of minerals, the finest in the world, admirably arranged, and luminously colored. The dome of this saloon merits notice. It was painted by La Fosse, and has been described as the apotheosis of Iris, or birth of Minerva. In the middle of the window stands a table, composed of a variety of lavas from Mount Vesuvius, presented by the Earl of Exeter. The eighth room contains a department of natural history, part of which is the valuable donation of Mr. Cracherode, disposed in two tables, nearly in the Linnæan order; and a much more extensive series, arranged according to the Wernerian system. The principal productions are very valuable, consisting of minerals from Derbyshire, Siberia, the South seas, volcanic and rock stones from Germany, &c. One very curious specimen of natural history is pointed out in the fifth division of the Cracherodean collection, an egg-shaped piece of chalcedony, containing water, which may be seen by gently shaking the vase. Here, also, in a glass case, is the famous fossil skeleton from Gaudaloupe, which has been the object of much interesting controversy among eminent naturalists. The ninth is appropriated to petrifactions and shells. In the first division of the cases in the middle of the room, is a valuable univalve shell, of the species called the paper nautilus, or argonaut shells, remarkable for the slightness of its fabric, and the elegance of its shape. It is inhabited by an animal not unlike a cuttle-fish, which by extending a pair of membranes, adhering to the top of its longest arms, has the power of sailing on the surface of the sea. Under the tables are deposited, in this and the next room, a great number of volumes and parcels, containing collections of dried plants; which, from the fragile nature of their contents, are shown only on particular leave. The tenth room is entirely filled with vegetable productions, zoöphytes, sponges, &c. The contents of the eleventh room are birds, and arranged as far as convenience would admit, according to the Linnæan system. Among the curious specimens of ornithology is a humming-bird, scarcely larger than a bee; also another beautiful little creature called the harlequin humming-bird, from the variety of its colors. In this room there is a curious picture, executed many years ago in Holland, of that extremely rare and curious bird, the dodo, belonging to the tribe _gallinæ_. In the table in the middle are preserved the nests of several birds, among the most curious of which are several hanging nests, chiefly formed by birds of the oriole tribe; nests of a substance resembling isinglass, which the Chinese make into a rich soup; scarce feathers, &c. In the second table are deposited a variety of eggs and nests: among the former may be noticed the eggs of the ostrich, the cassowary, the crocodile, &c. In the cases between the windows are several of the rarer quadrupeds; among these the most curious are, two orang-outangs, in a young state, a long-tailed macauco, ermine, &c.; in cases under the tables are an armadillo, or porcupine, several young sloths, and a fine specimen of the two-toed ant-eater. The twelfth room contains a general and extensive arrangement of fishes, serpents, lizards, frogs, &c.

The Townley marbles and Egyptian antiquities, are deposited in a very elegant suite of rooms built purposely for them. The first room is devoted to a collection of bass-reliefs, in _terra cotta_, pronounced the finest in Europe. The second is a beautiful circular room, whence you have a fine view of the whole suite of apartments, bounded at the end by an exquisitely-wrought _discobolon_, or ancient quoit-player. This room is devoted to Greek and Roman sculptures, among which may be pointed out a fine candelabrum, with several beautiful busts and statues. The third and fourth rooms are also filled with Greek and Roman sculptures: in the latter are several fine bass-reliefs. The fifth contains a collection of Roman sepulchral monuments, and a beautiful mosaic pavement, discovered in digging the foundations for a new building at the bank of England. The sixth exhibits a miscellaneous collection of one hundred grand pieces of Roman and Greek sculpture. The seventh is devoted to Roman antiquities, and the eighth, on the left, to Egyptian antiquities, among which are the two mummies before mentioned, with their coffins; a manuscript, or papyrus, taken from a mummy, &c. Among the Egyptian sculptures in the ninth room, is the celebrated sarcophagus, commonly called the tomb of Alexander the Great, an engraving and dissertation on which appeared in the Monthly Magazine for February, 1809. The tenth contains Greek and Roman sculptures of singular beauty.

Thence returning, and proceeding up stairs, the visitor is conducted to the eleventh room, containing ancient and modern coins and medals, arranged in geographical order, those of each country being kept separate. It is not shown unless by the permission of the trustees, or of the principal librarian. Not more than two persons are admitted at one time, without the presence of the principal librarian, or of some other officer. The twelfth room contains the collection of the late Sir William Hamilton, which has been removed from the saloon. It principally consists of penates, or household gods, bronze vessels, utensils, &c., specimens of ancient glass, necklaces, bullæ, fragments of relievos, and ancient armor, tripods, knives, patent lamps, seals, weights, sculpture in ivory, bracelets, bits, spurs, ancient paintings from Herculaneum, Babylonish bricks, and his unrivaled collection of Greek vases, the greater part of which were found in the sepulchers of Magna Grecia. The forms of the vases are much varied, and are equally simple and beautiful. In the thirteenth is deposited the extensive and valuable collection of prints and drawings, the most important part of which was bequeathed by the Rev. William Cracherode. The contents of this room can be seen only by a few persons at a time, by particular permission.

In addition to the various curiosities enumerated above, Professor Silliman mentions many others which have been contributed to the museum more recently; and more fully describes some already noticed. “Here,” he says, “is a rich collection of Etruscan vases, from the cemeteries of the ancient inhabitants of Italy, who preceded the Roman empire. A part of this collection was deposited by the Prince de Canino, son of Lucien Bonaparte. The Maltese are now the only people who fabricate ware like the ancient Etruscan. Through the kindness of a gentleman attached to the museum, we were permitted to see the original Portland vase. It is of moderate dimensions. The material, contrary to my former impression, is glass, and not earthen-ware. The basis was dark blue, almost black, and in the manner of the modern Bohemian glass, it appears to have been dipped into a semi-transparent white enamel, which gave it an exterior coating of that color. This was then cut away, so as to leave the exquisitely wrought figures of the human form by which it is adorned. It was successfully imitated by the late Mr. Wedgwood, in his peculiar porcelain, but it has never been surpassed in beauty of model, or in the perfection of its decorations. Mr. Wedgwood’s copies cost fifty pounds each, which, even with a large subscription, did not reimburse him. Mr. Webber, the artist, received fifty pounds for modeling it. The original was discovered in the tomb of Alexander Severus, who died as early as the year 235, and the Duchess of Portland paid one thousand guineas for it; hence it was called the Portland vase. It will appear incredible that any one should be willing to destroy such a gem of art; still, a few years ago, a man who was believed to be either drunk or insane, (very probably both,) hurled a stone at it, and shivered the beautiful antique into fragments. A fac-simile of the vase, as it lay in ruins, is preserved in a glazed frame in the room. But by great care and skill, the fragments have been reunited, and cemented together, so that the joinings can be perceived only by a near approach. The culprit was imprisoned for two years; and a law being afterward made to fit such cases, (_ex post facto_, perhaps,) he is, I believe, not yet liberated, and, certainly, ought not to be, without satisfactory evidence of a sounder state of mind. In the same room with the Portland vase is a rich collection of antique ornaments in gold. They are personal ornaments, Etruscan, Roman, British, Saxon, Norman, Scotch and Irish. Among them are elegant forms, rings, bracelets, girdles, tiaras, brooches, &c. They are in appearance as rich and bright as if made yesterday; and evince that in ages long past, both the value of gold and the manner of working it were well understood. Some of these things were found in graves, some in morasses, and, probably, some on battle-fields.

“Here, also, we saw the colossal monuments of stone, disinterred by the labors of Mr. Layard, and brought from ancient Nineveh. The bull and the lion, each with the wings of an eagle, and the face of a man, symbolical of strength, courage, speed and intelligence, are at present in the lower room, along with the two gigantic figures in human form, each being originally divided transversely above the waist. It is now intended to reunite them, when the Nineveh figures receive their final position in the museum. These stupendous pieces of primeval sculpture fill the observer with astonishment, both that they could ever have been constructed, and that they should ever have been extricated from their long-forgotten sepulchers, and transported, without the slightest injury, from a position far inland, across wide oceans, to this distant country, which did not begin to emerge from barbarism until ages after the very site of Nineveh had passed into oblivion. These colossal forms are so vast in their dimensions, that man, by the side of them, appears a pigmy; and still they were shaped by human hands, which for thousands of years have crumbled into dust, while their works remain fresh and perfect as when first finished by the chisel of the now long-forgotten artist. Our polite conductor also accompanied us to a lower room, in which are stored a great number of the alabaster panels of Nineveh. They are very large, and are covered by figures in relief, bold and perfect; scenes of war and of peace, figures of master and servant, of monarch and subject, of warrior and soldier, and of victor and prisoner. In fact, they are exactly such figures as are represented in the published volumes of Mr. Layard, the illustrations in which are in no degree exaggerated, but, on the contrary, the figures are copied with the most scrupulous exactness. A hall is in preparation for these precious relics of an age coeval with the dawn of art and civilization, and of which, as extended to our time, the entire Christian era forms but an integral part. At first view, it appears very surprising that they have escaped through thirty or forty centuries without injury; and this is the more remarkable, as they are composed of so soft a material as alabaster. It would certainly have been worn and corroded by the hand of time had it not been protected by the mildness of the climate, and still more by the position of these sculptures, cut off from the atmosphere, and buried in the crumbled and dry earth of the buildings when they were destroyed.”

The collection of minerals, &c., Silliman goes on to say, is arranged in sixty cases in four rooms. And here is the fossil woman of Gaudaloupe, a skeleton both headless and footless, but having ribs, spine, limbs, &c., so complete as to show beyond doubt that once it belonged to a living woman; and with it there were found numerous other human bodies as well as utensils, rude weapons, &c. Here, too, are the remains of the enormous lizards of geological antiquity. “The _fossil saurians_, in the collection of Mr. Hawkins,” says the writer just quoted, “purchased by the museum, were skeletons of ichthyosauri, plesiosauri, and other forms of reptilian life. There is a perfect fossil skeleton of the ichthyosaurus, which I measured. It is fully twenty feet long; and there is beneath it a series of vertebræ of another individual, doubly cup-shaped, like the vertebræ of fishes. They seem to be all present, and must have belonged to an animal still larger than the one which I have named. The figures of these ancient distinct races are now familiar in our elementary books, and I shall not enter into any minute details. Most of the fossil saurians were marine. They appeared soon after the period of the coal formation, and were continued to that of the chalk. A miniature lizard has been recently found in the old-red-sandstone.

“The collection in the British museum is appalling. It fills one with astonishment, as we here contemplate the indubitable remains of an age gone by, never to return. Still more astonishing are the reptilian remains, brought to light chiefly by the researches of Dr. Mantell, aided by Dr. Buckland and other coadjutors. But to Dr. Mantell solely belongs the credit of having established the existence of several families of land lizards, whose magnitude far exceeds that of the marine saurians. The bones of the iguanodon, of the hylæosaurus, and pelorosaurus, are colossal—equal to those of the largest elephants, and in some individuals even surpassing them, while their length, in some instances, was equal to that of the longest whales. The form of their teeth, and the hollow condition of their bones, with a large canal for marrow, prove that their habits were those of terrestrial animals; while the form of the teeth, and the solid condition of the bones of the saurians, before named, adapt them to a marine life; since the buoyancy derived from the sustaining power of the water would enable them to swim with this additional weight. The bones of these land lizards discovered by Dr. Mantell, and now in the museum, with those in his own house, studied and disposed of anatomically, by his skill in comparative anatomy, and in the general principles of physiology, prove the existence of these giants of antiquity, which were not carnivorous, but were vegetable eaters, in a climate capable of producing a tropical vegetation, which then existed both in England and on the European continent, and probably pervaded, more or less, the entire planet. Dr. Mantell’s original memoirs and published volumes must be consulted for the proofs of these positions, and for the details of anatomical structure. He was with me in my last visit to the museum, and gave additional explanations on the grand fossils deposited there, especially those of his own gathering, and also on those obtained by Mr. Hawkins, of Gloucester. Both collections relate chiefly to the extinct colossal lizards of the gone-by geological ages. The immense collection of fossils from the Himalaya mountains also passed under review. They have added much to our knowledge of zoölogical antiquity. Dr. Buckland discovered near Oxford the bones of a large carnivorous reptile, the megalosaurus, which approximated toward the magnitude of the lizards of Dr. Mantell.”

MADAME TUSSEAU’S MUSEUM.

This museum consists of a celebrated collection of wax figures, which “enjoys a high and deserved reputation,” says Silliman; and which, he adds, “is the only one of the kind from which I have ever received any pleasure.” “There are three successive rooms,” he continues, “in which are seen a great number of personages in costume, and in natural and characteristic positions in relation to each other. In the vestibule the visitor passes through groups of marble statues, such as may be seen in many other places. On entering the first room of the museum, exactly at the door, and sitting in a chair, a pleasant looking young Chinese, a door-keeper, as I supposed, almost spoke to me, and I did quite speak to him, so lifelike was he; but as he seemed not to understand English, we passed on. The next personage, in the right corner of the room, was a well dressed gentleman, whom I for the moment mistook for a living Englishman; he looked so very affable, that I took him for an official, and was about to make an inquiry of him, when I perceived that he too belonged to the deaf mutes. Next came those to whom I must not speak, the queen with Prince Albert, and four of their sweet children, mounted on an elevated platform. The likenesses are so striking, judging from pictures, statues and information, (for I have not seen them,) that the royal personages might be readily recognized by one who knew them; for, as seen here, they are all but speaking, and moving, and breathing.

“Although no figures in these rooms spoke, three gave signs of life. One, a Chinese lady in a rich oriental dress, was standing on her little feet, by her husband, while he, a Hong merchant, in splendid attire, was listening to some communication from her; and although we could not hear what she said, she gave effect to her address by an earnest look and by a gentle movement of her head. Another lady, Madame —--, afterward a victim of Robespierre’s cruelty, because she indignantly refused to become the victim of his lust, lies asleep on her couch in her day dress, probably in prison prior to her execution. She breathes, and her bust, with her dress, rises and falls so naturally with the respiration, that you instinctively move softly, lest she should be disturbed in her slumber. In these rooms are seen imposing occasions of state. The queen, in another scene than which has been named, with her family, is surrounded by her ministers, bishops, and lords and ladies, and by courtiers, and generals, and foreign embassadors; (I blend two of these scenes into one;) all are in full court-dress, in magnificent robes, and sparkling with factitious diamonds. The illusion is so complete, that were an observer introduced suddenly into the scene, without an intimation of the deception, he would be startled at finding himself in such company.

“Hundreds of the most eminent persons, both of the living and the dead, are here, and the likenesses are so good that I readily recognized several, either of those whom I had seen when living, (_e. g._, George III., Pitt, and Fox,) or whose pictures or busts were familiar, (Voltaire, Sir. W. Scott, and Washington.) Calvin, Luther and John Knox are in one group, and the latter is addressing Queen Mary of Scotland, on whom he seems not likely to make any more impression now than he did of yore. I might multiply these instances. Napoleon and his marshals; Louis XVI. and his children and sister; Louis Philippe and his family; Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers; Anne Boleyn and her bloody husband; Charles I. and II., the former listening to a talk from Cromwell; James I. and II.; the royal dukes, sons of George III.; Lord Wellington; Lord John Russell; Admiral Napier, of Acre memory; and many, many more. Pictures of eminent persons and of interesting scenes are hung all around the lofty rooms, which are gilded and adorned in the manner of a palace. A throng of visitors were in the apartments, but from their dress and appearance, it was obvious that they belonged not to the upper ten thousand, but to the lower million, and most of them were probably of that class, who, having been drawn to London by the great exhibition, take the opportunity to see other wonders of the great metropolis, and we were pleased that they could be thus gratified.

“Passing the room of _horrors_, (that is of murders and executions,) where an additional sixpence is demanded for the pleasure of seeing what all should desire to avoid, we entered a room called the hall of Napoleon, occupied chiefly by relics of that great captain and emperor, who made such an impression on the age in which he lived, that his name and his deeds—the deeds of more than twenty years of sanguinary conflict, with only short interludes of repose—are now enrolled in history, and will go down to the end of time. The relics here preserved are personal articles, which once belonged to him. His own hair is inclosed in the same locket with that of his son, the Duke of Reichstadt. There is the sword of the Egyptian campaign, which was waved in many a bloody battle. Here are the more harmless utensils of his table; but the most conspicuous things are his carriages, three in number. In one of these he made his excursions from Longwood, in St. Helena, to the boundaries of that small island, rough with volcanic rocks. This carriage is a plain yellow barouche, with nothing peculiar in its appearance. His common or usual traveling carriage was in the post-chaise form, with inside seats for only two persons, and there is a low division between them. His iron bedstead was folded like the legs of a grasshopper, packed in a case, and hung beneath the coachman’s seat. Inside of the carriage is a writing-desk, which can be drawn out at pleasure, to accommodate the traveler; and it still retained its connection with the front of the carriage. There is a movable board, which answered for a table; and a door opens in front, beneath the writing-desk, to afford room for the limbs when the traveler wishes to sleep. The bedstead might perhaps admit of a partial contraction, so as to be placed in the carriage, in front of the seat, as a support, or there might have been some other contrivance for this purpose. This carriage is said to be lined with concealed iron plates, to afford protection against the bullets of assassins. That found on the field of Waterloo is yellow, and the paint and varnish, have come off in certain places, so that it is defaced in appearance. This latter carriage is a common coach with two seats, the front seat, as usual, reversed; but there is nothing peculiar in its appearance or conveniences, and it was probably taken in haste after the return from Elba; for the hundred days included Napoleon’s hegira, his brief sway in Paris, and his downfall at Waterloo, and to that fatal field he rode in this carriage. But the most interesting relic is the bed on which the fallen emperor died. We were assured that it was the very bed and bedstead of St. Helena, and that it was the camp establishment of his campaigns.”

THE PALACE OF BLENHEIM.