British Museum

British Museum. The germ of the present Museum was the collection of MSS. formed by Sir R. Cotton, and left by his grandson to the nation in 1700. In 1753 the rich collection of MSS. and curiosities belonging to Sir Hans Sloane, and the MSS. collected by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, were left to the nation on condition of payments very much below their real value. An Act was accordingly passed to purchase these and to provide a general repository for them and the Cottonian library, the money being raised by a lottery. The trustees appointed for the purpose acquired the ducal residence of Montagu House in Bloomsbury, which was then for sale, and the collections, thenceforward entitled the British Museum, were opened to the public early in 1759. The acquisition in 1816 of the Elgin Marbles, and in 1823 of the Royal library, rendered an increase of space imperative; and in the years 1823-45, Montagu House was gradually pulled down and replaced by the main portion of the present buildings, designed by Sir R. Smirke, and arranged in a hollow quadrangle. The side facing Great Russell Street was adorned with a columnar facade, the pediment being occupied with sculpture by Westacott. To meet the great increase in the number of books, the present reading room was erected in the centre of the Quadrangle, after the plan of Sir A. Panizzi. In 1880 the enormous increase of the natural history and archaeological collections led to the removal of the former to the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road, South Kensington. Even then some of the departments suffered from want of room, but by the aid of a bequest from Mr. William White, which came into the hands of the trustees in 1879, a new gallery was built to hold the Mausoleum Marbles, and a new wing fronting Montagu Street, called the White Wing, giving space for a newspaper reading room, for the department of prints and drawings, and other purposes. A new story was constructed in 1891 over one of the rooms devoted to Greek antiquities, and serves as an extension of the department of coins and medals.

An account of the Museum by departments follows.

The Department of MSS. had its origin in the Harleian, Cottonian, and Sloane collections, to which have been added, among others: the Old Royal MSS. (1757); the King's MSS., collected by George III.; the Birch MSS. (by the Rev. Thomas Birch, D.D.); the Lansdowne MSS. (of the Marquess of Lansdowne); the Arundel MSS. (of the Earl of Arundel); the Burney MSS. (of the Rev. Charles Burney, D.D.);the Hargrave MSS. (of Francis Hargrave, Q.C.); the Egerton MSS. (of the Earl of Bridgewater); the Stowe MSS. (of the Marquess of Buckingham); and the "Additional" MSS., a large collection made up of miscellaneous purchases, donations, and bequests, The department contains upwards of 55,000 volumes and about the same number of rolls and charters, besides 10,000 seals and casts of seals; and one of its chief treasures is the unique MS. of the lost Treatise on the Constitution of Athens, ascribed to Aristotle, which was discovered on a papyrus brought from Egypt in 1889.

The Department of Printed Books had its nucleus in the collections brought together in 1753, to which have been successively added: the Old Royal Collection, formed by English sovereigns from the time of Henry VII., and including the libraries of Cranmer and Isaac Casaubon; the Civil war and Commonwealth Tracts, over 30,000 in number, collected by the Royalist bookseller Thomason, and after many strange vicissitudes presented by George III. in 1762; the collection of plays bequeathed by David Garrick in 1779; the choice collection of the Rev. CM. Cracherode, bequeathed in 1799; that of Sir Joseph Banks, mostly works of natural history, acquired in 1820; the large library formed by George III. and presented by George IV. in 1823, now known as the King's Library; and the very valuable library of the Right Hon. Thomas Grenville, received in 1847. Besides these additions, the operation of the Copyright Act, passed in 1814, which gives the Museum the right to a copy of every book published and offered for sale in the United Kingdom, adds largely to the library; many books are received by copyright from the Colonies, and by exchanges with foreign nations, and by gifts from all parts of the world, and considerable sums (at present about £10,000 a year) are devoted to purchases.

The Library is computed to contain about 1,750,000 volumes. The annual increase of volumes from all sources amounts to about 46,000, exclusive of newspapers (which number about 3,000), music (about 4,000) and continuations. This rate of progress will, in a few years, place the Museum first in point of size among the libraries of the world, and ahead of its only rival, the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris.

A catalogue by authors' names has been made of the whole library, pamphlets included. It is hoped that in 1900 the printing of this from the MS. volumes will be complete, comprising about 600 folio volumes.

The Antiquities of the Museum were formed into a separate department in 1807, and in 1861 into the three departments of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Coins and Medals, and Oriental Antiquities with British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography. In 1866 the latter became a distinct department. The chief components of the antiquities collections have been: the collection made by Sir William Hamilton while ambassador at Naples, purchased in 1772; the sculptures collected by Mr. Townley, including the celebrated Townley Venus, purchased in 1805 and 1814; the sculptures from the Parthenon at Athens, collected by the Earl of Elgin and bought of him in 1816 for £35,000; the Phigaleian marbles purchased in 1815-16; the marbles, coins, and bronzes bequeathed by Mr. Payne-Knight in 1826, and then valued at £60,000; the marbles from Lycia, found by Sir Charles Fellows in 1845; the remains of the Mausoleum in 1845; and those of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, excavated by Mr. J. T. Wood. Most of these collections contained coins, which have been added to from the Bank of England and India Office collections, and other sources.

Egyptian antiquities were almost unrepresented in the Museum till 1801, when a quantity collected by the French in Egypt were handed over by them after the capitulation of Alexandria. Among these was the celebrated Rosetta Stone, bearing a Greek inscription, with translations in hieroglyphics and in the popular (demotic) Egyptian character, thus forming a key to the deciphering of those characters.

The Babylonian and Assyrian collections have been brought together in modern times by the exertions of Sir H. Layard, Sir H. Rawlinson, and others.

The Semitic antiquities are as yet few. The department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities has been formed of: the Slade bequest, chiefly of glass; the Henderson bequest of pottery and oriental weapons; the Burges and Meyrick collections of armour; a large and curious collection of watches, clocks, and keys, bequeathed by Mr. Octavius Morgan; the Franks collection of pottery and porcelain; the Christy collection (formerly exhibited in Great George Street, Westminster) of prehistoric archaeology; and Canon Greenwell's collection of antiquities from British barrows.

The Ethnographical collection is based on Captain Cook's collection, the Christy collection, and the objects found by Lord Lonsdale on his Arctic expedition.

The Department of Prints and Drawings is one of the richest collections in Europe; its resources are but faintly shown in the historical exhibition of sketches and drawings of all schools which are on view.

The Natural History collections took their rise from the Sloane collection, and steadily increased till, in 1860, it was resolved to separate them from the rest. A new Museum was erected at a cost of £325,000, in Cromwell Road, South Kensington, on the site of the Exhibition of 1862, and the removal took place during 1881-86, the first gallery being opened April, 1881. Here are to be found all "products of natural forces," while objects "that show the effect of man's handiwork" are kept at Bloomsbury. Sciences such as chemistry, which cannot be studied to advantage without experiment, find no place in the Museum. Its collections fall under the three heads of Mineralogy, Botany and Zoology, and Geology (i.e. palaeontology). In the fine Entrance Hall of the Museum is an Introductory Collection, showing by types the scientific classification of natural objects, and serving as a key to the whole.