BORE AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
To the Right Hon. Sir William Molesworth, Bart.
"I am a Man upon Town; that is, I confess, I spend the greater part of my time in idling thereabout. But now and then I am seized with a desire to improve my mind, expand my faculties, elevate my ideas—and all that sort of thing—and in this proper disposition I go to the British Museum: which I find shut.
"I don't know how this is. My own fault? I ought to know that the Museum is only open on certain days? Yes, I ought—but I don't. I forget the days. I can't remember them; and other people who are not so indolent as I am, and take pains to recollect them, forget them too.
"Besides, if I am indolent, I am one of the British Public, for whose use and amusement the British Museum is meant, and think its arrangements ought, in a reasonable measure, to be accommodated to my indolence.
"But what you will, perhaps, regard as a consideration of greater weight, there are numerous persons who only get a leisure day occasionally; and that leisure, like my fit of diligence, is safe to occur on a day when the Museum is closed.
"Why not throw the British Museum open every day, except on the few days when it may be necessary, if it is necessary, that artists should have it all to themselves—like the National Gallery? What good do the statues, the stuffed animals, the antiquities, and the mummies do half their time, wasting their sweetness on the desert—or at least the vacant—air? It would be much better if they were putting some ideas into my vacant mind.
"I wish, like a good fellow, you would attend to this, as Chief Commissioner of Works, and have the British Museum thrown open, or get the Trustees, or whatever you call the authorities, to throw it open daily, or as nearly so as possible, to suit the convenience of industrious fellows, and the desultory habits of
"An Inconstant Reader."
"P.S. Her Majesty's subjects have to thank you for admission to Kew Gardens on a Sunday. It would be a capital thing if you could get the Museum opened to them likewise; particularly as the Nineveh sculptures, I understand, are regular 'sermons in stones'—to borrow the expression of—I believe—Shakspeare."