How to See the British Museum in Four Visits

by Blanchard Jerrold

TEMPLE OF THESEUS.

When the ashes of Theseus, long after his death, were conveyed in state to Athens, festivals were instituted in his honour; and a magnificent temple was erected to his memory nearly five centuries before our era. The sculptures of the temple represented the exploits of Theseus, and of Hercules, with whom Theseus was always on terms of great friendship, and to whom he gave the highest honours his country could afford. The subject of the frieze (which the visitor will find against the eastern wall of the saloon, numbered from 136 to 149), has been variously explained, but is shrewdly conjectured to be the Battle of the Giants, in which Hercules played a prominent part, and in which the giants are said to have hurled rocks at their adversaries, like pebbles. This battle was fought in the presence of divinities, who are represented seated upon slabs (137-8-133-4.) This frieze was on the most conspicuous part of the temple. The frieze that flanked the building was sculptured with the exploits of Theseus; and here the visitor will once more see the battle of the Centaurs and the Lapithae illustrated (150-154). The Centaurs hurling huge stones, and wielding the stems of trees; and the invulnerable Coeneus, half crushed by his savage enemies, are again represented. The casts of three metopes (155-157) are from the north side of the temple of Theseus. Upon the first the hero is represented destroying the King of Thebes, Creon; upon the second he is throwing Cercyon, King of Eleusis; and upon the third he is overcoming the Crommyonian sow. "About this time," Plutarch tells us, "Crommyon was infested with a wild sow named Phoeä, a fierce and formidable creature. This savage he attacked and killed, going out of his way to engage her, and thus displaying an act of voluntary valour: for he believed it equally became a brave man to stand upon his defence against abandoned ruffians, and to seek out and begin the combat with strong and savage animals. But some say that Phoeä was an abandoned female robber, who dwelt in Crommyon; that she had the name of 'sow' from her life and manners, and was afterwards slain by Theseus."

A series of bas-reliefs from an Ionic temple, dedicated to the Wingless Victory of Athens, are the next objects that command the general visitor's attention. They are numbered from 158 to 161 successively. Upon these are represented battles between the Greeks and Persians; and maidens leading a sacrificial bull. The fragments marked successively from 165 to 175 are remarkable for the Greek inscriptions on them, which cannot interest the general visitor. Let the visitor, therefore, next pause before the fragment of a frieze in green stone, marked 177, which is from the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenae. The sculptured scroll-work is of very remote antiquity. The next fragment is a bas-relief, on which a bearded man is represented, pressing a child towards him, and directing its attention to a votive foot which he holds in his hand. Passing from this, the visitor may next direct his attention to the fragment of a colossal statue numbered 178. It belongs to one of the pediments of the Parthenon. Hereabouts are various sepulchral urns and columns of no particular interest to the casual observer;—the circular altar from Delos, ornamented in relief with sacrificial bulls and other subjects. 179 may, however, be noticed, together with the column marked 183, which bears the name of Socrates, son of Socrates, a native of Ancyra, of Galatia. The object marked 186 is a Greek sun-dial found at Athens, of a time not long before the reign of the Emperor Severus. Passing other altars and fragments of columns, the visitor should pause on his way, to notice a bas-relief upon which Latona and Diana are sculptured, forming part of a procession (190). The bas-relief numbered 193 is from the theatre of Bacchus: it is a Bacchanalian group, in which Bacchus is holding forth a vessel to be filled by an attending Bacchante. The next object to be noticed is marked 194, and is a fragment of a head of the goddess Pasht, surmounted with a crown of serpents. A spirited scene occurs upon bas-relief 197, where a charioteer, heralded by a flying Victory, is represented driving four horses at full speed. A series of urns and votive altars are grouped hereabouts, which the casual visitor may pass, pausing before the small statue of Ganymede (207); a fragment of a boy supporting a bird on his arm (221); a small figure of Telesphorus, headless, and draped; more sepulchral urns and stêles; capitals of Corinthian and Ionic columns; various inscriptions, including a decree of a society of musicians (235); an amphora (238); a female head; a large and small head of a bearded Hercules (243-242); heads and fragments of heads; the base of a statue supposed to have been that of the Minerva of the western pediment of the Parthenon; urns and columns, and stales and inscriptions; a bas-relief showing Health, the daughter of AEsculapius, feeding a serpent; two more bas-reliefs; an inventory of the articles of gold and silver belonging to the Parthenon (282); stêles, inscriptions, and columns; fragments of colossal statues, a small statue (headless) of a Muse, 316; fragments of figures from the metopes of the Parthenon; a sculptured oblong vessel, found near the plain of Troy, for containing holy water (324); a mutilated colossal head supposed to represent Nemesis, found in the temple of Nemesis, at Rhamnus (325); a mutilated female statue found also at Rhamnus, in the temple of Themis; fragments of colossal statues, stêles, inscriptions, and altars. And hereabouts the visitor should pause once more to examine a consecutive series of sculptures. These are marked from 352 to 360. They are casts from the monument of Lysicrates, erected to celebrate a musical contest about three centuries and a half before our era. This monument is commonly known as the

LANTERN OF DEMOSTHENES.

This name is derived from a story long current, that the monument was built by Demosthenes as a place of retirement. It was in reality a monument erected in honour of Lysicrates, and the musicians or actors who carried off the palm in musical or dramatic entertainments. This monument is interesting as being the oldest existing specimen of the Corinthian order of architecture. The frieze, of which there are specimens before the visitor, represents the story of the revenge Bacchus indulged in towards some Tyrrhenian corsairs, who endeavoured to convey him to Asia to sell him as a slave. It is related that discovering their infamous project, he transformed the masts and oars of the vessel into snakes. The frieze is divided into nine compartments, and the central figure is Bacchus seated with his panther before him, a vessel in his hand, and attendant fauns. The fantastic punishment of the pirates is forcibly depicted. Here one bound to a rock finds the cord changed into a powerful serpent; there men leaping into the sea are already half changed to dolphins; and others are receiving severe castigation. Having examined these curious sculptures, the visitor may rapidly review the rest of the relics which he will care to examine. Passing the inscriptions (all interesting to the antiquarian), the votive altars, and other fragments, he may halt here and there before various interesting bas-reliefs. Among these are a bas-relief representing Vesta and Minerva crowning a young man (375); a bas-relief of Jupiter and Juno; a bas-relief representing a sacrifice before an altar (380); an imperfect bas-relief representing three goddesses (383); a lion's head from the roof of the Parthenon (393); a fragment from Mantell's collection, of a female figure found on the plains of Marathon (397); the upper part of a female figure, in bas-relief, from Athens (419); two women and a child making offerings found in Laconia (430); another bas-relief from Laconia (431); a curious subject in bas-relief from Athens, representing the upper part of a youth holding something, supposed to be a lantern, with a boy near him, and a cat on a column (432); a cast from a tablet representing in bas-relief Pan seated on a rock with a draped nymph, supposed to be Echo, before him (433); a cast of the tablet of Euthydia, daughter of Diogenes, who is taking leave of friends (435); and lastly, a bas-relief representing the shape of a shield, on which the names of the ephebi of Athens, under Alcamenes, are inscribed. This is said to have belonged originally to the Parthenon. And here the visitor will close his inspection of the Elgin Saloon. That he will return to these fine relics of the old Greeks, if he have the opportunity, is certain. He may come again and again, and each time gain something in the contemplation of these classical models; noble thoughts before the masterly figure of Theseus, a keen sense of beauty near the beautiful forms of the Parthenon frieze. Of all the glorious monuments of antiquity that have reached us of the proud nineteenth century, none have so noble a significance as the broken marbles collected in this room. The contemplative man, seeing their perfect beauties, asks himself in their presence many puzzling questions. But perhaps the first that rises in the mind is wonder at the contrast between the development of art and the poorness of science in this splendid antiquity. No steam then to wield the hammer; only the most limited knowledge of the earth: the west an indescribable region of harmony and glory; the world a flat surface; fearful mariners hugging the shore close at home, and trusting to the stars; and England a savage place where wolves rent the air at night; and a heathen mythology the faith of the most civilised people of the earth. Under these barbarous circumstances, the poetry that dwells in the heart of all people who cultivate some affinity to nature, fashioned the mould of a Phidias for the people of Athens. A man with a stern soul, an eye large and grand, a frame built to realise the soul's tasks—we see this Phidias of the Greeks as he hovered about the foundations of the Parthenon, when the name of Pericles was every Greek's watchword, four centuries and a half before our Christian era. The man appears to have been of colossal parts in every way. Versed in history, a poet given to study fables (as all poets are), keen in sifting the subtleties of geometry, a passionate reader of Homer; this was indeed the sculptor of the gods! Of the high estimation in which the sculptures of the Parthenon should be held, it is superfluous to say more than all writers on art have agreed in saying. Here we have master-pieces, beyond which the sculptors of the many ages that have passed away since Phidias laboured at his Jupiter in the Olympian grove have never reached. High praise this to say of a man who has been twenty-two centuries in his grave, that he accomplished in the utmost perfection those ideals to which his imitators have vainly aspired. It appears that Phidias had his troubles, knew the force of a frown from men in power, and in exile produced his master-piece. Whether he died in disgrace and by foul means are points upon which the dust of ages has settled for ever. We know thus much of him and no more. But the visitor who has probably been more impressed with the contents of the Elgin Saloon than with the massive coarseness of the Egyptian antiquities, will be glad to hear a few general words—an authoritative summing up of the matter from a pen more clearly authorised to touch the subject than ours can be. A brief summary, a terse description, analytical and picturesque, of a field of speculation or a region of wonder, systematises the spectator's impression, and with the view of fastening the proper contemplation of these master-pieces upon the visitor's mind, we quote a few pointed sentences on the sculptures of the Elgin Saloon, from the pen of Sir Henry Ellis.

"These marbles, chiefly ornamental, belong to one edifice dedicated to the guardian deity of the city, raised at the time of the greatest political power of the state, when all the arts which contribute to humanise life were developing their beneficial influence. Many of the writers of Athens, whose works are the daily textbooks of our schools, saw in their original perfection the mutilated marbles which we still cherish and admire. The Elgin collection has presented us with the external and material forms, in which the art of Phidias gave life and reality to the beautiful mythi which veiled the origin of his native city, and perpetuated in groups of matchless simplicity the ceremonies of the great national festival. The lover of beauty and the friend of Grecian learning will here find a living comment on what he reads; and as in the best and severest models of antiquity we always discover something new to admire, so here we find fresh beauties at every visit, and learn how infinite in variety are simplicity and truth, and how every deviation from these principles produces sameness and satiety. It is but just that those who feel the value of this collection should pay a tribute of thanks to the nobleman to whose exertions the nation is indebted for it; and the more so as he was made the object of vulgar abuse by many pretended admirers of ancient learning. If Lord Elgin had not removed these marbles, there is no doubt that many of them would long since have been totally destroyed; and it was only after great hesitation, and a certain knowledge that they were daily suffering more and more from brutal ignorance and barbarism, that he could prevail on himself to employ the power he had obtained to remove them to England. These marbles may be considered in two ways; first, as mere specimens of sculpture; and secondly, as forming part of the history of a people. As specimens of sculpture they serve as excellent studies to young artists, whose taste is formed and chastened by the simplicity and truth of the models presented to them. The advantage of studying the ancients in this department of art rests pretty nearly on the same grounds as those which may be given for our study of their written models. Modern times produce excellence in every department of human industry, and our knowledge of nature, the result of continued accumulations, needs not now the limited experience of former ages. The sciences founded on demonstration, though they may trace their origin to the writings of the Greeks, have advanced to a state in which nothing would be gained by constantly recurring to the ancient condition of knowledge. But it is not so with those arts which belong to the province of design; they require a different discipline, and the faculties which they employ may have received a more complete development two thousand years ago, under favourable circumstances, than they have now. Their perfection depends on circumstances over which we have little control: they cannot, in our opinion, ever become essentially popular in any country but one where the climate favours an out-of-door life, and where they are intimately blended in the service of religion. If then a nation has existed whose physical organisation, whose climate, and whose religion all combined to develop the principles of beauty, and taught man to choose from nature those forms and combinations which give the highest and most lasting pleasure, we of the present day who do not possess these advantages must follow those who were the first true interpreters of nature. Their models possess the advantage of being fixed; for without some standard universally admitted, we should run into all the extravagances of conceit and affectation.

"No work of the present time is ever universally admitted as an indisputable standard. It is only when time has placed an interval between the present and the past, wide enough to destroy all the rivalries of competition; that great works receive the full acknowledgments of their merits, and become standards to which we all appeal. Thus in the art of writing our own language, we refer to the best models of past instead of to the works of our own days; and our youth at school are chiefly trained on the written models of Greece and Home, instead of those of our own country. The advantage of this consists in having before us examples which all appeal to, not because we contend that they are in all respects the best, but because they were the best of their day, and being written in a language no longer subject to change, may be taken as an universal standard by which all civilised nations may measure their thoughts and the mode of expressing them. The frieze of the Parthenon and the dramas of Sophocles, the forms of the marble and the conceptions of the great poet, still speak to our imagination and our understanding: we recognise, in both, the beauty of proportion, the simplicity and truth of design; and we all assent to a standard which we feel to be in harmony with nature, and to which all nations will yield a more ready obedience than to any other that we can name.

"Though the artist and the student may examine the sculptures of the Parthenon with somewhat different views, their studies are more nearly allied than is generally supposed. The artist who looks at them merely as delineations of form, without reference to the ideas which gave them their existence, loses half the pleasure and the profit; and the student who merely names and catalogues them, without connecting them with the written monuments of Grecian genius, that is with the illustration of ancient texts, is also pursuing a barren study."

And now the visitor's way lies through the sculpture galleries, back to the grand entrance. He has accomplished the labour of examining all that is exhibited to the public generally of the contents of the national museum. He may wander into the eastern wing of the building (if it be open to the general visitor), and through the northern, where the vast library of printed books and manuscripts are deposited; but these are only accessible to the public under special regulations. This remark is applicable also to the print-room.

The visitor, however, cannot leave the British Museum, having wandered over it and examined its various curiosities, without getting something from his journey. It is full of suggestive matter, which, with a little direction, may be turned to useful account by large classes of the people. It affords glimpses into the mysteries of the Animal Kingdom, with all its varieties, its wonders, its traceable progresses, its past and extinct forms, its promises of future developments. Then the mineralogical galleries afford the general visitor a peep at the formations of the earth; the various developments of minerals; the natural state of ores and stones which most men see only in their manufactured state. From the mineralogical tables the visitor stepped aside to examine the wondrous revelations of extinct animal life recovered from the bowels of the earth; he saw the colossal megatherium, the towering mastodon, and the great Irish elk. He understood something of the progress of animal life, from the fishes and the saurians. Then he passed into the Egyptian room, and found himself surrounded with the preserved bodies of the ancient Egyptians; he examined their household gods; he pried into their coffins; he saw their food; he was familiarised with their apparel. Still proceeding onward, he came to the beautiful bronzes; and then he saw the wonders that the ancient tombs of Etruria disgorged. He still advanced in the galleries, till he came to a room that was a little museum in itself—an exhibition of the curious industries of many different countries. Here were Buddhist temples; Chinese chopsticks; marvels from savage islands; a tortoise-shell bonnet; a Chinese bell;—in short, a room packed from the ceiling to the floor with a compact mass of curiosities. And then he left the upper floor of the building, after having spent two days there, through two towering cameleopards. He came a third time, and at once passing many things that tempted him by the way, he passed on into the great and wonderful Egyptian Saloon. Here he lingered for hours over ancient Egyptian tombstones; before colossal sarcophagi; thinking of the tough work Belzoni must have had of it with the young Memnon; endeavouring to realise the approach to the ancient Egyptian temples through rows of colossal and majestic sphinxes. Next he passed on to the ruins of Nineveh, and its mystic mounds. Here he was with Layard for a time, dreaming of the ancient Assyrians and their winged bulls. Hence he passed into the Lycian room, and saw something of the strange remains of the Xanthus of old; and then, probably, he went home to dream of these great marvels of the times gone by. But he came again; and this time hovered throughout the day amid the ruins of the arts of ancient Greece. And now he has examined these; and he may leave the national museum, assured that he has some useful knowledge of the curiosities which scientific men have gathered from the remote parts of the world, for the benefit of the learned resident in England.