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.