‘I do love these ancient ruins;
We cannot tread upon them, but we set
Our foot upon some reverend history.
· · · · ·
But all things have their end,
Castles and cities (which have diseases like to men)
Must have like death which we have.’
Webster, The Duchess of Malfi.
The Libraries of the East.—The Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and their Explorers.—William Cureton and his Labours on the MSS. of Nitria, and in other Departments of Oriental Literature.—The Researches in the Levant of Sir Charles Fellows, of Mr. Layard, and of Mr. Charles Newton.—Other conspicuous Augmentors of the Collection of Antiquities.
We have now to turn to that vast field of research and exploration, from which the national Museum of Antiquities has derived an augmentation that has sufficed to double, within twenty-five years, its previous scientific and literary value to the Public. In this chapter we have to tell of not a little romantic adventure; of remote and perilous explorations and excavations; sometimes, of sharp conflicts between English pertinacity and Oriental cunning; often, of great endurance of hardship and privation in the endeavour at once to promote learning—the world over—and to add some new and not unworthy entries on the long roll of British achievement.