Each one pressing his fellow, and each one shading his brother;
None in a fitting abode, in the life-giving play of the sunshine;
Here in disorder we lie, like desolate bones in a charnel.’
Other conspicuous augmentors of the Galleries of Antiquities.
Many other liberal benefactors to the several Archæological Departments of the Museum deserve record in this chapter. But the record must needs be a mere catalogue, not a narrative; and even the catalogue will be an abridged one.
Foremost among the discoverers of valuable remains of Greek antiquity, subsequent to most of those which have now been detailed, are to be mentioned Mr. George Dennis, who explored Sicily in 1862 and subsequent years; and Captain T. A. B. Spratt, who travelled over Lycia and the adjacent countries, following in the footsteps of Sir Charles Fellows, |Spratt and Forbes’ Travels in Lycia, Mityas, and the Cibyrates (2 vols; 1847), passim.| and who enjoyed the advantage of the company and co-operation of two able and estimable fellow-travellers, Edward Forbes and Edward Thomas Daniell, both of whom, like their honoured precursor in Lycian exploration, have been many years lost to us.
The antiquities collected in Sicily by Dennis, at the national cost, were chiefly from the tombs. They included very many beautiful Greek vases, a collection of archaic terracottas, and other minor antiquities.[[43]] Some of the marbles discovered by Spratt are of the Macedonian period, and probably productions of the school of Pergamus.
At Camerus and elsewhere, in the island of Rhodes, important excavations were carried on by Messrs. Biliotti and Salzmann. These also were effected at the public charge. |Reports of British Museum; 1864, and subsequent years.| In the course of them nearly three hundred tombs were opened, and many choicely painted fictile vases of the best period of Greek ceramography were found. Those researches at Rhodes were the work of the years 1862, 1863, and 1864. In 1865, the excavations at Halicarnassus were resumed by order of the Trustees, and under the direction of the same explorers, and with valuable results. In 1864, an important purchase of Greek and Roman statues, and of the sculptures from the Farnese Collection at Rome, was made. In the following year came an extensive series of antiquities from the famous Collection of the late Count Pourtalès. Of the precious objects obtained by the researches of Mr. Consul Wood, at Ephesus, in the same and subsequent years, a brief notice will be found in Chapter VI.
CHAPTER V.
THE FOUNDER OF THE GRENVILLE LIBRARY.
‘He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one,