Doth conquer them that did his master conquer,
And earns his place i’ the story.’
Character of the Blacas Collection.
The late Duke of Blacas augmented his father’s collections by many purchases of great extent and value. His special predilection was for coins and gems. In that department the combined museum of father and son soon came to rank as the finest known collection, belonging to an individual possessor. It includes seven hundred and forty-eight ancient and classical cameos and intaglios, and two hundred and three others which are either mediæval, oriental, or modern. The most precious portion of the Strozzi cabinet passed into it, as did also a choice part of the collections, respectively, of Barth and of De la Turbie. The Blacas Museum is also eminently rich in vases and paintings of various kinds; in sculptures, on every variety of material; in terracottas, and in ancient glass. Its ‘silver toilet service’ of a Christian Roman lady of the fifth century, named Projecta, has been made famous throughout Europe by the descriptive accounts which have appeared from the pen of Visconti and from that of Labarte. The casket is richly chased with figure-subjects. Among them are seen figures of Venus and Cupid; of the lady herself and of her bridegroom, Secundus. Roman bridesmaids, of indubitable flesh and blood, are mingled with the more unsubstantial forms of Nereids, riding upon Tritons.
Hugh Cuming; his travels and his collections, in America and elsewhere, 1791.
Of the men devoted, in our own day, to the enchaining pursuits of Natural History, few better deserve a competent biographer than does Hugh Cuming, whose career, in its relation to the Museum history, has an additional interest for us from the circumstance that his course in life was partly shaped by his having attracted, in childhood, the notice of another worthy naturalist and public benefactor, |See page 376.| Colonel George Montagu, of Lackham.
Young Cuming’s childish fondness for picking up shells and gathering plants attracted Colonel Montagu’s notice about the time that the boy was apprenticed to a sailmaker, living not far from the boy’s native village, West Alvington, in Devon. The elder naturalist fostered the nascent passion of his young and humble imitator, and the trade of sailmaking brought Cuming, whilst still a boy, into contact with sailors. The benevolent and Nature-loving Colonel told the youngster some of the fairy tales of science; the tars spun yarns for him about the marvels of foreign parts. A few, and very few, years of work at his trade at home were followed by a voyage to South America. At Valparaiso he resumed his handicraft, but only as a step (by aid of frugality and foresight) towards saving enough of money to enable him to devote his whole being to conchology and to botany. Seven years of work under this inspiring ambition, seem to have enabled the man of five-and-thirty to retire from business, and to build himself a yacht. But his was to be no lounging yachtman’s life; it was rather to resemble the life of an A.B. before the mast. The year 1827 was spent in toiling and dredging, to good purpose, amongst the islands of the South Pacific. When he returned to Valparaiso, the retired sailmaker found that he had won fame, as well as many precious rarities in conchology and botany. The Chilian Government gave him special privileges and useful credentials. He then devoted two years to the thorough exploration of the coasts extending from Chiloë to the Gulf of Conchagua. |Athenæum of 1865; Returns presented to Parliament, v. y.| He botanized in plains, marshes and woods; he turned over shingle, and explored the crannies of the cliffs, with the patient endurance of a Californian gold-digger, and was much happier in his companions. In 1831, he returned to England, with a modest but assured livelihood, and with inexhaustible treasures in shells and plants, of which multitudes were theretofore unseen and unknown in Europe.
The year 1831 was a happy epoch for a conchologist. The Zoological Society had just gained a firm footing. Broderip and Sowerby were ready to exhibit and to describe the rich shells of the Pacific. Richard Owen was eager to anatomize the molluscs, and to write their biography. Some of the novelties brought over by Cuming in 1831 were still yielding new information thirty years afterwards; probably are yielding it still.
In 1835, Mr. Cuming returned to America. He devoted four years to an exhaustive survey of the natural history—more especially, but far from exclusively, the conchology and the botany—of the Philippine group of islands, of Malacca, Singapore, and St. Helena.
Cuming was fitted for his work not more by his scientific ardour and his patient toil-bearing, than by his amiable character. He loved children. His manner was so attractive to them that in some places to which he travelled a schoolful of children were extemporised into botanic missionaries. The joyous band would turn out for a holiday, and would spend the whole of it in searching for the plants, the shells, and the insects, with the general forms and appearances of which the promoter and rewarder of their voluntary labours had previously familiarised them. He returned to England with such a collection of shells as no previous investigator had brought home; and with about one hundred and thirty thousand specimens of dried plants, besides many curious specimens in other departments.