“Mais, Mons. Professeur,” put in a French savan.
“C’est impossible,” replied the Professor, shrugging up his shoulders.
“Could not we just have a little peep at it, sir?” here asked some of my fair countrywomen, in wheedling accents.
“I am very sorry, ladies, but this is not the day, you know. I shall be most happy to explain all to-morrow, at four o’clock,” was the reply of the polyglot Professor.
It would be well if the curators of museums in England would have the example of Professor Thomsen before their eyes. There is no end to his civility to the public, and to his labours in the departments of science committed to his care. Speaking most of the European languages, he may be seen, his Jove-like, grizzled head towering above the rest, listening to the questions of the curious crowd, and explaining to each in their own tongue in which they were born the meaning of the divers objects of art and science stored up in this palace. Next day, I found him engaged in lionizing a big-wig; at least, so I concluded, when I perceived that, on either breast, he wore a silver star of the bigness of a dahlia flower of the first magnitude; while his coat, studded with gold buttons, was further illustrated by a green velvet collar. Subsequently I learned, what I, indeed, guessed, that he was a Russian grandee on his travels. He is the owner of one of the best antiquarian collections in Europe. Professor Thomsen, not to be outdone, likewise exhibited four orders. While the Muscovite examined the various curiosities of the stone,[1] the bronze, and the iron period, I heard him talking with the air of a man whose mind was thoroughly made up about the three several migrations from the Caucasus of the Celts, Goths, and Sclavonians.
An Englishman, when he sees this wonderful collection, cannot but be struck with astonishment, on the one hand, at the industry and tact of Professor Thomsen, who has been the main instrument in its formation; and with shame and regret, on the other, that Great Britain has no collection of strictly national antiquities at all to be compared with it; and, what is more, it is daily being increased. The sub-curator, Mr. C. Steinhauer, informed me, that already, this year, he had received and added to the museum one hundred and twenty different batches of national antiquities, some believed to date as far back as before the Christian era. And then, the specimens are so admirably arranged, that you may really learn something from them as to the state of civilization prevailing in Scandinavia at very remote periods: the collection being a connected running commentary or history, such as you will meet with nowhere else. Observe this oak coffin, pronounced to be not less than two thousand years old; and those pieces of woollen cloth of the same date. Look at that skeleton of a stag’s head, discovered in the peat.
“There is nothing in that,” says an Hibernian, fresh from Dublin. “Did you ever see the great fossil elk in Trinity College Museum?”
Ay! but there is something more interesting about this stag’s head, nevertheless. Examine it closely. Imbedded in the bone of the jaw, see, there is a flint arrow-head; the bow that sped that arrow must have been pulled by a nervous arm. This “stag that from the hunter’s aim had taken some hurt,” perhaps retreated into a sequestered bog to languish, and sunk, by his weight, into the bituminous peat, and was thus embalmed by nature as a monument of a very early and rude period.
Presently we get among the gold ornaments. There the Irishman is completely “shut up.” “The Museum of Trinity College,” and “Museum of the Royal Irish Academy,” are beaten hollow. Nay, to leave no room for boasting, facsimiles of the gold head and neck ornaments in Dublin are actually placed here side by side with those discovered in Denmark. The weight of some of the armlets and necklets is astonishing. Here is a great gold ring, big enough for the waist; but it has no division, like the armlets, to enable the wearer to expand it, and fit it to the body; moreover, the inner side presents a sharp edge, such as would inconvenience a human wearer.
“That,” said Professor Thomsen, seeing our difficulty, “must have been the waistband of an idol; which, as there was no necessity for taking it off, must have been soldered fast together, after it had once encircled the form of the image.[2]”