BOOK III, GROUP OF GISTS AND OTHER CON SPICUOUS AUGMEN TORS OF THE OF ANTI QUITIES. from amidst the ruins of Carthage. Many of these, like 'Here have ye piled us together, and left us in cruel confusion, 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, and who enjoyed the advantage of the company and co-operation of two able and estimable fellow-travellers, Lycia, Mityas, Edward FORBES and Edward Thomas DANIELL, both of whom, like their honoured precursor in Lycian exploration, have been many years lost to us. Spratt and Forbes' Travels in and the Cibyrates (2 vols, 1847), passim. 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 terra-cottas, and other minor antiquities.* Some of the * These were given to the Museum by Lord Russell, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Lord Russell was one of the earliest of marbles discovered by SPRATT are of the Macedonian period, Book III, and probably productions of the school of Pergamus. Chap. IV. GISTS AND EXPLORERS. Museum; years. 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 Reports of charge. In the course of them nearly three hundred tombs British were opened, and many choicely painted fictile vases of the 1864, and best period of Greek ceramography were found. Those subsequent 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 POURTALÉS. 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. the Foreign Secretaries who began a new epoch, in this department of public duty, by setting new official precedents of regard and forethought for the augmentation of the national collections. BOOK III, Chap. V. THE FOUNDER OF THE LIBRARY. CHAPTER V. THE FOUNDER OF THE GRENVILLE 'He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one, But to those men that sought him, sweet as Summer.'— 'If a man be not permitted to change his political W. F. HOOK, Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury, The GRENVILLES and their Influence on the Political Aspect It was the singular fortune of Thomas GRENVILLE to belong to a family which has given almost half a score of ministers to England; to possess in himself large diploGRENVILLE matic ability; and to have been gifted-his political opponents themselves being judges-with considerable talents for administration; and yet, in the course of a life protracted to more than ninety years, to have been an active diplomatist during less than one year, and to have been a Minister of State less than half a year. It is true that he was of that happy temperament which both enables and tempts a man to carve out delightful occupation for himself. He had, too, those rarely combined gifts of taste, fortune, and public spirit, which inspire their possessor with the will, Chap. V. THE OF THE LIBRARY. and confer upon him the power, to make his personal enjoy- BOOK III, ments largely contribute (both in his own time and after it) to the enjoyments of his fellow-countrymen. It might be FOUNDER true, therefore, to say that Thomas GRENVILLE was the GRENVILLE happier and the better for his exclusion, during almost forty-nine-fiftieths of his long life, from the public service. But it can hardly be rash to say that England must needs have been somewhat the worse for that exclusion. WHAT WAS IT THAT KEPT GRENVILLE OFFICE? Nor was it altogether a self-imposed exclusion. There POLITICAL was among its causes a curious conjunction of outward accidents and of philosophic self-resignation to their results. Untoward chances abroad twice broke off the foreign embassies of this eminent man. Unforeseen political complications amongst Whigs and semi-Whigs twice deprived him of cabinet office at home. But, no doubt, neither shipwreck at sea nor party intrigue on land would have been potent enough to keep Thomas GRENVILLE out of high State employment, but for the personal fastidiousness which withheld him from stretching out his hand, with any eagerness, to grasp it. It would, perhaps, be hard to lay the finger on any one family recorded in the British Peerage' which so long and so largely influenced our political history, in the Georgian era of it, as did that of GRENVILLE. During the century (speaking roundly) which began with the suppression of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, and ended with the Repeal of the Corn Laws, GRENVILLES are continually prominent in every important political struggle. The personal influence and (for lack of a plainer word) the characteristic idiosyncrasy' of individual GRENVILLES notoriously shaped, or materially helped to shape, several measures that have had world-wide results. But perhaps the most curious feature in their political history as a family is this: At almost every great THE POLI TICAL IN OF THE GRENVILLE FAMILY; ITS DURATION PECULIAR CHARACTER ISTICS. BOOK III, Chap. V. THE FOUNDER crisis in affairs one GRENVILLE, of ability and prominence, is seen in tolerably active opposition to the rest of the GRENVILLES. In the political history of the man who GRENVILLE forms the subject of this brief memoir the family peculiarity, it will be seen, came out saliently. OF THE LIBRARY. PARENTAGE AND EARLY HIS SHORT See above, Book II, Chap. III, page 431. The political GRENVILLES were offshoots of an old stock which, in the days of eld, were richer in gallant soldiers than in peace-loving publicists. The old GRENVILLES dealt many a shrewd sword thrust for England by land and by sea, in the Tudor times, and earlier. The younger branch has been rich in statesmen and rich in scholars. Not a few of them have shone equally and at once in either path of labour. Thomas GRENVILLE was the second son of the Minister of GEORGE THE THIRD, George GRENVILLE,-himself the second son of Richard GRENVILLE, of Wotton, and of Hester TEMPLE (co-heiress of Richard TEMPLE, Lord Cobham, and herself created Countess TEMPLE in 1749). He was born on the thirty-first of December, 1755, and entered Parliament soon after attaining his majority. In the House of Commons he voted and acted as a follower of Lord ROCKINGHAM and a comrade of Charles Fox, in opposition to the other GRENVILLES and the Grenvillite' party. Had the famous India Bill of Fox's ministry been carried into a law, Thomas GRENVILLE, it was understood, would have been the first Governor-General of India under its rule. His first entrance into the diplomatic service was made in 1782. His mission was to Paris. Its purpose, to negotiate with Benjamin FRANKLIN a treaty of peace with America. The circumstances beneath the influence of which it was undertaken I have had occasion to advert to, already, in the notice of Lord SHELBURNE. It is needless to return to them now. |