Chap. I. MUSEUM History-to that very limited extent to which the monu- BOOK III, ments and memorials of our history are to be found in print. Virtually, the grants on behalf of the Manuscript Department, not those on behalf of the Printed Book UNDER Department, were, in 1812, as they still are in 1870, the grants which mainly tend to make the British Museum what, most obviously, it ought to become, the main storehouse of British History and Archæology, both in literature and in art. The magnificent additions made by private donors to every section of the British Museum during the administration of PLANTA, have been sufficiently passed under review in the closing chapters of Book II. Several of them, it has been seen, were the fruits of the public spirit of individual Trustees. Such gifts amply vindicated the wisdom both of Sir Hans SLOANE and of Parliament, when both Founder and Legislature gave to men of exalted position a preference as peculiarly fit, in the judgment of each, for the general guardianship of the Museum. MR. PLANTA. HIS CATHO LICITY OF SYMPATHIFS. But private gifts-munificent as they were-left large gaps in the National Collections. It is one of Mr. PLANTA'S TASTES AND distinctive merits that his tastes and sympathies embraced the Natural History Department, as well as those literary departments with which, as a man of letters, he had a more direct personal connection. He supported, with his influence, the wise recommendation to Parliament-made in 1810 for the purchase of the GREVILLE Collection of Minerals. He recommended, in 1822, the purchase, from the representatives of the naturalist MONTICELLI, of a like, though minor Collection, which had been formed at Naples. The Cavaliero MONTICELLI'S Collection was, in the main, one that had been undertaken in imitation of an earlier assemblage of volcanic products which had been also gathered at BOOK III, OF THE MUSEUM MR. PLANTA. Naples by Sir William HAMILTON, and by the Collector given (as I have already recorded) to the Trustees. In a similar spirit he promoted the acquisitions which were made from time to time, by the instrumentality of Claudius RICH, of Henry SALT, and of several other workers in the fruitful field of Classical, Assyrian, and Egyptian archæological exploration. Both in the literary and scientific departments of the Museum he also gave some special attention to the due continuance and completion of the various collections bestowed on the Public by the munificence of Sir Joseph BANKS. Another conspicuous merit belongs to Joseph PLANTA. He supported the Trustees in that wise and large-minded policy which induced them to regard publication, as well as accumulation, to be one of the chief duties of their Trust for the Nation. He thought it not enough, for example, to show to groups of Londoners, from time to time, and to occasional foreign visitants, in almost solitary state, the wealth of Nature and of Art in the Museum Collections. He saw it to be no less the duty of the faithful trustees of such treasures to show them to the world at large by the combined labours of the painter, the draughtsman, the engraver, and the printer. It will ever be an honourable distinction-in the LABOURS ON briefest record of his Museum labours-that he promoted the publication of the beautiful volumes entitled Description of the Ancient Marbles in the British Museum; of the Catalogue of the Anglo-Gallic Coins; of the Mausoleum and Cinerary Urns; of the Description of Terra Cottas; and other like works. The first-named work in particular is an especial honour to the Trustees of the Museum, and to all who were concerned in its production. Beautifully engraved, and ably edited, it made the archæological treasures of the Nation widely known even to such foreigners, PLANTA'S THE MUSEUM'S Chap. I. OF THE MUSEUM UNDER MR. PLANTA. interested in the study of antiquity, as circumstances pre- Book III, cluded from ever seeing the marbles themselves. When HISTORY watching-in the bygone years-the late Henry CORBOULD busy at the work into which he threw so much of his love, as well as of his skill in drawing, I have been tempted, now and then, to envy the craft which, in its results, made our national possessions familiarly known, in the far parts of the world, to students who could never hope to see the wonderful handicraft of the old Greek sculptors, otherwise than as it is reflected and transmitted by the handicraft of the skilled modern draughtsman. CORBOULD had the eye to see artistic beauty and the soul to enjoy it. He was not one of the artists who are artisans, in everything but the name. In the 'Ancient Marbles in the British Museum,' published under the active encouragement of the Trustees and of their Principal Librarians, during a long series of years, CORBOULD, as draughtsman, had just the work for which Nature had pre-eminently fitted him. TICULARLY, TALOGUES. Joseph PLANTA also took his share in the compilation of AND, PAR the Catalogues both of Printed Books and of Manuscripts. In this department, as in the archæological one, he extended the benefits of his zealous labour to the scholar abroad as well as to the scholar at home. What was carefully prepared was liberally printed and liberally circulated. PLANTA wrote with his own hand part of the published Catalogue of the Printed Books, and much of the Catalogue of the Cottonian Manuscripts. To the latter he prefixed a brief life of the Founder, by which I have gladly and thankfully profited in my own more extended labour at the beginning of this volume. One incidental employment which Mr. PLANTA's office entailed upon him-as Principal Librarian-was of a less grateful kind. It merits notice on more than one account, BOOK III, HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM MR. PLANTA. THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND THE very trivial as is the incident of Museum history that occasioned it, when looked at intrinsically. In 1821, the then Duke of BEDFORD (John, ninth Duke) filed in Chancery an injunction against the Trustees to restrain them from building on the garden-ground of the GARDENS OF Museum. To build was-at that time-an undoubted injury to the Bloomsburians, and, consequently, a not less undoubted depreciation of the Duke's estate. It is hard, nowadays, to realise to one's fancy what the former Museum gardens were in the olden time. They not only adorned every house that looked over them, but were-in practice, and by the indulgence of the Trustees and officers-a sort of small public park for the refreshment of the vicinity at large. Their neighbourhood made houses more valuable in the market. Almost seventy years before the filing of the Chancery injunctions of 1820-21, a predecessor of the Duke (John, seventh Duke) had compelled Parliament-and with great reason to enact that the New Road' should be made a broad road; not a narrow lane. He had carried a proviso for the construction of gardens in front of all the houses along the road. Were public property, and public enjoyments, protected by English law with one tenth part of the efficiency with which private property and private enjoyments are protected, that clause in the 'New Road Act' of 1750 would have proved, in our own present day, a measure advantageous to public health. But public easements are unknown, or nearly unknown, to English law. And the Duke's clause has come, in course of time, to teem with public nuisance, instead of public benefit. Englishmen build at the national cost magnificent cathedrals, and then permit railway-jobbers to defile them, at pleasure, with railway architecture.' They construct, by dint of large taxation, magnificent Chap. I. OF THE MR. PLANTA. river-embankments, and permit every sort of smoke-belching BOOK III, chimney and eye-killing corrugated-iron-monstrosity to HISTORY spoil the view. What the old Duke of BEDFORD intended MUSEUM to make a metropolitan improvement, as well as a defence UNDER to his own property, has come to be a cause of public detriment, simply because our legislation, in the year of Grace 1870, affords protection to no kind of public property that is insusceptible, by its nature, of direct valuation in pounds and pence. The action of the ninth Duke of BEDFORD was in contrast with that of his predecessor. It was not altogether selfish, since there was an actual abatement of public enjoyment in that step which he was opposing. The Trustees of the British Museum were really compelled to take something from the Public with one hand;-but, with the other, they gave a tenfold equivalent. Their contention, of course, prevailed against the Duke's opposition. It may not be intrusive here to mention that it is known. that by the present Duke of BEDFORD very generous and liberal furtherance would be given to new schemes of extension for the Museum, were Parliament, on full consideration, to think enlargement at Bloomsbury the right course to be taken in pending matters. But this subject will demand a few words hereafter. PLANTA'S energies seem for several years to have been given, almost exclusively, to his Museum duties, in combination (as was perfectly practicable and befitting, under the then circumstances) with his Exchequer Paymastership. But in the closing years of his Under-Librarianship many months were (not less fitly) given to a worthy literary undertaking. He wrote his History of the Helvetic Confederacy towards the end of the last century, and published |