Chap. VI. Mr. SLADE also bequeathed three thousand pounds for BOOK III, the augmentation, by his Executors, of his Collection of OHER Ancient Glass, and five thousand pounds to be by them expended in the restoration of the parish church of Thorn- RECENT ton-in-Lonsdale. BENEFAC TORS OF DAYS. AND HIS TIONS OF Philip VON SIEBOLD was born at Wurtzburg, in February, VONSIEBOLD 1796, and in the university of that town he received his JAPANESE education. He adopted the profession of medicine, but COLLEC devoted himself largely to the study of natural history. In 1823-8. the joint capacity of physician and naturalist, he accompanied the Dutch Embassy to Japan in the year 1823. He was a true lover of humanity, as well as a lover of science. Many Japanese students were taught by him both the curative arts, and the passion for doing good to their fellowmen, which ought to be the condition of their exercise and practice. He won the respect of the Japanese, but his ardent pursuit of knowledge brought him into great peril. In 1828 he was about to return to Europe, laden with scientific treasures, when he was suddenly seized and imprisoned for having procured access to an official map of the Empire, in order to improve his knowledge of its topography. His imprisonment lasted thirteen months. At last he was liberated, and ordered to do what he was just about to do when arrested. (SIEBOLD, says his biographer, kam mit der Verbannung davon.) But his banishment was not perpetual. In 1859, he returned. He won favour and employment from the then Tycoon. He returned to his birthplace in 1862, and died there in October, 1866. The Of his second library, Mr. WATTS wrote thus: collection of Japanese books was one of two formed by Dr. BOOK III, OTHER TORS OF RECENT VON SIEBOLD during his residence in, and visits to, Japan. This was the last sentence in the last official report ! BOOK III, Chap. VI. BENEFAC- DAYS. laid before Parliament. He died on the ninth of September, 1869, at the age of fifty-nine. His post was not filled up until the end of December, when he was succeeded by Mr. William Brenchley RYE, who was then Senior RECENT Assistant-Keeper in the Department of Printed Books. Mr. RYE is well known in literature. He has edited, with great ability, several works of early travel for the useful 'Hakluyt Society,'-an employment which he has often shared with his friends and Museum colleagues Messrs. Winter JONES and Richard Henry MAJOR, and with like honourable distinction in its performance. More recently, he has increased his reputation by a book which has been largely read, and which well deserves its popularity— England as seen by Foreigners. This work was published in 1865. BOOK III, Chap. VII. RECON STRUCTORS AND PRO- GROSLEY'S IDEA OF THE MUSEUM CHAPTER VII. RECONSTRUCTORS AND PROJECTORS. 'What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our Libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his Library, you call him mad,-a Bibliomaniac. But you never call any one a Horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their losses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the bookshelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars.' RUSKIN, Sesame and Lilies, pp. 75-77. The various Projects and Plans proposed, at different times, for the Severance, the Partial Dispersion, and the Rearrangement, of the several integral Collections which at present form The British Museum.' THE first reconstructor, in imagination, of the British Museum on the plan of severing the literature from the scientific collections, was a speculative and clever Frenchman, Peter John GROSLEY, who visited it within less than six years of its being first opened to public inspection. GROSLEY expressed great admiration for much that he saw, and he also criticised some of the arrangements that seemed to him defective, with freedom but with courtesy. Some of my readers will probably think that he hit a real blot, at that time, when he said: "The Printed Books are the weakest part of this immense collection. The building cannot contain such a Library as England can form and ought to form for the ornament of its capital. It has a building quite ready in the "Banquetting-House" [at Whitehall], and that building could be enlarged from time to time as occasion might require.' Chap. VII. STRUCTORS Other writers, at various periods, have advocated BOOK III, the severance of collections which seemed to them RECONtoo multifarious to admit of full, natural, and equable development, in common. There is perhaps no apparent reason, on the surface, why a great Nation should not be able to enlarge the most varied public collections as effectively, and as impartially, within one building, as within half a dozen buildings. Nor does there seem to be any necessary connection between the wise and liberal government of public collections, and their severance or division into many buildings, rather than their combination within a single structure. Nevertheless it is certain that many thinkers have, by some process or other, reached the conclusion that severance would favour improvement. FOR THE OF THE COLLEC TIONS, 1837. Seventy years after GROSLEY wrote, Thomas WATTS re- MR. WATTS' vived the proposition of dividing the contents of the British PROPOSITION Museum, but he revived it in a new form. His idea was to SEVERANCE remove the Antiquities and to retain at Montagu House MUSEUM both the Libraries and the Natural History Collections. The pictures have been removed,' wrote Mr. WATTS in 1837, why should not the statues follow? The collections at the Museum would then remain of an entirely homogeneous character. It would be exclusively devoted to conveying literary information; while the collection at the National Gallery would have for its object to refine and cultivate the taste.' It was not by any oversight that Mr. WATTS spoke of the 'homogeneity' of Manuscripts, Printed Books, and Natural-History Collections. He (at the time) meant what he said. But I doubt if the naturalists would feel flattered by the reason which he gives in illustration of his opinion. The various curiosities accumulated at the Magazine, Museum might be considered,' he continues, as a vast pp. 295, seqq. Watts, in Mechanics' vol. xxvi, |