Chap. VI. OTHER BENEFACTORS OF RECENT DAYS. mentation of the public stores. Towards the close of his Book III, life he lived in London, and used to amuse himself by exhibiting, and by lecturing upon, what he regarded as the FOR more racy portion of his later collections. He chose (I am told) the hour of eleven o'clock on Sunday morning for such peculiar expositions, but I do not think that these Sunday Lectures' were regarded, either by the man who gave them or by his auditors, as especially fitted for the instruction of the working classes.' CHRISTY AND ITS FOUNDER'S Of a very different calibre to Mr. George WITT was the THE donor of the noble Museum of Ethnography which, for MUSEUM want of room at Bloomsbury, still occupies the late donor's dwelling-house, almost two miles off. It is not too much HISTORY. to say of Henry CHRISTY, that he was both an illustrious man of science and an eminent Christian. The man whose fame as a searcher into antiquity is spread alike over Europe and America, is also remembered in many Irish cabins as one who was willing to spend, lavishly, his health and strength, as well as his money, in lifting up, from squalid beds of straw and filth, poor creatures stricken at once with famine and with fever, and so stricken as sometimes to have almost lost the semblance of humanity. He is also remembered by Algerian peasants, by West African negroes, and by Canadian Indians for like deeds of beneficence. When Prussian insolence and Prussian barbarity struck down Danes who were defending hearth and home, CHRISTY Was again the open-handed benefactor of the oppressed. When Turks were, in like manner, beating down by sheer brute force the Druses of Syria, Henry CHRISTY was relieving the distressed and the down-trodden in the East, with no less liberality than he had evinced a little while before in relieving them in the North of Europe. BOOK III, OTHER TORS OF RECENT DAYS. CHARACTER OF THE ANCIENT PART OF AMERICA. The time which works of good-samaritanism such as these left unoccupied was given to a vast series-or rather to a succession of series-of explorations which have had already a noble result, and which will yield more and more fruit for many a year to come. The scene of them embraced Mexico, the United States, British America, Deninark, and several Departments of Southern and Western France. Their period reached from 1860-when he had just entered the fiftieth year of his age—almost to the day of his lamented and sudden death in the May of 1865. His able and beloved friend and fellow-worker LARTET was with him in the Allier, when the fatal illness struck him, at the age of fifty-four. It will be pardoned me, I trust, if in this connection I quote, once again, those thoughtful words, out of the private note-book of Lord BACON, which I applied in a former chapter to another and more recent public loss--Princes, . . . . . when men deserve crowns for their performances, do not crown them below, where the deeds are performed, but call them up. So doth GOD, by death.' The little that need here be added as to the nature and extent of Mr. CHRISTY'S gift to the Public, will be best said in the words of the present able Curator of the Collection, Mr. A. W. FRANKS. But it should be first premised that the posthumous gift was only the continuation of a long series of gifts, which embraced the Museums, not of England alone, but those of Northern and of Southern Europe, and (as I think) some of those of America : Among the most important contents of the CHRISTY Museum is a collection of stone implements from the Drift. They are the most ancient remains of human industry hitherto discovered; they include a remarkably fine series from St. Acheul, near Amiens. Antiquities found in the BOOK III, Chap. VI. BENEFAC- DAYS. Report on Museum (abridged). Caves of Dordogne, were excavated by Mr. CHRISTY and M. LARTET, at the expense of the former. This collection is very extensive, and includes a number of drawings on reindeer bone and horn, probably some of the most ancient works RECENT of art that have been preserved. It would have been still more extensive, had it not been known that Mr. CHRISTY Franks' intended to present the unique specimens to the French Christy Museum, an intention which the Trustees under his Will have felt bound to fulfil. The Museum includes many ancient stone implements found on the surface, in England and Ireland, France, Belgium, and Denmark. The last of these is a remarkable collection, and includes a good series from the Danish Kitchenmiddens. A few specimens from Italy are also to be found; a valuable collection from the caves at Gibraltar; and specimens from the Swiss Lakes. For convenience, a case of ancient stone implements from Asia has been placed in this room, as well as the more modern implements, dresses, and weapons of the Esquimaux of America and Asia, and of the maritime tribes of the NorthWest Coast of America. These furnish striking illustrations of the remains found in the Caves of Dordogne, and prove that, while the climate was similar to that of the northern countries in question, the inhabitants of that part of France must have resembled the Esquinaux in their habits and implements. ASIA. The African Collection is very extensive, and supplies a AFRICA AND lacuna in the collections of the British Museum, where there are few objects from this continent. The same máy be said of the series from the Asiatic Islands. The collection from Asia proper is not very numerous; the races now occupying that continent being generally in a more advanced state of civilization than that which especially interested Mr. CHRISTY. Attention should, however, be BOOK III, OTHER TORS OF RECENT MELANESIA AND POLY- ASIA. AUSTRALIA AND PART NORTH AND SOUTH called to two valuable relics from China; an Imperial State Seal carved in jade, and a set of tablets of the same material, on which has been engraved a poem by the Emperor KIEN-LUNG. The Polynesian Room contains a valuable collection of weapons, ornaments, and dresses, both from the islands inhabited by the black races of the Pacific, and from those of Polynesia proper. Many of the specimens are of interest, as belonging to a state of culture which has now completely changed, and as illustrating manners and customs that have disappeared before the commerce and the teaching of Europeans. In the Asian Room' are placed the larger objects from the Pacific, such as spears, clubs, and paddles. The collection of spears is very large and interesting. The Australian Collection is very complete, and it would not be easy to replace it, inasmuch as the native races are dwindling in most parts of that continent. The American department in chief includes antiquities and recent implements and dresses from the North American Indians; ancient Carib implements; and recent collections from British Guiana, and other parts of South America. The most valuable part of the contents of this room is the collection of Mexican antiquities, which is not only extensive, but includes some specimens of great rarity. Among them should be especially mentioned the following-An axe of Avanturine jade, carved into the form of a human figure; a remarkable knife of white chalcedony; a sacrificial collar formed of a hard green stone; a squatting figure, of good execution, sculptured out of a volcanic rock; and three remarkable specimens coated with polished stones. The latter consist of a wooden mask covered with a mosaic of blue stones, presumed to be turquoises, but more probably a rare form of amazon-stone; a human skull BOOK III, Chap. VI. BENEFAC- DAYS. There is also a Franks' A catalogue of the collection was privately printed by Mr. CHRISTY in 1862; but it embraces only a small part of the present collection. A more extended catalogue is in preparation. It is due to accuracy to add that the aspect of the rooms devoted to the CHRISTY Museum in Victoria Street, and the facilities of study which they afford, are utterly unsatisfactory to real students. They are adapted only to holiday sightseers, who look and go, and but to very small groups, indeed, even of them. Every praise is due both to the Trustees and to their officer, for having done their best, under strait and lamentable limitations, the removal of which is the duty of Parliament and of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not that of the Trustees. Under the Premiership of such an eminent scholar and writer as Mr. GLADSTONE, humbler students of history and of literature would fain hope that a long-standing reproach will speedily be removed; but his ministerial surroundings are unfriendly to such anticipations. After words which we have recently heard, from the Treasury Bench itself, about Public Parks, there is only scanty ground for hope that much improvement can, under existing circumstances, be looked for in respect to Public Museums. At all events, the condition, as to space, of the CHRISTY Museum in Victoria Street, no less than the condition, in Report, as above. |