BOOK 1, Chap. VI. FOUNDERS OF THE MUSEUM. ole amount of labour and research-upon an object ally and largely public. Yet a British Parliament THE hot summon up enough of public spirit to tax its own rs, in common with their tax-paying fellow subjects SLOANK hout the realm, to the extent of a hundred thousand , in order to meet an obvious public want, to redeem al parliamentary pledge, and to secure a conspicuous I honour for all time to come. That want of public id not exhaust its results with the ruin of the poor , scattered here and there, whose scanty means had zarded and lost by gambling, under a parliamentary ion. It impressed itself, so to speak, on the subsehistory of the institution for more than forty years. useum had been founded grudgingly. It was kept simoniously. that fact been otherwise, the story of the knavery LEHEUP would have little merited recital a century and he, had passed into oblivion. value of so small an incident in the crowded story National Museum lies simply in the fact that it forms and salient illustration of the narrowness of spirit ich the then representatives of the people received eral gift of public benefactors. It serves to show was that, from the year 1753 down to some years 500, the History of the British Museum casts very nour on Britain as a nation, whereas the precedent of its integral parts, as separate and infant collecasts, and will long continue to cast, great honour on mory of the COTTONS, the HARLEYS, and the SLOANES, n they were painfully gathered and most liberally ed. bily, as the course of this narrative-whatever its BOOK I, Chap. VI. THE FOUNDERS OF THE SLOANE MUSEUM. shortcomings cannot fail to show, the literary and scientific treasures which men of that stamp had collected, came, in a subsequent generation (and, in a chief measure, by dint of the exertions of the Trustees and Officers to whom they had been, in course of time, confided) to be more adequately estimated by Ministers and by Parliament in their public capacity, as well as by the more cultivated portion of the people generally. For more than a half-century past the History of the British Museum has been one that any Briton may take delight and pride in telling. And such it promises to be, preeminently, in the time yet to come. In a conspicuous sense, the men by whom it was first founded, and the men by whom, for what is now a long time past, it has been administered and governed, have alike been true workers for Posterity. III. THE COLLECTORS OF THE CRACHERODE, LANSDOWNE, IV. THE KING'S LIBRARY-ITS COLLECTOR AND ITS DONOR. V. THE FOUNDER OF THE BANKSIAN MUSEUM AND LIBRARY. IE King made this Ordinance :-That there should ission of three of the brethren of Solomon's House, errand was only to give us knowledge of the affairs ate of those countries to which they were designed, pecially of the Sciences . . . . and Inventions of all orld; and withal to bring us books, instruments, Eterns in every kind. have also precious stones, of all kinds; many of fgreat beauty. Also, store of fossils. do hate all impostures and lies, insomuch as we verally forbidden it to all our fellows, under pain of by or fines, that they do not show any natural work g adorned or swelling, but only pure as it is, without ion of showing marvels. e have also those who take care to consider of the labours and Collections, and out of them to direct plorations more penetrating into Nature than Upon every invention of value we erect to the inventor, and give him a liberal and honourvard. ner. .... have hymns and services, which we say daily, of d thanks to GOD for His marvellous works, and f prayer imploring His blessing for the illumination. labours."-BACON, New Atlantis, a Work un |