Chap. III. OF THE MUSEUM is important. Such a series serves to show both the defec- BOOK III, tive and the excessive forms of minerals, and their transitional capacities. These five several collections are, it will be seen, over and above that other special Collection of Sky-stones or Meteorites,' which is already very nobly represented in our National Museum. UNDER SIR A. PANIZZI. BOOK III, GISTS AND CHAPTER IV. ANOTHER GROUP OF ARCHEOLOGISTS AND The Libraries of the East.-The Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and their Explorers.-William CURETON and his Labours on the MSS. of Nitria, and in other Departments of Oriental Literature.-The Researches in the Levant of Sir Charles FELLOWS, of Mr. LAYARD, and of Mr. Charles NEWTON.-Other conspicuous Augmentors of the Collection of Antiquities. WE have now to turn to that vast field of research and exploration, from which the national Museum of Antiquities has derived an augmentation that has sufficed to double, within twenty-five years, its previous scientific and Chap. IV. ARCHEOLO. literary value to the Public. In this chapter we have BOOK III, to tell of not a little romantic adventure; of remote ANOTHER and perilous explorations and excavations; sometimes, of GROUP OF sharp conflicts between English pertinacity and Oriental GISTS AND cunning; often, of great endurance of hardship and privation in the endeavour at once to promote learning-the world over-and to add some new and not unworthy entries on the long roll of British achievement. EXPLORERS. LIBRARIES Two distinct groups of explorers have now to be recorded. The labours of both groups carry us to the Levant. What has been done of late years by the searchers after manuscripts, in their effort to recover some of the lost treasures THE of the old Libraries of the East, will be most fairly appre- OF THE EAST. ciated by the reader, if, before telling of the researches and the studies of CURZON, TATTAM, CURETON, and their fellowworkers in Eastern manuscript archæology, some brief prefatory notice be given of the earlier labours, in the same field, of HUNTINGTON, BROWNE, and other travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mention must also be made of the explorations of SONNINI and of ANDRÉOSSI. RESEARCHES OF ROBERT HUNTING- MONAS About the year 1680, Robert HUNTINGTON, afterwards THE Bishop of Raphoe, visited the Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and made special and eager research for the Syriac version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius, of the existence of which there had been wide-spread belief amongst the TERIES; learned, since the time of Archbishop USSHER. But his quest was fruitless, although, as it is now well known, a Syriac version of some of those epistles did really exist in one of the monasteries which HUNTINGTON visited. monks, then as afterwards, were chary of showing their MSS., very small as was the care they took of them. The The BOOK III, Chap. IV. ANOTHER GROUP OF ARCHEOLO GISTS AND EXPLORER3. AND THOSE OF SONNINI, AND OTHERS. Browne, Travels in Africa, &c., p. 43. Huntington, Observations (repr. in Ray's Coll.). Andréossi, Vallées des Lac de Nation, pass. only manuscripts mentioned by HUNTINGTON, in recording his visits to three of the principal communities-St. Mary Deipara, St. Macarius, and El Baramous-are an Old Testament in the Estrangelo character; two volumes of Chrysostom in Coptic and Arabic; a Coptic Lectionary in four volumes; and a New Testament in Coptic and Arabic. Towards the close of the following century, these monasteries received the successive visits of SONNINI, of William George BROWNE, and of General Count ANDRÉOSSI. SONNINI says nothing of books. BROWNE SAW but few-among them an Arabo-Coptic Lexicon, the works of St. Gregory, and the Old and New Testaments in Arabic— although he was told by the superior that they had nearly eight hundred volumes, with none of which they would part. General ANDRÉOSSI, on the other hand, speaks slightingly of the books as merely ascetic works, some in Arabic, and some in Coptic, with an Arabic translation in the margin;' but adds, We brought away some of the latter class, which appear to have a date of six centuries.' This was in 1799. BROWNE died in 1814; SONNINI DE MANONCOURT, in 1812; Count ANDRÉOSSI survived until 1828. In the year 1827, the late Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND (then Lord PRUDHOE) made more elaborate researches. His immediate object was a philological one, his Lordship desiring to further Mr. TATTAM's labours on a Coptic and Arabic Dictionary. Hearing that 'Libraries were said to be preserved, both at the Baramous and Syrian convents,' hoe's Narra- he proceeded to El Baramous, accompanied accompanied by Mr. LINART, and encamped outside the walls. "The monks in this convent,' says the Duke, 'about twelve in number, appeared poor and ignorant. They looked on us with Lord Prud tice, &c., as abridged in Quarterly Review, vol. lxxvii, pp. 45, seq. Chap. IV. GROUP OF ARCHEOLO EXPLORERS. great jealousy, and denied having any books, except those BOOK III, in the church, which they showed us.' But having been ANOTHER judiciously mollified by some little seductive present, on the next day, 'in a moment of good humour, they agreed to GISTS AND show us their Library. From it I selected a certain number of Manuscripts, which, with the Lexicon (Selim) already mentioned, were carried into the monk's room. A long deliberation ensued, as to my offer to purchase them. Only one could write, and at last it it was agreed that he should copy the Selim, which copy and the MSS. I had collected were to be mine, in exchange for a fixed sum of dollars, to which I added a present of rice, coffee, tobacco, and such other articles as I had to offer.' After narrating the acquisition of a few other MSS. at the Syrian convent, or Convent of St. Mary Deipara, his Lordship proceeds: These manuscripts I presented to Mr. TATTAM, and gave him some account of the small room with its trap-door, through which I descended, candle in hand, to examine the manuscripts, where books, and parts of books, and scattered leaves, in Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and Arabic, were lying in a mass, on which I stood. . . . In appearance, it seemed as if, on some sudden emergency, the whole Library had been thrown down this trapdoor, and they had remained undisturbed, in their dust and neglect, for some centuries.' THE IN THE Ten years later, Mr. TATTAM himself continued these researches. But in the interval they had been taken up RESEARCHES by the energetic and accomplished traveller Mr. Robert LEVANTINE CURZON, to whose charming Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant it is mainly owing that a curious aspect of monastic life, which theretofore had only interested a few scholars, has become familiar to thousands of readers of all classes. Mr. CURZON'S researches were much more thorough MONASTE- |
