Over the Ocean Part 19

In the Queen's Gallery, which is about one hundred and seventy-five feet in length, there is a very interesting collection; and here the guide had some indulgence, and allowed us to tarry a little. Great tapestry hangings, with scenes from the life of Alexander the Great, beautifully executed, were suspended on the walls; here hung Raphael's portrait, painted by himself; here Henry VII.'s Children, by Mabeuse; and here old Holbein (to whose brush we owe all the pictorial representations we have of Henry VIII.) especially flourishes; for his portraits of Henry when young, of Erasmus, Will Somers, the king's jester, Francis I. of France, and others that I do not remember, hang here; there is a beautiful St.

Catherine, by Correggio; a Jewish Rabbi, by Rembrandt; Boar's Head, by Snyders; Fruit, by Cuyp; a Boy and Fruit, by Murillo; besides scores of others by great artists. What a collection to be allowed thirty-five minutes to look at! It was little less than an aggravation.

Next came the Queen's Drawing-room, which contains many pictures from the pencil of Benjamin West; among them, that with which every one of us, who has studied an American geography or child's book of history, is so familiar--the death of General Wolfe at the storming of Quebec. From out the windows of this room is another of those superb English landscape views of which I have so often spoken, that we get from the castles and palaces of the country. A magnificent avenue of lime trees, nearly a mile in length, stretches out to view, and an artificial river, or ca.n.a.l, of the same length, s.h.i.+nes between the greensward of the park, while an old English church tower, at the extreme background, fills out the charming picture of nature.

In the Queen's Audience Chamber we have old Holbein's works again. The curious old pictures from his brush here are, Henry VIII. embarking at Dover; the Battle of Spurs; Meeting of Henry VIII. and the Emperor Maximilian, and Meeting of Henry VIII. and Francis I. on the Field of the Cloth of Gold. This last picture has a story, which is to the effect that in Cromwell's time the Parliament proposed to sell it to the King of France. The Earl of Pembroke, however, determined that such a treasure of art and historical memento should not leave England, and thereupon carefully and secretly cut off the head of Henry the Eighth from the canvas, so that the French king's agent, discovering the mutilation, refused to take the painting. When Charles the Second came to the throne, after the Restoration, Pembroke returned the head, which had been carefully preserved, and it was very skilfully replaced; so skilfully, that it was only by getting a view by a side light that we could discover that it had been disturbed.

In the Private Dining-room, as it is called, are shown three of the great couches of royalty, the state beds of William III. and his Queen Mary, and that of George II., and but few pictures of note; so we go on through other "halls," "writing closets," "audience chambers," &c., till we reach a fine, lofty gallery, built by Sir Christopher Wren; here we have more portraits by Holbein, one by Abert Durer, one of Queen Elizabeth, in her vast and enormously built up and gaudy costume, Landscape by Rubens, Battle Piece by Wouvermans, Inside a Farm House by Teniers, and some two or three hundred others.

After this pictorial surfeit we pa.s.sed into the magnificent great Gothic Hall, designed by Wolsey, and finished by Henry VIII., when Anne Boleyn was queen. This hall is pure Gothic, one hundred and six feet long, forty wide, and sixty high, the roof very elaborately carved oak, decorated, with great taste and splendor, with arms and badges of King Henry. It is somewhat singular that at this very place, which was the scene of Wolsey's magnificence and Henry's lordly splendor, there should have been acted, by King George I.'s command, in 1718, Shakespeare's play of "Henry VIII., or the Fall of Wolsey." The walls of this hall are hung with splendid arras tapestry, representing the history of Abraham; around the hall hung portraits of Henry VIII., Wolsey, Jane Seymour, and Queen Elizabeth; and at intervals are deers' heads, carved from wood, above which are banners and trophies. The notable feature of the hall, however, is its stained-gla.s.s windows, thirteen in number, besides the great one and the beautiful oriel window, splendid in its proportions, fine Gothic canopy, and rich in beautiful colored gla.s.s, bearing armorial devices of the King and Jane Seymour. The Great Window is divided off into fourteen compartments, one of which has a half-length portrait of King Henry, and the others are filled with armorial crests and devices. Six of the other windows bear the armorial pedigrees of the six wives of the king, and the others various heraldic designs. The architecture and decorations of this n.o.ble hall are very well managed, and the subdued and colored light, falling upon the rich carving and Gothic tracery, produces an imposing and strikingly beautiful effect.

After an inside view of the palace and its picture-galleries, the stroll through the great park is none the less delightful. This park, or rather the gardens, as they are called, are elegantly laid out with beds of brilliant-colored flowers, broad gravel walks, beautiful closely-clipped lawns, and groups of splendid oaks and elms; and, although the grounds are almost a dead level, with but little inequality, still they are so beautifully arranged as to present a charming and romantic appearance.

Here crowds of people walked beneath the great trees in the broad shaded avenues, sat on the velvety turf at the foot of great oaks, or paused and admired the huge plats of flowers, of brilliant hues and delicious fragrance, arranged by the gardener's skill in beautiful combinations, or strolled into the conservatory to see the orange trees, or into the vinery to see that celebrated grape vine, which is said to be the largest in Europe; and a royal monster it is, indeed, stretching out its arms over one hundred and thirty feet, and having a stem that, at three feet from the ground, measures over thirty inches in circ.u.mference. It was planted in 1768. Its fruit is the richest black Hamburg variety, and from two thousand to two thousand five hundred bunches of the luscious spheroids are its annual yield. Not among the least of the attractions of the gardens is a maze, skilfully constructed of hedges about seven feet in height, and the walks to the centre, or from the centre to the outside, so skilfully contrived in labyrinthine pa.s.sages of puzzling intricacy as to render it a matter of no ordinary difficulty to extricate one's self. A guide, however, stands upon an elevated platform outside, and a.s.sists those by his instructions who are unable to do so, and give up the trial. The shouts of laughter of those who were entangled in the deceitful avenues told of their enjoyment of the ingenious puzzle.

Near the maze is one of the large gates of the palace gardens, opening exactly opposite to Bushy Park; and here we pa.s.sed out into a great avenue, a mile in length, of horse-chestnut trees, the air redolent with their red and white blossoms. In this park the parties who come from London to visit Hampton Court picnic, as no eatables or picknicking is permitted in the gardens of the latter. Hawkers and pedlers of eatables and drinkables, of all kinds and at all prices, were in every direction; groups under the trees were chatting, lunching, and lounging, and enjoying themselves.

The finest residence of English royalty, at the present time, is Windsor Castle; and a pleasant railway ride of twenty miles or so from London brought us in sight of the splendid great Round Tower, which is so notable a feature of the place. It crowns the apex of a hill, and is a conspicuous landmark. Edward III. was born here; Cromwell and Charles II. have lived here; and a statue of the latter is conspicuous in the great quadrangle of the castle, which you enter after mounting the hill.

The towers around the walls bear such names as Edward III. Tower, Lancaster Tower, Brunswick Tower, Victoria Tower, &c.; but the n.o.blest of all is the great Keep, or Round Tower, which rises to the height of one hundred and twenty-five feet above the pavement of the quadrangle; and up to the summit of this I toiled, to be repaid by the charming English landscape view spread out on every side. Twelve counties were within the range of vision; the square turrets of old English churches, arched-stone bridges, the beautiful park and grounds beneath, with cricketers at play, and the beautiful sheet of water ("Virginia water"), like a looking-gla.s.s beneath the sun, and the Thames winding away in the distance like a silver ribbon on the green landscape, which was dotted with villages, elegant country seats and castle-like dwellings of the aristocracy, formed a picture that it was a luxury to look upon.

Visitors are conducted through the state apartments, which contain many fine pictures, some magnificent tapestry, and which, of course, are furnished in regal style. The Gobelin tapestry, and a magnificent malachite vase,--the latter a gift to the queen from Nicholas, Emperor of Russia,--were in the Presence Chamber. The Waterloo Chamber contained many fine portraits of Waterloo heroes by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and the Vand.y.k.e Room was hung only with pictures painted by that artist.

It will be recollected that Edward III. inst.i.tuted the Order of the Garter at Windsor, in 1349, and in St. George's Hall, or the State Dining-room, as it is called, is where the queen confers the order. At the upper end of this hall, which is two hundred feet in length, is the throne upon its raised dais. Upon one side of the apartment are hung the portraits of England's sovereigns, while upon the other are the coats of arms of the original Knights of the Garter, elegantly emblazoned with their names and t.i.tles, and those of their successors. The ceiling is also elegantly ornamented. The most attractive apartment is the long gallery, about fifteen feet wide and four hundred and fifty long, which is rich in bronzes, busts, and pictures, although we looked with some interest at a shattered section of the mast of Lord Nelson's flag-s.h.i.+p, the Victory, which bears the mark of the enemy's cannon-shot, and is surmounted by a bust of Nelson, in a room called the Guard Chamber; and in the same room is a s.h.i.+eld, inlaid with gold and silver-work, presented by Francis I. to Henry VIII. at their celebrated meeting on the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Next after the state apartments St. George's Chapel engaged our attention. This chapel was begun by Edward IV. in 1461, and not completed till early in the sixteenth century. The architectural beauty of the interior is indescribable. The richly-ornamented roof and the great east window are most exquisitely done, and it is a wonder that tourists, authors, and the guide-books do not say more than they do about it. Knights of the Garter are installed here. Their banners and escutcheons hang above their carved oaken stalls. A wrought steel screen, by that cunning artificer in iron, Quintin Matsys, stands above the last resting-place of Edward IV. Here, below the marble pavement, rests the gigantic frame of Henry VIII.; here slumber Charles I. and Henry VI, George III., IV., and William IV. The monument to the Princess Charlotte is a magnificent group, representing her upon a couch as if just expired, and a sheet thrown over the body, while her maids by its side, with mantles thrown over their heads, are bowed down with grief.

Above, the spirit is represented as an angel soaring towards heaven--a figure exquisitely cut, and so gracefully poised that the spectator half expects to see it rise, float away into the air, and soar out of sight.

The effect is much heightened by the admirable manner in which it has been managed to have the light fall upon this beautiful sculpture.

There is a home park to Windsor Castle; and how large, think you, American reader, is this home park for British royalty? Why, _only_ five hundred acres! This is connected with Windsor Great Park by the Long Walk, a splendid avenue lined with elms, which avenue is continued on for three miles. The Great Park has one thousand eight hundred acres within its area. Here was Windsor Forest, Herne's Oak, where Herne the Hunter was said to dash forth upon his steed, and where old Falstaff,--

"A Windsor stag, and the fattest, I think, i' the forest,"--

made his a.s.signation with the merry wives of Windsor. Old Windsor itself is some little distance away, nestled down on the banks of the River Thames; and though we saw some ancient houses and an inn or two, there were none that, in our brief sojourn, we could conjure by imagination into such a one as fat Jack and his friends, Bardolph and Pistol, swilled sack in, nor anything that looked like the Garter Inn, or Mistress Quickly. One inn rejoices in the name of Star and Garter, but the briskness and modern style of it savored not of Jack Falstaff's time.

We closed our visit to Windsor with an inspection of the royal stables, or Queen's Mews, as they call them here. These stables were very well arranged and kept, and contain nearly a hundred horses when all are in.

Many were away with the family, who were absent at the time of our visit; but there were the horses for park drives, the horses for road drives, &c., while there were also a dozen or more very handsome barouches, pony and basket carriages, and seven handsome carriages for the queen and suite to go to and from railway stations, Clarences, and various other vehicles, among them a large open-sided affair, with a white tent-like roof, a present from Louis Philippe. Considering that this is only one of the Queen's Mews, it seemed as if this part of her "establishment" was regal indeed. After patting the fat old white pony, which her majesty always uses in her morning drives in the park when at Windsor, we presented our cicerone with an English s.h.i.+lling, which, notwithstanding he wore the queen's livery, he did not scorn to receive, and, taking a glance at the interior of the Riding School, which is a handsomely-arranged room about two hundred feet long, where scions of royalty may be taught to

"Witch the world with n.o.ble horsemans.h.i.+p,"

we bade adieu to Windsor.

If there is any one thing aggravating to the American tourist, on his first trip to England, it is the supreme indifference of the English press to American affairs. Accustomed to the liberal enterprise of the press of his own country, which, with a prodigality of expenditure, stops at nothing when news is to be had, and which every morning actually gives him news from all parts of the world, in addition to copious extracts from foreign and domestic papers, he is struck with astonishment at the comparative lack of enterprise shown by the London papers.

The London Times, which for the past half century it has been the custom for American papers to gratuitously advertise in paragraphs about its wonderful system and enterprise, can no more compare with the New York Tribune and New York Herald in lateness of news, amount of news by telegraph, and correspondence, than a stage coach with a locomotive.

Marked features in the Times are the finished style of its editorials and correspondence, and its parliamentary reports, although the latter, I hardly think, are much better made up than the American Congressional reports in our own papers. But where the inferiority of the English, and the superiority of the American papers is most conspicuous, is in the matter of telegraphic despatches, the American papers using the telegraph without stint, and the English very sparingly. The New York Tribune will generally give its readers, every morning, from five to eight times as much by home lines of wire as the London Times. To be sure we have a much larger extent of territory, at home, that the wires go over; but then the American papers generally give more telegraphic news from the continent of Europe even, than the London papers.

The American, on his first visit to England, calls for the Times at his breakfast table, and if he is lucky enough to get one, turns eagerly to the telegraphic column to see what may be the latest news from America.

He finds a despatch of from six to twelve lines, in which the quotations of the price of United States stocks, New York Central, Erie, Illinois Central, and some other railroad shares, are given, and, perhaps, a line or two saying that Honorable Thaddeus Stevens, member of Congress, died this morning, or the president has appointed George S. Boutwell secretary of the treasury department. A hundred other matters, which affect British and American commerce, are not reported; intelligence interesting to Americans, or any one who has _ever been_ to America, is not alluded to; extracts from American papers seldom given, and, when given, only such as will give a prejudiced impression. Accounts of the commercial, agricultural, and material progress of the country seem to be carefully and jealously excluded from their columns, and after a month's reading of English newspapers, your wonder that the English people are so ignorant of America will give place to astonishment that they should have any correct impression of it whatever.

Take, for example, the well-known speech of Senator Sumner upon the Alabama claims, which, day after day, the papers of London thundered, roared, and howled over, wrote against and commented on, and not one of them printed in its columns until an American publis.h.i.+ng house, in London, in answer to the call for it, issued it in a pamphlet. Every American knows that had a speech of equal importance, relating to this country, been made in England, it would have been telegraphed to and have appeared in our journals, _entire_, within twenty-four hours after it had been made. Then, again, the enterprise of our own press is shown in its giving extracts, pro and con, of the opinions of the British press, so that the American reader feels that he is "posted," and may judge for himself; whereas, in the English papers, he gets only one side of the question, and a meagre allowance at that.

Murders, railroad accidents, steamboat explosions, riots, and suicides are the favorite extracts from the American press made by the London papers. The progress of great railroads, increase of great cities in size, and the progress of this country in industry, science, art, and manufactures, are only occasionally alluded to.

My national pride being touched at these omissions, I inquired the reason of them of a good-natured Englishman of my acquaintance one day.

"Well, the fact is, yah see, we don't care much about Americar h'yar, yah know--yah know--'cept when there's some deuced row, yah know, and then the Times tells us all about it, yah know."

And it is even so; the national pride is so intense, that the Englishman, as a general thing, seems to care very little for anything that is not English; his estimate of anything as good or bad is based upon its approach to or retreat from the British standard of excellence; his national vanity leads him to care very little about the progress or decline of any other country, so long as it does not immediately affect his own "tight little island." Many have, apparently, pictured in their minds a map of the world like that of the Chinese topographer, which gave their own country four fifths of the s.p.a.ce, carefully drawn, leaving the remainder a blank, as occupied by outside barbarians.

"But why," asked I of my good-natured friend, "does the Times give two columns of bets and horse-race matter, and only a dozen lines about the great Pacific Railroad?"

"Yaas, ah! the Darby, yah know,--British national sport--every Englishman knows about the Darby--couldn't make up a book without the Times, yah know. The Darby's right h'yar, and yah Pacific railway's three thousand miles off, yah know."

It is to be acknowledged there was a certain degree of force in this reasoning, but our American newspaper readers, who, from appearances, number as five to one compared with Englishmen, have been educated up to such a point of news-getting, that such an argument would fail to satisfy them. To hear some Englishmen talk, you would think the Times had been their swaddling-clothes in infancy, was their book of laws in manhood, and would be their winding-sheet at death.

And yet the Times, despite its great influence, is far exceeded in circulation by other papers in London--the London Telegraph, for instance, which, to an American, will seem in its general characteristics and enterprise the most like an American paper. It takes more pains to make itself a sheet for popular reading. Its editorials are not so heavy, either in subject or matter, as the Times, but more off-hand and easier digested. It seems to be _the_ paper of the middling cla.s.ses. In nearly every railroad station I stopped at in England a handsomely-painted sign-board, sometimes three and sometimes six feet square, informed me that the London Telegraph had the largest circulation in the world; and immediately under it we were informed, upon another sign of the same size, but another color, that the Evening Standard was the largest paper in the world. Besides these announcements on signs, we found them on posters of the same size all over London, wherever bills were posted, and also posted in other English cities--a style of advertising rather expensive, but hardly so efficacious as the columns of the newspaper.

One is struck by the difference between the American and English as a newspaper-reading people. In America, newspapers are seen everywhere; boys hawk them at every corner; they are sold at news-stands in the entrance hall of every hotel; newsmen pa.s.s through the cars with armfuls, at intervals, on every railroad line; half a dozen are taken in every hair-dresser's shop for the use of customers; and the great hotels have a reading-room with files from all the leading cities, so that a daily newspaper may be had in America, and is at hand at any and all times when the reader may wish it; but here in London I found it comparatively a matter of difficulty always to obtain a daily paper. The hotel where I lodged, which had some thirty or forty guests, "took in"

_one_ London Daily Times, a Manchester paper, and one other weekly. Of course the first person who got the Times never resigned it until he had read it through, and exhausted the patience of anybody else who undertook to wait for it. There was no news-stand near, nor in the hotel--"the porter could horder me a Times of the newsman, reg'lar, when he came round, if I wished it, as would be ready at breakfast."

Some of my English friends smiled, almost incredulously, at my a.s.sertion that our American business men very generally subscribed for from three to five daily papers, besides weeklies, and wondered "why they wanted to read the news over so many times," and were also astonished to know that American coachmen read newspapers while waiting for a fare, a porter while waiting for a job, or a handcart-man at his cart-stand, that they were always a prime necessity to pa.s.sengers in cars and omnibuses, and were studied, conned, and perused at almost every interval of business, and occupied no small portion of the leisure hours of all cla.s.ses of American citizens. The railroad stations in London are provided with good news-stands, where the traveller may always obtain the daily and weekly papers, and also a good supply of excellent light literature. My foreign experience, thus far, however, has strengthened my conviction that America is the land of newspapers.

Trying to give the British Museum a thorough examination is somewhat of a formidable undertaking; for it requires several visits to get even a superficial view of its valuable contents. The s.p.a.ce of seven acres of ground is occupied by the buildings, which cost over a million pounds sterling, while the curiosities, relics, antiquities, and library cannot be estimated in a money value. As an indication, however, of the value, I may enumerate some of its purchases of collections, &c.: the Charles Townley collection of Roman sculpture, purchased by government in 1805 for twenty thousand pounds, including Discobolus, n.o.ble busts of Homer, Pericles, Sophocles, &c.; the Elgin Marbles, purchased of Lord Elgin for thirty-five thousand pounds; the Phygalian Marbles, which cost nineteen thousand pounds; Portland Vase, eighteen hundred guineas; prints, in the collection of prints and engravings, costing from two hundred to five hundred guineas each. The enormous library has swallowed up vast private collections, besides the valuable ones that have been given to it, among them that of Sir Thomas Grenville, which cost fifty-four thousand pounds; George III.'s library, which was given to the government, and cost one hundred and thirty thousand pounds--an exceedingly rich and rare collection; the valuable collection of ma.n.u.scripts--the Cottonian Harleian, cost ten thousand pounds; Lansdowne, five thousand pounds; Burney, thirteen thousand pounds, &c. These are only a few of the prices of leading collections that I find set down in the different hand-books of the museum; but, as is well known, there are other articles of antiquity, historical relics, bibliographical curiosities, &c., for which perfectly fabulous prices have been paid, especially for any well-authenticated relics or ma.n.u.scripts relating to the early history of the country. Sometimes articles of this description find their way into a public auction sale, and there is a struggle between some wealthy virtuoso and the museum agent for its possession. But he must be a bold buyer, with a deep purse, to contend successfully against the British Museum, when it is decided that any article offered for sale ought to be added to its collection. The museum is divided into eleven different departments, viz.: printed books and ma.n.u.scripts, Oriental antiquities, Greek and Roman antiquities, British mediaeval antiquities, coins and medals, botany, prints and drawings, zoology, palaeontology, and mineralogy.

The library is that portion of the museum most read about by strangers, and the least seen by visitors, as they are only admitted into a very few of the rooms in which this enormous collection is contained. There are now seven hundred thousand volumes, and the number increases at the rate of about twenty thousand a year; and among some of the curiosities and literary treasures in this department, I will mention a few, which will give a faint indication of its incalculable value. There are seventeen hundred different editions of the Bible, some very rare and curious; an Arabic edition of the Koran, written in gold, eight hundred and sixty years ago; a collection of block books, printed from carved blocks of wood on one side of the leaf only, which was a style of bookmaking immediately preceding the art of printing.

We were shown specimens of the earliest productions of the printing press, some of which, for clearness and beauty of execution, are most remarkable. The Mazarine Bible, 1455, is very fine. Then we saw a copy of Cicero, printed by Fust and Schoeffer, in 1465. The first edition of the first Latin cla.s.sic printed, and one of the two books in which Greek type was used;--the press work of this was excellent. A Psalter, in Latin, in 1457, by Fust and Schoeffer, on vellum, and the first book printed in colors, the typography clear, and beautifully executed.

The first edition of Reynard the Fox, printed 1479. A splendid copy of Livy, printed on vellum, in 1469, for Pope Alexander VI., and the only copy on vellum known to exist;--this volume cost nine hundred pounds in 1815. The first edition of the first book printed in Greek characters, being a Greek Grammar, printed in Milan, in 1475. The first book in which catch-words were used. The first book in which the attempt was made to produce cheap books by compressing the matter, and reducing the size of the page, was a little copy of Virgil, issued in Venice in 1501; and the present price would be far from cheap. The first book printed in France, the first in Vienna, &c. "The Game and Playe of Chess," printed by Caxton, in Westminster Abbey, in 1474, and which was the first edition of the first book printed in England. Then there was the first edition of old Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, printed in 1476, by Caxton.

Cauntyrburye was the way they spelled it in his time. aesop's Fables, with curious old wood-cuts, printed by Caxton, in 1484. The first printed doc.u.ment relative to America, Columbus's letter, written eight months after his discovery, and printed in Rome in 1493. The first edition of Paradise Lost, and of Robinson Crusoe. And our eyes were made to ache by trying to read a "microscopic" edition of Horace, printed in the smallest type ever produced, and undecipherable except with a magnifying gla.s.s.

Besides these, and hundreds of other old books, enough to drive a bibliomaniac out of his remaining senses, were specimens of fine and sumptuous printing, some of which, in the fifteenth century, on vellum, were a little short of marvellous in execution, and unsurpa.s.sed by anything I ever saw in modern printing. An allegorical poem, in German, printed on the occasion of the marriage of Maximilian I., at Nuremberg, in 1517, was a perfect wonder of typographic art and beauty, and challenges the attention of every one, more especially those versed in typography, as a marvel of the art. I have not s.p.a.ce for enumeration of any of the wondrous specimens of beautiful illuminated works, printed on vellum and parchment, in colors undimmed by hundreds of years, and which the printer of to-day labors in vain to surpa.s.s. The purple and gold, the rich crimson and emerald green, that absolutely flash out on the pages of those exquisite volumes known as Books of Hours, printed in 1488, 1493, and thereabouts, are the most prodigal luxury of the art I ever laid my eyes upon; and the patience, labor, time, and care required to bring out lines, s.p.a.ces, and letters to such perfection must have been very great, to say nothing of the quality of ink that has held its brilliancy for more than three centuries and a half.

Next we have books tracing the rise and progress of ill.u.s.tration, and then a collection of books with autographs. In these last are some autographs worth having, as, for instance, the autograph of Martin Luther, in the first volume of a copy of the German Bible, which Bible was afterwards in the possession of Melanchthon, who wrote a long note on the fly-leaf of the second volume, signing it with his autograph; an autograph of Charles I. in a volume of almanacs for the year 1624; an autograph of Milton on a copy of Aratus's Phaenomena; that of Lord Bacon on a copy of Fulgentius; autograph of Katherine Parr, last wife of Henry VIII., in a French volume; and that of Ben Jonson in a presentation copy of his Volpone.

The library has an extensive collection of newspapers, the oldest being a Venetian Gazette, bearing the date of 1570.

The great reading-room of the library, where free admission to read is granted to any person over eighteen years of age who can procure a recommendation from a person of respectability, is a magnificent apartment. It is a great circular s.p.a.ce, containing forty-eight thousand superficial feet, covered by a dome one hundred and forty feet in diameter, and one hundred and six feet high. This room is open from nine A. M. to five or six P. M., and is always well lighted and warmed, and contains thirty-seven reading tables, with two or three exclusively for ladies. The floor is covered with a material which deadens the sound of footsteps, and no loud talking is permitted; so that every opportunity is afforded for quiet study. Quite a number were busily engaged, some with a large heap of volumes about them, evidently looking up authorities; others slowly and patiently transcribing or translating from some ancient black-letter volume before them; and still others quietly and comfortably enjoying the last new novel. There is s.p.a.ce afforded for three hundred readers, and in the centre of the room, on shelves, are catalogues of the books and ma.n.u.scripts contained in the library. Close at hand, running round the apartment, are shelves containing books of reference, or "lifts of the lazy," such as dictionaries, encyclopaedias, &c., which readers are allowed to take from the shelves themselves. These form of themselves a library of twenty thousand volumes. For other books the reader fills out a card, and hands it to one of the attendants, who sends for it by others, who fetch it from its near or distant shelf.

The catalogue of the library is not finished, and there is a saying that the man is not living who will see it finished, the regular additions and occasional bequests serving to keep it in a perpetually unfinished condition. The most noted of the bequests are those presented by Right Hon. Thomas Grenville and George III. The former donor, whose gift was twenty thousand two hundred and forty volumes, worth over fifty thousand pounds, bequeathed his library to the nation as an act of justice, saying in his will that the greater part of it had been purchased from the profits of a sinecure office, and he acknowledged the obligation to the public by giving it to the museum for public use. The library of George III. contained eighty thousand volumes, and is kept in a gallery built expressly to hold it.

The Egyptian Galleries contain an endless collection of antiquities from that ancient land. From Memphis there are old monuments, fragments of statues, slabs with innumerable hieroglyphics, while old Thebes, the capital of ancient Egypt, seems to have been ransacked to have furnished slabs, stones, carvings, fragments of monuments, hieroglyphical inscriptions, and sarcophagi. In these galleries we saw the granite statue of Rameses II., the colossal granite head and shoulders from the Memnonium at Thebes; the head of a colossal ram from an avenue of them which leads up to the gateway of one of the great palaces at Karnak; here were two granite lions from Nubia; a colossal head brought from Karnak by Belzoni; and heaps of carved plunder stolen from old Egypt by British travellers and the British government; mummies, articles taken from mummy pits, ornaments, vases, Egyptian papyri, monuments cut by chisels two thousand years before Christ; implements the very use of which can now only be surmised; carvings of scenes in domestic life that are guessed at, and of battles, feasts, sieges, and triumphs, of which no other record exists--a wonder to the curious, and a not yet solved problem to the scholar.

The a.s.syrian Galleries, with their wealth of antiquities from ancient Nineveh, brought princ.i.p.ally by Mr. Layard, are very interesting. Here we may study the ba.s.s-relief from Sennacherib's palace, and the hieroglyphics on a monument to Sardanapalus, and ba.s.s-reliefs of the battles and sieges of his reign; the best specimens of a.s.syrian sculpture, gla.s.s, ivory, and bronze ornaments, mosaics, seals, obelisks, and statues, the dates of which are from seven to eight hundred years before the Christian era. Think of being shown a fragment of an inscription relating to Nebuchadnezzar, and another of Darius I., a ba.s.s-relief of Sardanapalus the Great, the writing implements of the ancient Egyptians, the harps, flutes, and cymbals, and the very dolls with which their children played three thousand years ago!

The lover of Roman and Grecian antiquities may enjoy himself to his heart's content in the Roman and Grecian Galleries, where ancient sculptures by artists whose names have perished, though their works still challenge admiration, will attract the attention. In these galleries the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of mythology are liberally represented--the Townley Venus, Discobolus (quoit-thrower), elegant bust of Apollo, heads and busts of n.o.ble Greeks and Romans, and the celebrated marble bust, Clytie; that exquisitely-cut head rising above the bust, which springs from a half-unfolded flower.

The Elgin Marbles are in two rooms, known as the Elgin Rooms. These marble sculptures were obtained by the Earl of Elgin, in 1802, while he was the British amba.s.sador at Constantinople, the sultan granting him a firman to remove from Athens whatever monuments he might wish. He accordingly stripped from the Parthenon huge slabs of ba.s.s-reliefs, marble figures, and ornamental portions of that n.o.ble building.

Whatever may be said of this desecration of the Athenian temple, it is altogether probable that these world-renowned sculptures and most splendid specimens of Grecian art are better preserved here, and of more service to the world, than they would have been if suffered to remain in the ruin of the temple. The beauty of these sculptures, notwithstanding the dilapidated and shattered condition of some of them, shows in what perfection the art flourished when they were executed, and the figures are models yet unsurpa.s.sed among artists of our own time.