names, condition, and places of abode, as also the day and hour at which they desired to be admitted. Their applications were written down in a register, which was submitted every evening to the librarian or secretary in attendance. If this official, judging from the condition and ostensible character of an applicant, deemed him eligible for admittance, he directed the porter to give him a ticket on the following day. Thus the candidate for admission was compelled to make two visits, before he could learn whether it was the gracious will of a librarian or secretary that he should be allowed the privilege of inspecting Sir Hans Sloane's curiosities. If successful, his trouble did not end when he obtained the ticket; for it was provided by the trustees that no more than ten tickets should be given out for each hour of admittance. Accordingly, every morning on which the museum was accessible, the porter received a company of ten ticket-holders at nine o'clock, ushered them into a waiting-room "till the hour of seeing the museum had come," to quote the words of the trustees. This party was divided into two groups of five persons, one being placed under the direction of the under-librarian, and the other under that of the assistant in each department. Thus attended, the companies traversed the galleries; and, on a signal being given by the tinkling of a bell, they passed from one department of the collection into another :-an hour being the utmost time allowed for the inspection of one department. This system calls to mind the dragooning practised in Westminster Abbey, under the command of the gallant vergers, to the annoyance of leisurely visitors, and of ardent but not active archæologists. Sometimes, when public curiosity was particularly excited, the number of respectable applicants for admission to the museum exceeded the limit of the

prescribed issue. In these cases, tickets were given for remote days; and thus, at times, when the lists were heavy, it must have been impossible for a passing visitor in London to get within the gateway of Montague House. In these old regulations the trustees provided also, that when any person, having obtained tickets, was prevented from making use of them at the appointed time, he was to send them back to the porter, in order "that other persons wanting to see the museum might not be excluded." Three hours was the limit of the time any company might spend in the museum; and those who were so unreasonable or inquisitive as to be desirous of visiting the museum more than once, might apply for tickets a second time "provided that no person had tickets at the same time for more than one." The names of those persons who, in the course of a visit, wilfully transgressed any of the rules laid down by the trustees, were written in a register, and the porter was directed not to issue tickets to them again.

These regulations secured the exclusive attendance of the upper classes. The libraries were hoarded for the particular enjoyment of the worm, whose feast was only at rare intervals disturbed by some student regardless of difficulties. To the poor, worn, unheeded authors of those days, serenely starving in garrets, assuredly the British Museum must have been as impenetrable as a Bastille. We imagine the prim under-librarian glancing with a supercilious expression upon the names and addresses of many poor, aspiring, honourable men-men, whose "condition," to use the phrase of the trustees, bespoke not the gentility of that vulgar age. In those days the weaver and the carpenter would as soon have contemplated a visit to St. James's Palace as have hoped for an admission ticket to the national museum.

These mean precautions of the last century, contrast happily with the enlightened liberty of this. Crowds of all ranks and conditions besiege the doors of the British Museum, especially in holiday times, yet the skeleton of the elephant is spotless, and the bottled rattlesnakes continue to pickle in peace. The Elgin marbles have suffered no abatement of their marvellous beauties; and the coat of the cameleopard is without a blemish. The Yorkshireman has his unrestrained stare at Sesostris; the undertaker spends his holiday over the mummies, and no official suppresses his professional objections to the coffins. The weaver observes the looms of the olden time: the soldier compares the Indian's blunt instrument with his own keen and deadly bayonet. The poor needlewoman enjoys her laugh at the rude sewinginstruments of barbarous tribes: the stone-mason perhaps compares his tombs with the sarcophagi of ancient masters. No attendant is deputed to dog the heels of five visitors and to watch them with the cold eye of a gaoler; no bell warns the company from one spot to another: all is open-free!

Through the bright new galleries of Sir Robert Smirke, crowded with the natural productions of every clime, the printed thoughts of the greatest and best men, the marvellous art of forgotten ages, and the poor barbarisms of savage life, we propose to conduct the visitor, in

FOUR DISTINCT VISITS.

VISIT THE FIRST.

ON arriving in front of the British Museum for the first

time, the visitor will not fail to notice the Grecian Ionic façade, ornamented with forty-four columns, and rising at its extreme point to the height of sixty-six feet. The sculpture which decorates the tympanum of the portico is the work of Sir Richard Westmacott, and is an allegorical representation of the progress of civilisation. The spiritual influences that have successively worked upon the savage natures of the dark ages, have here distinct types. Religion tames the savage; Paganism makes him a crouching sensualist; the Egyptian sees a God in the stars of heaven; and then the mathematician, the musician, the poet, and the painter set to work, and these prophets of mysterious beauties realise civilised mankind. The visitor enters the museum, after ascending a noble flight of steps, by a massive carved oak door, into a fine entrance hall, the ceiling of which is highly coloured, and the general decoration of which is Grecian Ionic. Here he will observe, in addition to one or two of the Nineveh sculptures, at once, three statues: one of the aristocratic lady sculptor, the Honourable Mrs. Damer; Chantrey's statue of Sir Joseph Banks; and Roubillac's study of Shakspeare, presented to the museum by David Garrick. Before entering the galleries of the museum the visitor should observe, that the building faces the four points of the compass, and that the façade forms the southern line. This observation will facilitate a careful and

regular examination of the interior. Branching westward from the entrance hall, then eastward to the gallery, is a noble flight of seventy steps, the walls of the staircase being richly inlaid with marble. Having ascended this staircase, the visitor's attention is at once arrested by two stuffed giraffes-the giraffe of North Africa, and the giraffe of South Africa, given to the museum by the late Earl of Derby. These striking zoological specimens at once introduce the visitor to

THE SOUTHERN (CENTRAL) ZOOLOGICAL
ROOM,

which is devoted, together with the next room to the east, to Hoofed Animals. Looking eastward from the western side of the room he will observe at once that his way lies down a passage, marked on either side by formidable zoological specimens, which he would rather meet, with their present anatomy of hay, than in their natural condition. In the first room, near the giraffes, stand the walrus of the North Sea; the African rhinoceros; and the Manilla buffalo. He will next observe, that the walls of the room are lined with glass cases, about twelve feet in height, and that in these cases various stuffed animals are grouped. The groups in this room include the varieties of the Antelope, Sheep, and Goats. Grouped together in two or three cases, are the sable and other antelopes from the Cape of Good Hope; the algazelle, and the addax and its young from North Africa; the sing-sing, and the koba from Western Africa; the sassaybi; the chamois of the Alps-the subject of many a stirring mountain song; the goats of North Africa; the strange Siberian ibex ; the grue and gorgon from the Cape; varieties of the domestic goat, and the beautiful Cashmere goat. Here