their wants; and the grandest and best
appointed public reading-room in the world
will become an even greater boon than it
is to men of letters, as the guide books and
other facilities for consulting its treasures
increase. It is pleasant to think of " the
Museum Flea," and the many other abuses
of the old reading-room, as utterly
extirpated; and of most of the strikingly
trenchant evidence given by Mr. Carlyle
as obsolete. Idle loungers still take up
the room which might be more profitably
occupied by diligent workers; but it seldom
happens that any of these last are unable
to obtain a seat, and the imbecile who was
sent every day to the reading-room by pious
relatives, wishing to keep him out of harm's
way, has, we would fain hope, no representatives
in our day. Not that there are not
plenty of eccentric people always to be seen
in the reading-room. The untidy, the
unkempt, the unwashed, the chattering, the
vacuous of both sexes find their way there;
and that the trustees had to remonstrate,
not very long ago, upon the parasitically
animated condition of a reader's coat, and out
of deference to his fellow-readers, to exclude
him till it was purified, seems to prove that
the keeper of printed books does not err
on the side of exclusiveness in the conditions
under which he grants tickets for
the library.

The man of education is thoroughly
provided for at the British Museum. It
addresses itself to his tastes and instincts
throughout; and though the terrible
crowding and confusion of the various
collections jars upon his sense of fitness,
he is generally able to find what he wants,
and knows that a staff of accomplished,
courteous, and specially qualified gentlemen
will delight in guiding him. But to
such visitors as Ham and his fellows
the Museum is an appalling enigma; the
solution of which is an impossibility. They
understand not a tittle of what they see;
there is nothing in any of the rooms they
wander through so listlessly, to make the
dry bones live; and upon this class the
great national treasure-house is effecting
a minimum of good. It is, of course,
pleasant to learn from Mr. Walpole, that a
hundred thousand more visitors entered the
Museum during the last twelve months than
was the case four years since, but the
satisfaction is greatly modified when the nature
of their inspection and the tenor of their
remarks are known. In the opinion of
those best capable, from opportunities of
observation, of judging, the British Museum
is neither appreciated nor understood by
the average visitor, and repeated visits of
inspection have led us to the same conclusion.
There is a manifest want of sympathy with
the wants and wishes of the taxpayer who
needs improvement most, and to whom the
Museum should be a national elevator.

But let us accompany poor Joe and
his friends up the principal staircase and
to the chamber where our old friend the
stuffed giraffe rears his graceful head;
where the walrus exhibits his vast bulk;
and full-grown gorillas from the Gaboon
stare with fixed and rigid ugliness at all
comers. There is more animation here
and in the room adjoining than we found
down-stairs. The attendant, who stands
wand in hand, is not unfrequently
appealed to for information, and a couple
of seafaring men have a group of
listeners round them, while they relate
anecdotes of an extremely marvellous
character concerning their own personal
adventures with gorillas. These two sailors
supply the element of human interest to
the show, and it is instructive to mark the
faces near them light up as after each story
their owners turn again to the central case
to examine the paws, arms, and mouths
of the hideous creatures within it. When
these sailors depart, not without our
receiving a shrewd and humorously
interrogative glance from one of them, as if to
gauge the extent of our credulity, the
sight-seers become dull. The antelopes are
not popular. Crowded together like toy-
animals shut up in a Noah's Ark, they
present a confused medley of heads and
horns, legs and tails, and glass eyes. Ham
regards their quarters and haunches with
an evidently professional eye, and has
"heerd they is good eating though stringy;"
Joe reads from the green guide-book
troublously, that " antelopes are beasts
with hollow horns, and chew the cud,"
a statement which provokes the sallow
tailor into contradiction and querulousness.
"They must put something in the
book" he supposes, captiously; "though
for his part he doesn't see why the 'orns
must be hollow at all." Mildly reminded
that the horn of the domestic cow is
occasionally turned to use as a drinking vessel,
and that there is nothing daringly
unreasonable in the supposition that the horns
of antelopes are similarly formed, he gives
a discontented grunt and wanders into the
next room alone. Here are some foreign
excursionists who are profoundly gratified
with the proboscis monkey; one of the