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Alexander Campbell
Letters from Europe--No. XVIII (1847-1848)

 

FROM

THE

MILLENNIAL HARBINGER.

SERIES III.

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VOL. IV. B E T H A N Y, DECEMBER, 1847. NO. XII.
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LETTERS FROM EUROPE--No. XVIII.

      My dear Clarinda--HAVING been, by the force of circumstances, compelled to advert to the scenes of my persecutions in Scotland, and consequently, for the time being, to break in upon the method I had proposed to myself in giving regular continuous notes of my tour, I will now resume my original plan, and proceed to notice in order those objects of public interest which claimed my attention in England, Scotland, and Ireland. I have only to add on the subject of the notices taken of my treatment in Scotland, that the religious press of that country exhibited an unusual want of candor in not giving to the public an impartial and correct statement of my position in the affair, as well as of my views on the subject of slavery. The only candid and veracious notice which I saw in any of the ecclesiastic or abolitionist periodicals, was that of the Jersey "Christian Record," of September 20th, which you have seen in my last letter.

      The Glasgow "Christian News," though prevailed upon to publish some communications from me, either preceded or succeeded them with such misrepresentations, suppressions, or distortions of the premises and facts, as to neutralize or impair their influence. Whatever could be said without fear of palpable exposure or of public indignation, to sustain the Anti-Slavery Society, and to impair my reputation either for correct views or Christian principles, was either said or insinuated in a cowardly and equivocal manner. To the shame of the religious press in Scotland, be it spoken and published in America, not one partizan paper had either the courage or magnanimity to tender to me its columns, or even to allow me to appear in my own proper character. If I appeared at all before their readers, it was with all the blemish and deformity of insinuation and abuse which they could heap upon me. But they have their reward; and I can honestly say I envy them not. When I obtain information as to the result of the appeal to the Lords in Bank, which will be announced to me sometime in December, I will again introduce the subject: meantime I shall return to London and pay a short visit to the British Museum.

      This immense quadrangular building, whose colonnaded front, consisting of forty-four columns of the Grecian Ionic order, extends full three hundred and seventy feet, and contains within it materials for thought and reflection on the wonders of Nature and of Art, which might employ the genius of the greatest philosopher and [686] amateur of the works of God and of man, for at least one hundred years. Its front view is most imposingly grand. Its forty-four columns, five feet in diameter at the bottom, stand upon a stylobate over five feet high, and tower some forty-five feet above, giving with the entablature of the colonnade a height of more than sixty-six feet.

      Its front is not yet finished, and one of its quadrangles is still in progress. Though not yet one hundred years old, this grand edifice contains immense collections of ethnographical curiosities, mammalia, minerals, organic remains, Roman sepulchral antiquities, Greek sculptures, Egyptian antiquities of all sorts, immense libraries of manuscripts and books of all languages, sciences, and arts, &c. &c. The library, it is said, now contains 600,000 volumes.

      We may say that this grand national institute began with the will of one individual. Sir Hans Sloane, a physician of much reputation, who, in addition to a large library, had collected many interesting objects of natural history as well as many works of art.--These he offered on certain conditions to Parliament, in the time of George II., about the middle of the last century. Parliament accepted the conditions, ordered the purchase of these, and also of the Harlein Library of Manuscripts, and placed with these the Cottonian Library, given to the government for public good, during the reign of William III., and in A.D. 1754 bought for these the Montague House in Great Russell Street. Thus commenced the collections which in their immense aggregate now constitute the British Museum.

      Early in the present century, extensive importations from Alexandria of all manner of Egyptian monuments and antiquities, together with the purchase of the Townley Marbles in 1805, suggested the necessity of a larger edifice. But the very magnificent donation of George IV., who presented to the nation the library collected by his father during his sixty years reign, constrained government to erect a grand Museum, three sides of which are now completed, and the fourth, or western quadrangle, is now in progress.

      I can only give you a mere synopsis of its numerous and various rich treasures. After ascending by a flight of stone steps at the foot of the Portico, one hundred and twenty-five feet wide, terminating in pedestals to receive magnificent groups of sculpture, we enter a hall 62 feet by 51, and 24 feet high. At the top of a splendid staircase we enter the suite of rooms set apart to Natural History. The Mammalia Saloon contains two series of animals, placed in two galleries. Of these there are not less than 166 cases. [687] 1st class. Rapacious beasts, beginning with the cat kind, at the head of which stands the South African lion, descending to the booted cat of the Cape of Good Hope, and the wild cats of Europe and Central America. There are thirty-one cases of rapacious animals, ending with the opossums of America and the eared seals of the African Capes.

      Next come the hoofed beasts, from the yac ox of Thibet down to the sloth of South America. Of these there are twenty-one cases. The varieties of antelopes, goats, sheep, and deer, to say nothing of other families, develope what varieties soil, climate, and food can effect in one and the same original species of animals.

      On the walls are 35 cases of raptorial birds. These are divided into two departments--the diurnal raptorial and the nocturnal raptorial birds. Of the last there are but five cases--beginning with the hawk-owls, as the Canada owl, and ending with our barn owls.

      Of perching birds there are five divisions. These are the wide-gaped perching birds; as the goat-suckers, swallows, Javan night-bird; and 2d, the Tenuirostral--such as the hoopers, sun-birds, humming-birds, honey-eaters, &c. The Conirostral--such as crows, jays, thrushes, finches, larks, &c. &c. The Scansorial--of these there are many divisions; parrots, cuckoos of all countries, woodpeckers, &c. Of these there are some ten cases.

      Next to these are the Gallinaceous--embracing pigeons of all countries, turtles, doves, pheasants, peacocks, turkeys, partridges, grouse, &c; in all more than twenty cases.

      Then come the wading and the web-footed birds--beginning with ostriches, dodos, cranes, plovers, storks, ibises, turnstones, coursers, &c. Then come the flamingos, passing through geese, swans, ducks, sea-parrots, gulls, pelicans, and tropic birds, more than I can enumerate.

      Next to these are arranged, in classic style, eggs of numerous families of birds, with some indications of the species to which they belong. In proximity to these are thirty tables of shells, beginning with molluscous univalves of the gasteropodous genus, and proceeding through the strombs with their pink pearls; the murices, with their angular or gadrooned edges; the rock shells, with their beautifully ornamented foliaceous, curled, and spinous protuberances; the cone shells, with the gloria Maris, from the Philippines. Then come the spindle, the turnip, the helmet species, &c., &c., down to the land shells, the fresh water shells, and the worm shells. After these the bivalves, not yet fully assorted and arranged, extending [688] from the lamp shells down to the Ammonites and Nautili, complete the department of conchology.

      To the conchologist the scientific classification of shells, and to the ornithologist the proper arrangement of birds, exhibited here, cannot fail to be both useful and interesting. They have been so far perfected by amateurs and masters in these sciences, that, to students, a few hours here are worth as many weeks without these aids in forming comprehensive views of these very grand and beautiful departments of Nature. Few persons in the private walks of life, and but few even of those who have access to ordinary cabinets and collections in ornithology and conchology, can form any adequate idea of the number, variety, and riches of these kingdoms of Nature in furnishing materials of thought, admiration, and piety to those properly educated in the word and works of God. In surveying these demonstrations of ingenious designs and fine taste, I am less disposed to award so much originality to man in either science or art, useful or ornamental, as I have sometimes been disposed to allow to him. I see the archetype of much that we admired in the arts and contrivances of men in these works of God. Man has copied much more from Nature than any one believes. I see that many of the implements of industry in numerous human vocations, and many of the figures and decorations of art, have been borrowed from the fowls of the air, the fish of the sea, and especially from such of them as carry with them their dwellings and their furniture.

      Passing along the Eastern Zoological Gallery, in five compartments stand some 120 portraits; amongst which the most remarkable is that of Mary Davies, an inhabitant of Great Sanghall, Cheshire, aged 74. "At the age of 28 an excrescence grew upon her head like a wen, which continued 30 years, and then grew into two horns, one of which the profile represents."

      On entering the Northern Zoological Rooms, in the wall cases are exhibited the skulls of the larger mammalia, illustrative of species and genera; and in table cases the tubes of annulose animals; but in the second room we are at once introduced into the company of reptiles, radiated animals, sea eggs, sea stars, lizards, snakes, serpents both poisonous and harmless, tortoises, turtles, terrapins, crocodiles, Batrachian animals, toads, frogs, efts, and encrinites.

      In the third room we find the handed mammalia--apes, monkeys, baboons, thumbless monkeys, spider monkeys, night apes. Then the glirine mammalia, rising from the rat and the beaver to the [689] flying squirrel, the porcupine, the souslicks, to the golden rats of Africa. Next to these stand the table cases, crowded with corals, star corals, madrepores, the red coral of the Mediterranean, gorgonai, cellepores, and horney sea weeds, &c. &c.

      In the fourth room, besides cabinets of crustacea, are twenty-six cases of fish to which I paid but little attention, crowded and overwhelmed as my mind was with the innumerable variety of animated nature around me. Twelve tables of insects also contended for their place in the animal kingdom, and even the sponges and molluscenes, and radiated animals contended for their rights.

      Rooms on the north side of the north wing are appropriated to mineralogical collections. Sixty cases display native iron, meteoric stones, copper, silver, sulphurets, oxides, aluminates, quartz, silicates, carbonates, sulphates, chlorides, fluorides, &c. &c.

      Of the Galleries of Antiquities I can say little. In the Lycian Room are tombs, bas-reliefs, statues, sarcophagi. In the Greek Central Saloon are Greek and Roman sculptures, urns, heads, busts, statues, &c. &c. In the Elgin Saloon, in the Gallery of Antiquities, are no less than 388 specimens of Greek sculpture.

      But the Egyptian Saloon surpasses all description, containing no less than 600 specimens of Egyptian antiquities. Many of the articles deposited here were collected by the French in Egypt, and when Alexandria capitulated, November, 1801, they fell into the possession of the English. They were, in 1820, by order of George III., sent to the British Museum.

      Egyptian antiquities growing every year more and more interesting, I paid more attention to this rare and large collection than to any thing in the Museum. Being curious to note the following particulars: 1st. the subject; 2d. the material of which it was composed, or upon which it was placed; 3d. the age of it; and 4th. the design or object proposed, I made the following notes and observations:--The subjects were the heads of animals worshipped, and sometimes the whole animal--such as a lion couchant, a ram's head, a gryphon or hawk-headed sphinx, emblem of the divinity Muntra; heads and statues of Rameses II. or III.; colossal statues of Amenophes, or Memnon, a monarch of the 18th dynasty; statues innumerable of kings, queens, scribes, priests, military commanders; very many statues of Pasht, the goddess, a celebrated divinity in Egypt; sarcophagi--these are numerous; coffins; sepulchral tablets--of these there are about 200 in all--one third of all the antiquities in the Museum.

      Sepulchral altars are also numerous. Sepulchral urns, sepulchral [690] shrines, and sepulchral columns, every where attest the Egyptian respect and devotion to the dead. Altars are also numerous--small altars for libations. These, with sepulchral tablets, are often dedicated to the gods of Egypt, amongst whom we frequently see associated Osiris, Isis, Horus. Rameses is often seen adoring Osiris, Isis, and Horus. While altars and tablets are dedicated to Anubis, Socharis, Rashpu, Ra, &c. much the greater part are dedicated to Osiris. We sometimes find Christian sepulchral altars with Greek inscriptions. We also find fish, animals of various kinds--serpents, frequently their heads and parts of their bodies standing in sculptured majesty; ravenous birds and animals, sphinxes, parts of crocodiles.

      The materials of which they are composed are calcareous stone; red, black, and grey granite; white stone, white marble; basalt, dark and green; sandstone; arragonite; brownish breccia; nummulite, limestone, lyenite. But of these the calcareous stone is by far most common--next to it the different kinds of granite, and next the basalt. There are but very few on other materials.

      They are generally from the 12th to the 30th dynasty of their kings; but the greater part are from the 18th to the 26th dynasty. Their object seems to be devotional--sacred to their gods, and to the memory of their distinguished kings, dignitaries, and ancestors.

      But yet we have another class of Egyptian antiquities--we have the Egyptian Room, with its ten cases of divinities and sacred animals. We have wooden figures dug out of their tombs. We have their bronze offerings--objects of private devotion--porcelain and small figures of stone, perforated for net-work and for necklaces of mummies. First of their divinities stands Amen, or Amouenna, the Egyptian Jupiter on his throne, with his cynocephali and lotus sceptre. On his rear stands Amoun, between Rhons and Joh, another deity, in standstone, 7¼ feet high.

      Of these gods we have many antique figures. Thoth, or Thout, walking in a boat; Rhem, the Pan of the Egyptians, and many others too tedious to tell. We have Net, or Neith, their Minerva; Sate, or Seti, their Juno. We have them in every position, and in every monstrous combination; their Chous, or Hercules, with a lunar disk--a mystic lock of hair; another standing on two crocodiles, with a jackall's and a ram's head, the back formed by the body and tail of a hawk; Athor, the Egyptian Venus, with head overshadowed by a vulture supporting the disk and horns: his body is a shrine placed upon a wheel of eight spokes, with a figure of her godship dancing. Athor stands cow-headed, with disk and plumes; [691] Pasht, the Diana, of Egypt, cat-headed, standing in a striated garment, with an aegis in her left hand. Again, we have this divinity standing, human and hawk-headed, holding two swords, reeds, or feathers, two hands passing from the mouth to the shoulders.--Many of these are standing in porcelain, green, blue, grey, variegated. Taur, hippotamus, standing on its hind legs, with pendent arms, and breasts of a female, back covered with the tail of a crocodile; a Pharaoh too, standing, having on his forehead a place for the Uraeus.

      We have given but a specimen of these Egyptian superstitions and Pagan idolatries. Hundreds of these, and other fancies equally gross and humiliating, are found in these rooms, of which it would be not only tedious but disgusting either to write or speak.

      The sacred animals of Egypt are as curious, imaginative, and barbarous as their deities. Among their sainted quadrupeds stand conspicuous the jackall, cynocephalus, or dog-headed baboon, decorated with a lunar disk; a wolf, a shrew mouse, an apis, and an ibex on one knee; a gazelle and an ibex kneeling; lions couchant, a lion and a bull in one figure, sphinxes, monkeys, cats, rams, swine, hares, dogs, cows, mystic animals, head and neck of a viper and the body of a quadruped.

      Household furniture and other large objects: stools inlaid with ivory, four-footed and three-footed; high-backed chairs, on lion-footed legs; others double-backed, with seats of platted cord; concave seats, formed of four flat bars; cushions, stuffed with feathers of water fowl; three-legged tables or stands; model of a house, of a granary and yard, with a covered shed, in which a man is seated; in the yard a female making bread. There are also vases, ampullae, mirrors, combs, shoes and sandals, some with round and some with peaked toes; vases of all shapes and sizes; some conical, others resembling fruits, fish, lambs, gourds, &c.; spoons, chests, lamps, cups, baskets, knives, tools, nails; musical instruments, &c.

      To notice in detail a hundred other cases filled with various furniture, agricultural implements, weapons, fragments of tombs, coffins, boards, inscriptions, instruments of writing, painting, play-things, tools, weaving tools, mummies, animal and human; sepulchral ornaments, amulets, &c. &c., would be to write a volume; and but for the guide furnished us in making our too hasty tour through this miniature world, I could not, from either my notes or my recollections, have given so much as I have done with an accuracy to be relied on.

      I shall only add a few remarks on this grand national Museum, [692] and dismiss the subject. But on opening another page of my memoranda I discover, to me, one of the most interesting departments of this grand repository of some of the remains of worlds passed away. There is the collection of organic remains in room first, wholly pretermitted. In this, too, because of its relation to the science of geology, I took more interest than in any of the treasures of the rooms already noted. I must state a few of its more prominent fossil treasures, vegetable and animal. And, first, of the vegetable.

      These are not so valuable as the animal. There are in Room 1st fossils of submerged Algae, Tucoides, Conservites, &c· On some coal slate, in the same case, are displayed very striking impressions of plants with verticillated leaves, usually called asterophyllites annularia, &c. There are besides these some non-descripts, whose nature is yet mysterious.

      There are also calamites, of the species Equiseta. These come from the rocks of the coal formation of the highest antiquity. Ferns (filices) impressions on the clay state of the carboniferous strata, and some specimens of the Lepedodendron. There are also perfect specimens of the Clatharia Lyellii, from the Welden, with some remains of real Palmae. There are many beautiful specimens of polished fossil wood, found in the red sandstone formations of Saxony.

      Greenfield, Massachusetts, has contributed some recent red sandstone formations, covered with very singular impressions of various dimensions, resembling the feet of birds, called Ornithichnites.--There are sundry specimens in Room 2d, not yet arranged.

      In Rooms 3d and 4th are some very interesting osseous remains of reptiles. There are the Batrachian, the Chelonian, and Emydosaurian reptiles. The gigantic Salamander, of Scheuchzer's dissertation, belongs to the Batrachian race, first named. One whole case is filled with the bones of the Iquanodon. In these rooms are arranged the order Enaliosauria, or Sea Lizard, of which the genera Plesiosaurus and Ichthyosaurus are principal types. These, together with the casts of the Deinotherium, a most gigantic quadruped, found at Eppelsheim, including those of the Megatherium, are amongst the greatest curiosities in this Museum.

      In contemplating these huge lizards, inhabitants of climes that have been, but are not, and the casts of those huge animals already named, to which may be added the skeleton of the American Mastodon, we cannot but assent to the revelations of geology, and admit those deductions which assert the long series of ages that passed [693] away during the preparation of the materials of our terraqueous domicil, which were at the commencement of the present epoch, in a single week, new-modified, developed, and replenished for the comfortable residence of man.

      I fear that these details will he rather tiresome than edifying to yourself and others. My apology for them is the large space that Egypt holds in sacred and profane history--indeed, in the history of the literature, science, art, and religion of the world. It was once the greatest, the most learned, and the most admired nation in the world. The place which it occupies in the Louvre in Paris, and in the British Museum, are in good keeping with the large space which it once occupied in the esteem and admiration of mankind.

      In the arts of architecture, sculpture, painting--in mathematics, astronomy, and hieroglyphics--in all that pertains to the science of numbers, magnitude, and proportion, they stand out upon the canvass of time the most prominent and remarkable people of all antiquity. Even the present remains of their ancient greatness are still the wonder and the admiration of the most enlightened of the human race. The impression made by them on the family of Abraham--the long continuance of the charms of their greatness--the bewitchery of their arts and idolatries on that wonderful people, are amongst the most striking evidences of their former grandeur and magnificence, and of the transcendent influence of national greatness which can be adduced; indeed, they are altogether unparalleled in the history of the world.

      So early as the Pyramids of the 4th dynasty, beyond which we know little or nothing of architectural art, and have no reliable record, the Egyptians had attained a degree of perfection which has long been, and yet is, the wonder of the world. In these most ancient pyramids our present distinguished architects discover evidences of an art exhibiting forms of vast magnitude and of the most delicate and minute finish. They see in the colossal proportions and magnificence of their plans the primordial elements of classic taste and of those great achievements which were the pride of Greece and Rome. In the Egyptian columns of the 12th dynasty they see the Doric architecture in embryo developement, and the capitals of the columns of the 18th dynasty are seen breaking forth in the lotus buds and flowers with which the architects of Egypt adorned their first efforts.

      Their temples were rectangular, with gateways and doors tapering to their summit. Their walls were covered with sculpture, and their approaches were filled with sphinxes or divinities. Both [694] temples and sepulchres were frequently cut out of solid rock, having their sides adorned with paintings and sculpture, indicative of events religious or historical, as it happened to suit their taste. In sculpture they were most pleased with high relief, and painted all their works, whether of architecture or sculpture, with simple colors--white, black, red, blue, or yellow, as might please their taste.

      "The churches" called St. Paul's, St. Peters, and St. Germain's, are much more Egyptian than Christian, so far as we can learn from the British Museum, and from what is visible to those who visit them. In many respects we may be indebted to Egypt for her lessons in husbandry, general agriculture, architecture, sculpture, and painting; but certainly she is no model for us either in the object, the manner, or the places of Christian worship. When we look at her idols and her idolatries, but a meagre portion of which is found even in this most extensive and varied collection, we can see nothing in them indicative of any claim she can have upon our admiration or imitation. On the contrary, she exhibits more than any other nation the need of a divine revelation. Egypt was at best the hot-bed of idols and idolatries, and therefore teaches a lesson which almost all mankind are slow to learn--that the most gigantic strides and advances in science and learning, and in all arts both useful and ornamental, are quite possible, without a single perception of a spiritual system or a spiritual religion. Men have measured the heavens a-la-mode de La Place, or according to the pyramidal philosophers of Egypt: they have erected pyramids of art, temples, altars, and divinities; still they have worshipped a crocodile, a sphinx, a gryphon, a frog, an onion, or a fly.

      We ought not, then, to imagine that there is any necessary connexion between genius and religion, the fine arts and morality, philosophy and theology, national greatness and national goodness. There may be a good taste without good sense, a religion without piety, and a refinement without morality. But true piety and true humanity will always impart true dignity and true happiness to their possessor.

  In much affection, your father,
A. CAMPBELL.      

 

[The Millennial Harbinger, Third Series, 4 (December 1847): 686-695.]


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