British Museum
a national collection of science, literature and the arts. It is one of the attractive features of London. The present building occupies the site of the old Montague House mentioned in English literature. It is built in the form of a hollow square, with two-story galleries and a basement. The principal front, a block in length, faces Russell Street and is adorned with a colonnade of forty-four Ionic columns. The collections were begun with a gift of coins, antiquities, and books from Sir Hans Sloane in 1753. By act of Parliament a copy of every newspaper, book, pamphlet, or sheet of music copyrighted in the Empire is forwarded to the Museum. In 1857 it was found necessary to fill the interior of the square with a library building. A fine reading room in the center under a circular dome is within easy access of 2,500,000 printed volumes and many thousand priceless manuscripts. Desks are provided for 300 readers--altogether the greatest reading room in the world for scholars. Catalogs are at hand and attendants bring whatever is desired. New books are coming in at the rate of 60,000 a year. There are forty-three miles of shelves. The building cost nearly $4,000,000. The library is the greatest in the world. The most valuable single volume is a Mazarin Bible, the first book printed with movable type.
The entire contents of the Museum are arranged in eight departments in the care of a staff of 320 persons. The management is in the hands of forty-eight trustees, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the lord chancellor, and the speaker of the House of Commons.
It is impossible to enumerate the contents of the galleries and cabinets. Volumes, not pages, are required to enter the names. The first editions, rare books, and the manuscript writings of such people as Luther, Newton, Galileo, Burke, Cromwell, Milton, Gustavus Adolphus, Mary, Queen of Scots, Napoleon, Byron, Franklin, Frederick the Great, and a thousand others fill many a cabinet. The Roman gallery, the Assyrian gallery, the Hellenic room, and the hall of Egyptian antiquities present an orderly but overwhelming array of coins, casts, busts, vases, statues, weapons and armor, winged lions in stone from Nineveh, Etruscan vases of unknown antiquity, mummies from the Egyptian pyramids, and Theban sculpture in granite, alabaster, and sandstone. The Rosetta Stone is here, as well as fragments of papyrus rolls from the Nile and specimens of the hieroglyphics of the priests and the cuneiform writing of Babylon. Not the least interesting are antiquities of the period when Roman legions and Roman civilization prevailed in England. There are enough unread inscriptions to keep scholars busy for a century.
The natural history collections, the most instructive in the world, have been removed to a special building in front of Kensington Gardens. Scholars and sightseers visit the old museum. School children go to the new museum of natural history to see the birds' nests, plants, and mounted animals.