A Visit to the British Museum Author:British museum General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1838 Original Publisher: Chapman and Hall Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you ca... more »n select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: GALLERY OF ANTIQUITIES. FIRST ROOM. Mr. Edwards. -- We have lately been surveying natural curiosities, consisting of objects derived chiefly from the Animal and Mineral Kingdoms of Nature; and we must now turn our attention to works of art, the productions of the labour, taste, and genius of man, as exhibited in ancient sculptures and models of various descriptions. Omitting all notice of the numerous minor distinctions that might be pointed out in the several kinds of antiquities, (as they are styled,) here collected, it will be proper to observe that they may be nearly all referred to two grand classes; for while some of them exemplify the Grecian style of art, of which the Romans, and through them the people of Modern Europe in general, must be considered as mere imitators, -- others are specimens of Egyptian, or rather Indo-Egyptian art, displaying such characteristic traits as sufficiently distinguish them from the preceding. These respective kinds of antiquities are not generally mingled together in this exhibition, nor are they universally separated, -- some of the apartments being appropriated for the reception of Greek and Roman works of art, and others for the productions of the artists of ancient Egypt, or imitations of them ; but in one or two of the rooms which contain relics of the arts of Greece or Rome, are also some belonging to the Hindoos, andother Oriental nations, exhibiting no small degree of affinity with the antiquities of Egypt. We will now, according to the plan hitherto followed, notice the more curious and important of these objects in...« less