ly speaking, is not obliged to obey laws he did not make. It is, however, expedient to obey the laws which are found ready established, and which cannot well be revised and confirmed by every individual of each succeeding generation. This expediency ceases when the order of things violates the safety, the liberty, and the well-being of the people; and here begins legitimate resistance,but who is to determine the expediency? who is to judge of the fitness of resistance? Paley answers,every man for himself at his peril! This is bold no doubt, and, although true, might seem to prove too much at first sight; for, if resistance is successful, it becomes legitimate, praise-worthy, and glorious, and if it does not succeed, it is criminal, and deserves the gallows. This leads to a distinction between moral and political legitimacy. It is expedient that revolutionists should suffer for their ill success in terrorem, or there would be too many revolutions, the distinction between good and bad intentions belongs to a higher tribunal, in a better world. The new order of things, once established, should be maintained, if it secures the happiness of the people, without any reference to the means by which it was produced; for the pu nishment of the usurper might fall on the people, and lead to new violence and enormities. Corneille approached, without suspecting it, the expression of the above just and liberal sentiments, in the following lines of Cinna, dictated as they are by the most servile adulation. Tous ces crimes d'état qu'on fait pour la couronne, LONDON-BRITISH MUSEUM. Qui peut y parvenir ne peut être coupable, 81 Usurpers, however, should beware,-this principle is a two-edged sword, equally their safeguard and danger, and although Corneille might say truly, “quoiqu'il ait fait quoiqu'il fasse" was going too far. April 18.-There was yesterday a meeting of the electors of Westminster, legally convened for the purpose of petitioning Parliament for the liberation of their representative, Sir Francis Burdett, and new disorders were apprehended. The language of the petition is certainly violent, and in fact a mere vehicle for rude censure, and abuse of the House of Commons; but the meeting was peaceable, and all this will end in a war of words. To hear the noise which is made, it might be supposed that the whole civil machine was going to fall to pieces, but at the height of it, certain established forms interpose, and, by diverting the passions, prevent irregular and violent proceedings. This government is a system of checks and counterpoises; the great aim seems to be retarding the motion, and giving time for the exaggeration and irritation of parties to subside, and from all the various impulses to form a right and a moderate one. As wheels are clogged down hill, not to prevent the carriage descending, but to avoid its being precipitated, the object is to arrive safely at the bottom, but not to fall there. There is now light and length of day sufficient to see the sights of this capital. We have begun by the British Museum. The building is disposed round a vast court, and in very good taste. You are to wait in the hall of entrance till fourteen other visitors are assembled, for the rule is, that fifteen persons are to be admitted at one time, neither more nor less. This number completed, a German ciceroni took charge of us, and led us au pas de charge through a number of rooms full of stuffed birds and animals;-many of them seemingly in a state of decay. We had a glimpse of arms, dresses, and ornaments of savages hung around ;-of a colaround;-of lection of minerals ;-next of antiquities from Herculaneum and Pompeia, and monstrous Egypt. We remarked a treble inscription on a large block of dark porphyry, brought from Rosetta; one is in hieroglyphics, one in the common language of Egypt, and one in Greek;-all three saying the same thing serve as a glossary to each other. This stone, and several large sarcophagi, and numerous statues, and basso-relievos, belonged to the French collection which fell into the hands of the British in 1801. The last and most valuable acquisitions are the Greek and Roman marbles brought from Italy by Mr. Townly. We had just time to notice a very fine statue of Diana, and a bust of a man looking up with a great expression of indignation and terror; the more remarkable, from the general calmness and tranquillity of antiqués. The merit, however, of a considerable part of these marbles, consists mostly of their being undoubtedly antique. Among the manuscripts, we observed in the catalogue 43 volumes of Icelandic literature, presented by Sir Joseph Banks, who visited that singular island 40 years ago,-41 volumes of decisions of the commissaries who settled the boundaries of properties after the great fire in London, which destroyed 400 streets, and 13000 houses, says Hume, in 1666. The damage was estimated, at the time, 1 LONDON-BRITISH MUSEUM. 83 at L. 10,716,000 sterling, equal to L. 28,000,000 sterling now. The city was left a vast plain of rubbish. We noticed also an original deed of some land to a monastery, dated Ravenna, Anno Dom. 572, written on the papyrus; and the original of Magna Charta. We had no time allowed to examine any thing; our conductor pushed on without minding questions, or unable to answer them, but treating the company with double entendres and witticisms on various subjects of natural history, in a style of vulgarity and impudence which I should not have expected to have met in this place, and in this country.* The painted ceilings on the stairs and halls are very fine, by La Fosse, Rousseau, Monoyer,—all foreign artists; for the fine arts were but little cultivated in England at the time this building was erected, (1680) by the first Duke of Montagu. The museum owes its origin to the collection of Sir Hans Sloane, bequeathed to Parliament, on condition that his family should receive L. 20,000 sterling for what had cost him more than L. 50,000, and the labour of many years. He died in 1753; and the museum was opened to the public, the first time, in January 1759, in these buildings, purchased for that purpose. It has received continual accessions since that time by donations and purchases; particularly the collection of Sir William Hamilton, costing L. 8400; of Mr. A. Townley's, in 1805, costing L. 20,000; the library of Lord Oxford, purchased from his heirs, for L. 10,000, rich in manuscripts, and known by the * I am informed that a great improvement took place soon after we were there, and that the Museum is now shewn much more conveniently. name of the Harleian Library, the Cottonian library, a bequest, and several others. We have spent a whole morning at Mr. Hope's, who has a magnificent collection of pictures; a week, or a month, would hardly be sufficient to see all his treasures; and even then it would be necessary to guess at some of them, from their bad situation; every side of every apartment being covered with pictures, light or no light. We have been much struck with the plague of Athens, by N. Poussin; the composition, the drawing, the colouring, the ghastly light, all concur to the same end,-all horribly beautiful. In the middle of the picture, a famished child is sucking his dead mother! The dead and the dying lie about in heaps, grouped with a terrible fertility of imagination. The prevailing tint of Poussin's colouring is generally a sort of dusky lurid red, which I do not like, but here it suits the subject. I remember with pleasure several good Van Dyck's of great beauty, particularly one of the death of Adonis. On the second story, a landscape of Claude, soft, warm, and golden; several others of the same artist appeared to me much inferior, the trees particularly lumpy and hard, and the light precisely the reverse of the golden hue; a landscape of Both pleased me more. A fine Dominichino (Suzanna). Several good Carlo Maratti. An excellent Caracci, and a wretched landscape by the same, although not unlike in composition to a very pretty picture of Isabey and his family in the Galerie du Musée. Such Rubens' as I have seen here are, as every where, ill drawn, gaudily coloured, the expression always low. I would except a good picture of the deluge by that artist. A storm, by Rembrandt, of the truest and grandest effect. Agar |