tion on the miniature stage, the back of which is hidden by a green curtain or tent, placed in the cart. Behind this screen the woman conceals herself and talks for the little automaton figures. There is a set dialogue in which the figures are supposed to converse, and as it is seldom changed, I give the fol lowing portion of a comedy of conversation, as that chiefly used for many years by the London Punch and Judy shows: Punch. chin! ENTER JUDY. What a sweet creature! what a handsome nose and (He pats Judy on the face lovingly.) Judy. Keep quiet, do! (Slapping him wickedly.) Judy. Oh, to be sure, my love. (They embrace and kiss.) Punch. Bless your sweet lips. (Hugging her.) These are melting moments. I'm very fond of my wife, I must have a dance. Judy. Agreed. (Dancing.) Punch. Get out of the way, you don't dance well enough for me. (Hits her on the nose.) Go and fetch the baby, and mind and take care of it and not hurt it. (Judy goes off.) JUDY. (Coming back with the baby.) Take care of the baby while I go and cook the dumplings. Punch. (Striking Judy with his hand.) Get out of the way! I'll take care of the baby (and Judy goes out). PUNCH. (Sits down and sings to the baby.) "Hush a-bye baby on the tree top, When the wind blows the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, (The baby cries and Punch throws it up and down violently.) Punch. What a cross child! I can't abear cross children. (Shakes the baby and pretends that he is about to kill it, and finally throws it out of the window.) ENTER JUDY. Judy. Where is the baby? PUNCH IS EXECUTED. 409 Punch. (In a lemoncholy tone.) I have had a misfortune; the child was so terrible cross I throwed it out of the window, I did. (Lamentation of Judy for her dear child. She goes into asterisks, and then excites and fetches a cudgel, and commences beating Punch over the head.) Punch. Don't be cross, my dear, I didn't go to do it. Judy. I'll pay yer for a throwin' the child out of the winder. (She keeps a beatin him on the blessed head with the stick, but Punch snatches the stick away, and commences a smashin of her blessed head.) Judy. (Screaming like hanythink.) I'll go to the Constable and have you locked up. Punch. Go to the devil. I don't care where you go. Get out of the way. (Judy goes hoff, and Punch sings, "Par Excellence," or, "Ten Little Indians." N. B. All before is sentimental, but this here's comic. Punch goes through his rootoo-to-rooey, and in comes the Beadle hall in red.) Then the Clown" and "Jim Crow," the "Doctor," "Jack Ketch," the hangman, with various characters, follow each other in quick succession and enact their absurdities to the intense delight of the "juveniles," as the showman, in his printed book of the play calls the children. Punch is tried and convicted of murder, and being sentenced to death, is finally hung by Jack Ketch, at Newgate, as a punishment for his crimes, and is then placed in a coffin and given to be dissected. All through these performances I have frequently noticed that the child spectators sympathized with Punch,-who is certainly a most notorious criminal if we are to judge by his actions on the stage of the Punch and Judy show,—and they always applauded when the Beadle got the worst of the fight. It is a strange instinct, that which rises and glows in the breast of a child, this resistance to the spirit or personification of authority. The same instinct in the full-grown man, draws a mob of ragged blouses after a Rochefort, in the streets of Paris, and builds barricades from which they fire upon the hireling soldiery of a Bonaparte. CHAPTER XXVII. THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND NATIONAL GALLERY. N Great Russell street, Bloomsbury square, is the British Museum, one of the chief glories of the English metropolis, and an institution of which every Londoner is deservedly proud. There is, perhaps, no finer collection of curiosities and antiquities, and the nation has been for a century gathering the tributes of Science, Art, and Antiquity together in this vast building, which covers, with grounds and outbuildings, an area of seven acres. The first purchase for the collection was made in 1750, when Sir Hans Sloane, a great collector and scientific man, died, leaving a will, in which he suggested that his collection which cost him £50,000 should be bought by Parliament for £20,000. This offer was accepted, and an act was passed purchasing Sir Hans Sloane's "library of books, drawings, manuscripts, prints, medals, seals, cameos, and intaglios, precious stones, agates, jaspers, vessels of agate, crystals, mathematical instruments, pictures, &c." Thus was laid the first foundation of the now world famous British Museum. By the same act a purchase was made of the Harleian Library of about 7,000 rare volumes of rolls, charters, and manuscripts, to which were added the Cottonian Library, and the library of Major Arthur Edwards. A lottery was devised, from which £100,000 was realized, and the collections were paid for from this fund, as well as the sum of £10,250 which was paid to Lord Halifax for Montague House, in which the museum was then located, and on which THE READING ROOM AND ITS OCCUPANTS. 411 site the present building has been erected. The additional sum of £12,873 was paid for the repairs of Montague House, and a fund was also set apart for its taxes, salaries of officers, and Trustees, who were chosen from the best and noblest in the land, and in 1759 the Museum was opened to the public. The present lofty and imposing building was thirty years in construction, although the Museum was all that time open to the public, the building being erected piecemeal. The main buildings form a quadrangle with spacious and lofty galleries and courts. The entrances to the buildings are by magnificent staircases of stone, and the portico is adorned with giant figures and groups of sculpture. Even in the old Egyptian days, no greater masses of stone were ever used than those which have been placed in the grand flight of steps of the main facade. There are twelve stone steps, 120 feet in width, terminating with pedestals, on which are the groups of sculpture. There are 800 huge stones in the edifice, weighing from five to nine tons each. In the pediment, on the main front, are typified in storied stone, Man, Religion, Paganism, Music, the Drama, Poetry, the Patriarchs, Civilization, Science, Mathematics, and other allegorical figures. The entire buildings have cost upward of £1,000,000. The principal doorway is really majestic, being twenty-four feet high and ten feet wide. The Reading-Room of the Library contains 1,250,000 cubic feet of space, the dome being 140 feet in diameter and 106 feet high. In this vast room an echo is heard like the sound of a trumpet, and on its shelves, and in contiguous alcoves, are 800,000 volumes of books upon every known subject and in every known language. This room cost £150,000. 4,200 tons of iron were used in the construction of the dome alone. There is accommodation for 300 readers, each person having a desk and table in a space of four feet three inches. There is a great silence in this vast room where every one seems bent on study. The very door-keepers who take your hat and umbrella, have a studious look. Every visitor presents his ticket of admission, and is registered for the benefit of the statistics of the Kingdom. Scores of men who have a taste for literature and reading, and no money to buy books, come here, and, during lunch-hours, those who are anxious to study, and do not wish to leave their seats, may be seen taking from under their tables light luncheons, kidney-pies, and sandwiches, of which they partake with that peculiar shamefacedness which is always observable in people who eat in public places. There is a member of Parliament in his natty suit, and with a heavy watch-chain, who has gotten him down an old rusty tome, from which he is cramming with great earnestness for the next debate. Last night he had never heard of the subject of which he is reading, and just now he is full of it, and so puzzled with the wealth of the material before him that he does not know at which end to begin. There is an old gentleman, in thread-bare clothes, and worn cuffs, who has a very mild and placid face, and blue bulbous eyes. The table before him is strewn with old, worn volumes, bound with parchment and sheep-skin covers, and every time he turns a leaf a cloud of powdered dust ascends to his nostrils, and he is nearly suffocated. It is easy to see from this man's soft and fixed look that he is a monomaniac upon some subject, and that he is now settled for the day. Ah! what a sigh of relief from the old codger. He has, after great trouble, secured in his mind the point in dispute, and now he is at work rapidly scratching away at his notes. Looking over his shoulder I can see that the old fellow has a number of works on the subject of Heraldry before him, and he is, of course, tracing some mystic pedigree to the Flood, or further back, perhaps for the satisfaction of a butcher or tailor who may be in want of an escutcheon and a bar sinister in his shield. In 1827, Sir Joseph Banks presented his botanical collection, and 66,000 valuable volumes. In 1837, the Prints and Drawings, the Geology and Zoology departments were formed, and in 1857, the Department of Mineralogy. The Museum is divided into departments of Printed Books, Manuscripts, An |