I have not observed
that London ever goes to bed.
September 29th.--Yesterday we walked to the British Museum. A sentinel
or two kept guard before the gateway of this extensive edifice in Great
Russell Street, and there was a porter at the lodge, and one or two
policemen lounging about, but entrance was free, and we walked in without
question. Officials and policemen were likewise scattered about the
great entrance-hall, none of whom, however, interfered with us; so we
took whatever way we chose, and wandered about at will. It is a
hopeless, and to me, generally, a depressing business to go through an
immense multifarious show like this, glancing at a thousand things, and
conscious of some little titillation of mind from them, but really taking
in nothing, and getting no good from anything. One need not go beyond
the limits of the British Museum to be profoundly accomplished in all
branches of science, art, and literature; only it would take a lifetime
to exhaust it in any one department; but to see it as we did, and with no
prospect of ever seeing it more at leisure, only impressed me with the
truth of the old apothegm, "Life is short, and Art is long." The fact
is, the world is accumulating too many materials for knowledge. We do
not recognize for rubbish what is really rubbish; and under this head
might be reckoned very many things one sees in the British Museum; and,
as each generation leaves its fragments and potsherds behind it, such
will finally be the desperate conclusion of the learned.
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