In America, I remember, when I lived in Lenox, I found
an insect of this species, and at first really mistook it for a twig. It
was smaller than these specimens in the Museum. I suppose every
creature, almost, that runs or creeps or swims or flies, is represented
in this collection of Natural History; and it puzzles me to think what
they were all made for, though it is quite as mysterious why man himself
was made.
By and by I entered the room of Egyptian mummies, of which there are a
good many, one of which, the body of a priestess, is unrolled, except the
innermost layer of linen. The outline of her face is perfectly visible.
Mummies of cats, dogs, snakes, and children are in the wall-cases,
together with a vast many articles of Egyptian manufacture and use,--even
children's toys; bread, too, in flat cakes; grapes, that have turned to
raisins in the grave; queerest of all, methinks, a curly wig, that is
supposed to have belonged to a woman,--together with the wooden box that
held it. The hair is brown, and the wig is as perfect as if it had been
made for some now living dowager.
From Egypt we pass into rooms containing vases and other articles of
Grecian and Roman workmanship, and funeral urns, and beads, and rings,
none of them very beautiful. I saw some splendid specimens, however, at
a former visit, when I obtained admission to a room not indiscriminately
shown to visitors. What chiefly interested me in that room was a cast
taken from the face of Cromwell after death; representing a wide-mouthed,
long-chinned, uncomely visage, with a triangular English nose in the very
centre.
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