d which has been
increasingly famous ever since as the British Museum.

The idea which had this splendid result had originated with Sir Hans
Sloane, baronet, a highly respected practising physician of Chelsea,
who had accumulated a great store of curios, and who desired to see the
collection kept intact and made useful to the public after his death.
Dying in 1753, this gentleman had directed in his will that the
collection should be offered to the government for the sum of twenty
thousand pounds; it had cost him fifty thousand pounds. The government
promptly accepted the offer--as why should it not, since it had at hand
so easy a means of raising the necessary money? It was determined to
supplement the collection with a library of rare books, for which
ten thousand pounds was to be paid to the Right Honorable Henrietta
Cavendish Holies, Countess of Oxford and Countess Mortimer, Relict of
Edward, Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer, and the Most Noble Margaret
Cavendish, Duchess of Portland, their only daughter.

The purchases were made and joined with the Cottonian library, which
was already in hand. A home was found for the joint collection, along
with some minor ones, in Montague Mansion, on Great Russell Street, and
the British Museum came into being. Viewed retrospectively, it seems
a small affair; but it was a noble collection for its day; indeed,
the Sloane collection of birds and mammals had been the finest private
natural history collection in existence. But, oddly enough, the weak
feature of the museum at first was exactly that feature which has been
its strongest element in more recent years--namely, the department of
antiquities. This department was augmented from time to time, notably by
the acquisition of the treasures of Sir William Hamilton in 1773; but it
was not till the beginning of the nineteenth century that the windfall
came which laid the foundation for the future incomparable greatness of
the museum as a repository of archaeological treasures.

In that memorable year the British defeated the French at Alexandria,
and received as a part of the conqueror's spoils a collection of
Egyptian antiquities which the savants of Napoleon's expedition had
gathered and carefully packed, and even shipped preparatory to sending
them to the Louvre. The feelings of these savants may readily be
imagined when, through this sad prank of war, their invaluable treasures
were envoyed, not to their beloved France, but to