On entering the Museum for the third time, the visitor should turn to the left, and passing under the staircase, enter the galleries devoted to Ancient Sculpture.  He will at once be struck with the strange allegorical figures clustered on all sides, the broken bodies, the fragments of arms and legs, the corners of slabs, and other dilapidations.  Here a fine figure is without a nose, there Theseus holds aloft two handless arms, and legs without feet.  The visitor who has not the least insight into the heart of all these collections of fragments from tombs, and temples, and neglected ruins, is perhaps inclined to laugh at the enthusiasm with which they are generally examined, and the rapturous strains in which the greatest critics have written of them.  Not to all people is the enthusiasm of Lord Elgin comprehensible.  Why not allow the fragments of the Parthenon to be ground into fine white mortar, and the busts of ancient heroes to be targets for the weapons of Turkish youths? are questions which a few utilitarians may be inclined to ask; and it would certainly be difficult to show, for instance in figures, the gain the country has made by expending 35,000L. on the Elgin marbles:  in the same way that it is difficult to appraise the beneficial influence of beauty, or to test the developments of the universe by double entry.

But let the visitor pace these noble galleries of his national museum with a reverent heart, let him learn from these beautiful labours of long ago, that not only to him and his fellows of the proud nineteenth century, when fiery words are flashing through the seas, and steam fights like a demon with time, were the living years pregnant with the glories of art; but that the Egyptian, with his rude bronze chisel, cut his native rocks with no unskilful hand, before the Son of God lay cradled in a manger.

Past the bewildering fragments of art in the south-western gallery to the south-western corner of the building, then south like an arrow to the northern end of the sculpture rooms, should the visitor at once proceed.  He will pass by fragments of Assyrian, Greek, and Roman art, but to these he should now pay little heed, as his immediate business is with the fine gallery of

Egyptian sculpture,

which is the most northernly apartment or gallery of the western wing.  Here he will at once notice the rows of Sarcophagi, which are ranged on either side of the central passage of the gallery.  These colossal outer-coffins contained the mummies of distinguished Egyptians.  Along the walls of the room are ranged the sepulchral tablets, or tombstones of ancient Egyptians, and the inscriptions generally record the name and age of a deceased person; and in some cases, points of domestic history and pious sentences.  Their dates range over a space of time amounting to more than twenty centuries.  Interspersed with these are other sculptures, chiefly of Egyptian deities; but the attention of the visitor will be probably attracted first to the