at the appointed time, he was to send them back to the porter, in
order "that other persons wanting to see the museum might not be
excluded." Three hours was the limit of the time any company might
spend in the museum; and those who were so unreasonable or inquisitive
as to be desirous of visiting the museum more than once, might apply
for tickets a second time "provided that no person had tickets at the
same time for more than one." The names of those persons who, in the
course of a visit, wilfully transgressed any of the rules laid down by
the trustees, were written in a register, and the porter was directed
not to issue tickets to them again.

These regulations secured the exclusive attendance of the upper
classes. The libraries were hoarded for the particular enjoyment of
the worm, whose feast was only at rare intervals disturbed by some
student regardless of difficulties. To the poor, worn, unheeded
authors of those days, serenely starving in garrets, assuredly the
British Museum must have been as impenetrable as a Bastille. We
imagine the prim under-librarian glancing with a supercilious
expression upon the names and addresses of many poor, aspiring,
honourable men--men, whose "condition," to use the phrase of the
trustees, bespoke not the gentility of that vulgar age. In those days
the weaver and the carpenter would as soon have contemplated a visit
to St. James's Palace as have hoped for an admission ticket to the
national museum.

These mean precautions of the last century, contrast happily with the
enlightened liberty of this. Crowds of all ranks and conditions
besiege the doors of the British Museum, especially in holiday times,
yet the skeleton of the elephant is spotless, and the bottled
rattlesnakes continue to pickle in peace. The Elgin marbles have