the first
collections of such objects, saw that they really had a scientific
interest, and founded at Cambridge the first professorship of geology.
Another remarkable collector was Sir Hans Sloane, who had brought home a
great number of plants from Jamaica and founded the botanic garden at
Chelsea. His servant, James Salter, set up the famous Don Saltero's
museum in the same place, containing, as Steele tell us, '10,000
gimcracks, including a "petrified crab" from China and Pontius Pilate's
wife's chambermaid's sister's hat.' Don Saltero and his master seemed
equally ridiculous; and Young in his satires calls Sloane 'the foremost
toyman of his time,' and describes him as adoring a pin of Queen
Elizabeth's. Sloane's collections were bought for the nation and became
the foundation of the British Museum; when (1753) Horace Walpole remarks
that they might be worth L80,000 for anybody who loved hippopotamuses,
sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese. Scientific research,
that is, revealed itself to contemporaries as a childish and absurd
monomania, unworthy of a man of sense. John Hunter had not yet begun to
form the unequalled museum of physiology, and even the scientific
collectors could have but a dim perception of the importance of a minute
observation of natural phenomena. The contempt for such collections
naturally accompanied a contempt for the antiquary, another variety of
the same species. The study of old documents and ancient buildings
seemed to be a simple eccentricity. Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary,
was a typical case. He devoted himself to the study of old records and
published a series of English Chronicles which were of essential service
to English historians. To his contemporaries this study seemed to be as
worthless as Woodward's study of fossils. Like other monomaniacs he
became crusty and sour for want of sympathy. His like-minded
contemporary, Carte, ruined the prospects of his history by letting out
his belief in the royal power of curing by touch. Antiquarianism, though
providing invaluable material for history, seemed to be a silly
crotchet, and to imply a hatred to sound Whiggism and modern
enlightenment, so long as the Wit and the intelligent person of quality
looked upon the past simply as the period of Gothic barbarism. But an
approximation is beginning to take place. The relation is indicated by
the case of Horace Walpole, a man whose great abilities have been
concealed by his obvi