the various cities and states that contended for the honour of having given birth to Homer-Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, &c.naturally stamped a head of the poet on their coins by way of asserting their claim; while no subject of the kind would seem more worthy to a sculptor than a bust of the father of poetry. In the head under notice the artist has succeeded admirably. The face is that of a mild and dignified old man, with hair and beard curling downwards, a band or circlet round the head. The sculptor has clearly intended to represent poetic genius in an ideal head and countenance appropriately shaped and conceived. Had he been a phrenologist, he could not have made the organ of ideality larger; in the region of that organ the temples swell out quite remarkably. Next in order (No. 26) is a head of another great Greek poet, the tragedian Sophocles, found in 1775 near Gensano, about seventeen miles from Rome. There is no doubt as to the authenticity of the portrait; but whether from the inferiority of the execution, or from some other cause, the face is, on the whole, disappointing to an admirer of the Greek Shakspeare. 'He must have had a finer face than that,' is the feeling with which one looks at the bust. The same disappointment will not be felt in looking at the bust that stands next on the list, that of Pericles, the contemporary of Sophocles, and the first of Greek statesmen (No. 32). Among the nicknames bestowed on this great ruler during his lifetime by the Athenian wits, one of the most popular, after that of 'Thundering Jove'-originally applied to him by the comic poet Aristophanes-was Schinocephalus, or Onion-head, in allusion to some extraordinary formation of skull for which he was remarkable. To hide this ungraceful peculiarity, as it was considered, the sculptors, says Plutarch, always represented Pericles with a helmet on. For this we are not now disposed to thank them, as it prevents us from judging of the onion-head for ourselves. From the present bust, which, with a duplicate of itself of later execution, was found in 1781 among some ruins near Tivoli, it is difficult to discover what can have been the peculiarity alluded to, unless, indeed, it was connected with the extraordinary depth of the head, as shown in the distance between the forehead and the nape of the neck, where the helmet confines the back hair. As it is, the bust is one of the most characteristic in the museum; and one is chiefly struck, in looking at it, with the extreme smallness of the features, and with a certain expression of weariness or severity to be seen in the face. The name Pericles is carved across the breast.

An extremely peculiar head is that of the philosopher Epicurus, the founder of the Epicurean philosophy, born in Attica B. C. 342, died B.C. 271 (No. 34). It is a high, narrow head, and represents

a somewhat serious long-visaged man, not at all agreeing with the popular notion of an Epicurean. It was discovered in 1775 at Rome. No. 39 is a highly-interesting bronze head of an unknown personage. It was

brought to England in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and was one of the most valuable antiques in the collection of the Earl of Arundel; thence it passed into the hands of Dr Mead; and at the sale of his effects in 1775, it was purchased by the Earl of Exeter, who presented it to the museum. It belonged originally, in all probability, to the sitting statue of some poet. For a long period it was called a head of Homer, but it does not resemble the ordinary busts of that poet either in feature or in expression. Mr Taylor Combe imagined it might be a head of Pindar; while others suppose it to represent Sophocles, whose marble bust, already described, it somewhat resembles. No. 42 is a terminal

Epicurus.

head of another eminent Greek-the celebrated Periander, tyrant of Corinth (B. C. 627), and one of the so-called 'seven wise men of Greece,' to whom certain maxims current in the Greek world were attributed. Industry is everything,' was the maxim of Periander. No. 44 is the head of an unknown Greek poet, once supposed to be Homer.

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Other remarkable heads in the Central Saloon are Nos. 47 and 48, which are heads of Apollo, of fine workmanship; two unnumbered busts of Jupiter Serapis, one in marble, and one in green basalt; and a bust of Antoninus Pius. The visitor ought also particularly to notice an exquisite bust of an unknown lady, represented as rising from the calyx of a flower. This bust, sometimes named Clytie rising from the sun-flower,' was so valued by Mr Townley, that he used jocularly to call it 'his wife;' and it is related that, when obliged hurriedly to escape from a threatened attack on his house by the Gordon rioters, he ran back and brought this marble to the carriage with him. Another curious bust is that of a youth, supposed to be Atys, or Adonis, the head and breast swathed with folds of cloth, as if to represent death, and only the face exposed. But a finer sculpture than any of these is the bust entitled 'Head of one of the Homeric heroes, supposed to be Ajax.' This head, which is.

undoubtedly ideal, has an aspect almost modern: it represents a heroic face looking upwards with an expression of earnestness and grief. The hair is arranged in fine bold masses; the beard is quite short. This admirable sculpture, executed probably some three centuries before Christ, was discovered by Mr Hamilton during his excavation on the site of Hadrian's villa.

Room I.-The most remarkable busts in this room, proceeding from the innermost to the outermost compartment, are the following:-A bust of Faustina Junior, the wife of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the daughter of Antoninus Pius; a bust of Domitia, the wife of the Emperor Domitian; a bust of Julia Sabina, the wife of the Emperor Hadrian; a bust of Otacilia Severa, the wife of the Emperor Philip; busts of the Emperors Augustus and Tiberius, both fine heads, particularly the former, which is remarkable for its breadth of brow; a bust of the Athenian orator Eschines, the celebrated opponent of Demosthenes, a heavy-looking good-humoured man; an ideal head of Jupiter, a supposed copy of a Jupiter sculptured by Polycletus, and celebrated for its mild expression of countenance; busts of

Adonis.

Caracalla, Gordian the Elder, Hadrian, Nero, and Septemius Severus-the bust of Caracalla, exhibiting a head of the most ugly and brutal type, admirably corresponding with his character; a head of a laughing satyr, of very fine work; a most characteristic head of the Cynic philosopher Diogenes, phrenologically remark

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able for the depression it exhibits in the coronal region; a bust, apparently from a statue, of a dying Amazon; a bust of Chalus, a second-rate Greek poet, who lived B. C. 270; a fine ideal bust supposed to represent Achilles; a bust of Hercules in advanced age; a bust of a Bacchante; a bust of a muse crowned with laurel; a bust of a child; a bust resembling that of the poetess Sappho; busts of Minerva, Bacchus, Apollo, Libera; a fine bust of Diana in Parian marble; a bust of Juno, with large eyes and imperious countenance; a joint terminal bust of Hercules and Omphale; a noble head of Demosthenes (see previous page), representing him as in the act of speaking, and with that repressed appearance of the under lip peculiar to persons who stutter; and finally, an admirable bust of Julius Cæsar, representing him with lean sunken cheeks, bald forehead, and anxious careworn visage.

Julius Cæsar.

APPENDIX.

THE LIBRARY, COIN ROOM, PRINT ROOM, &c.

THE parts of the museum that still remain to be noticed areThe Collection of Portraits; the Coin and Medal Room; the Print Room; the Manuscript Room; the Library; and the Reading Room. With the exception of the Collection of Portraits, these are all comparatively private in their character. While the rest of the museum is open to the public indiscriminately, the Coin Room, the Print Room, the Manuscript Room, and the Library, can be visited only by particular permission, and by a few persons at a time; and though the attendance in the Reading Room is more numerous, those who go there go for a special purpose, and require to be specially enrolled before they can be admitted. It will be sufficient, therefore, if we add to the detailed description we have already given of the more public parts of the museum, such brief notices of these remaining portions as may serve to make our account of the institution strictly complete.

COLLECTION OF PORTRAITS: EASTERN ZOOLOGICAL GALLERY.

Along the walls of the Eastern Zoological Gallery, very inconveniently hung over the upright cases, and hardly looked at by the crowds that walk through the gallery examining the shells and the birds, are a number of old pictures, almost exclusively portraits of eminent personages. Among these, the following are worthy of notice:-two portraits of Oliver Cromwell, one (No. 3) a copy from an original that was in the possession of a great-grandson of Cromwell, the other (No. 9) an original presented by Cromwell himself to Nathaniel Rich, a colonel in the Parliamentary army, and bequeathed to the museum in 1784 by Sir Robert Rich, Bart.—