We now propose to offer a few general observations on the subject of sight-seeing. And the first shall be respecting the prices at which this species of luxury is supplied by various parties. We have already remarked, not only that there are many new exhibitions, but that many old ones have been but recently made accessible to the public on reasonable terms.

It is curious to see, that here as on other points, the last place to which improvements extends-the last place which is willing to surrender anything for the gratification of the people-is the church. She is animated by an equal enmity to all reforms, whether the point in dispute be respect ing tythes or fourpenny offerings splendid endowments or sixpenny sights. It is in our great cathedrals, St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, strictly the property, as they are the pride of the nation, and to which every one should have easy access, that the old spirit of extortion is most rigorous and grasping. In visiting the former, some old cicerone, who holds a vested in'terest' in abuses, pops out at every corner, and demands a sixpence or a shilling for exhibiting his fraction of the curiosities of the place; at Westminster Abbey, you pay at once a high rate for seeing the whole. It is curious to see that not only are all our public secular establishments shown to the people upon much more moderate terms and in a much more liberal spirit, but even the collections which are the fruit of private enterprize, which are maintained at a vast expense, and which are instituted for the very purpose of fair gain, are cheaper, much cheaper. It is true, as before said, that we may see the best part of St. Paul's for nothing-and that is the outside; for this we are not indebted to those who have the showing of it. It is true also, that we may get a view of the inside for two-pence, a mean and miserable impost, which ought to be immediately abolished. The doors of such a place ought to stand open every day, and all who please permitted to enter and look round, certain persons being paid a proper, and no more than a proper, salary from the revenues of the cathedral itself, or if necessary, from the public purse, for seeing that no mischief is done.-But though a peep into the interior is comparatively cheap, the moment you wish to see any thing more, to look at any of the few rarities it contains, the work of extortion begins. A sixpence is asked here, and a shilling there; at every turn there is some new demandtill what with the whispering gallery, the ascent to the ball and cross, the visit to the tombs, the permission to gaze at a few tattered and crumbling standards, (how indignant would Nelson be could he know that it cost his countrymen six-pence even to take a peep at the trophies of his glory!) you have to pay no less than four shillings and sixpence, or five shillings, we forget which; that is to say, nine or ten times as much as for seeing

the infinitely more varied and curious rarities of the Tower. We believe that matters are somewhat better at Westminster Abbey, though the system is still very bad. In accordance with the usual practice of the Church, she serves the public with the worst goods at the highest price; her commodities are indifferent, and not cheap; her curiosities are not half so well worth seeing as those of many other places, while she makes us pay three times as dear for the sight.

There is not a shadow of reason for this extortion, except the desire of gain, and an indolent lazy disposition to let things remain as they are. If the rulers of the Church allege that they are anxious to guard what is valuable from theft or wanton mischief by keeping the company comparatively select, the reply is ready; at the British Museum there is no such barrier at all, and at the Tower there is only a sixpenny one, and yet it is found easy enough to guard both against fraud and mischief. If it be said, that the remuneration, extortionate as it may seem, is no more than sufficient to pay the trouble of the showman, we reply that what is found sufficient for the Tower ought to be sufficient for Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's. If it be said, that it can hardly be expected that the cicerones should accompany every visitor or party to the top of a building like St. Paul's for one sixpence, we admit it; but then we ask, who requires them to do it? During the period at which the edifice is open to the public let men be stationed at those points at which directions should be given or rarities are to be exhibited, and then let the visitors take care of themselves. The man who shows the monument is not expected to trot up and down the staircase with every visitor who pays his sixpence to do it.

St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, like the British Museum, are identified with the national glory, and should be open to the people for nothing; proper persons being appointed for showing them, who should be paid out of the ample revenues of these churches, or if it must be so, receive moderate salary at the public expense. Or if this be impossible, at least no more should be demanded for showing these places than is demanded for showing the Tower. Those to whom these magnificent piles are entrusted, should be ashamed thus to repress the interest of the people in edifices so associated with our national grandeur and so rich in historical recollections.

That a very small charge would be not only sufficient, to remunerate the trouble, but that the showmen themselves would be great gainers by the change, (a point of far more importance to them,) we have no manner of doubt. In cases of a like kind, it has hitherto been invariably found, that the sums derived from the vast increase of visitors when the terms of admission have been lowered, more than makes up for

the diminution in the sum paid by each. Thus in the Tower, where the proposition to reduce the price of admission was at first received with the utmost reluctance, the influx of visitors is such, that the whole receipts are far larger than they have ever before been. The statement will be found a little further on. And thus would it be, we have not the smallest doubt, with Westminster and St. Paul's.

The cheapest by far of our public exhibitions as well as in other respects the best, is the British Museum, for that costs nothing. The least interesting, (if we except those parts which we may see almost for nothing,) and yet incalculably the dearest, are St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey. The other exhibitions are all reasonable enough. Only a shilling is paid at the Adelaide Gallery or at the Polytechnic Institution; and all we can say is, that if the rarities at St. Paul's are worth five shillings, those at the above institutions are well worth thirty.

There is another point on which we wish to offer some few observations. We refer to the behaviour of the people at these exhibitions. One reason why public edifices have been guarded from the English populace with so much jealousy, and opened with so much reluctance, is, that our countrymen are so prone to wanton mischief. There has been hitherto unfortunately too much justice in this allegation. The populace of England have in this respect, perhaps, a less powerful sense of propriety than that of any other country in Europe. The vulgar, and even very many, who, upon other occasions would not be reckoned among the vulgar, cannot keep their hands from fingering what is curious, scrawling upon walls and columns, amusing themselves by defacing or mutilating, cutting or chipping off some little remnant of any object that tickles their fancy, slily appropriating a portion of some relic that is rare and precious, a bone, or a tooth of an old warrior, a tatter of some old standard, or a rag of an old vestment; thus taking away what is comparatively valueless in itself, yet is essential to the completion and perfection of the rarity from which it is stolen. Or if admitted into a

garden, they must needs be plucking the flowers, cutting slips, or trampling on the beds. Sometimes they have shown their brutal humour in still more wanton freaks of mischief, and in which it is hard to say what form of petty selfishness it was which was proposed to be gratified. For example, in recently passing through the British Museum, we observed that some brutal fellow had just thought proper to spit into the sarcophagus of some great Egyptian personage. Humiliation can hardly go deeper. Here was one of the great ones of the earth, who after having caused himself to be embalmed and entombed with amazing care and cost, must now submit not only to be dragged forth from the depths of the Pyramids, disinterred, unswathed,

and exposed to the light of open day, but to have his last dwelling thus contemptuously violated.

Of all the nuisances above mentioned, however, the most frequent as well as the most offensive to the eye, is that of scrawling names upon walls and columns. The great obscure' who indulge in this practice doubtless have an itching for immortality; and that to such a degree, that they would rather be notorious upon any terms, than not notorious at all: infamous rather than not famous. Thus prompted, they naturally seek the most durable materials on which to inscribe their names; nothing less than brass or marble will serve their turn. But we would respectfully remind John Smith and Thomas Brown, William Hobson and Richard Jobson, Nathanie Dobson and Mark Robson, Susan Tibbits and Martha Spry, that if they have no other means of securing immortality, this will hardly answer their purpose: as this is the only record which the world unhappily possesses of them, they will not be the less forgotten because their names are still extant. The only difference between them and other persons who have as little claim to be remembered, is that posterity will say, 'whoever they may have 'been, they have our hearty malison for their impudence and 'their mischievousness. We know of but one act of theirs, and 'that act entitles them to our thorough contempt.' We remember once suggesting to a friend a method of punishing at least some of these mischievous persons. Upon visiting one of the most venerable and splendid of our ecclesiastical edifices, we deeply disgusted at the number of the names of these aspiring insignificants inscribed upon the walls. Some of them, as if to insure a more particular remembrance, had been so explicit as to add their place of abode to their names; many of the dates were quite recent. We proposed to our friend, who was a native of the town in which the edifice stood, and who took a deep pride in this its chief ornament, that it might be desirable to collect the names of the gentlemen who had been so kind as to furnish their address, and to send each of them an anonymous letter, stating that doubtless it would be gratifying intelligence that their names, which they had inscribed with so much pains on the walls of Abbey, in the year 18-, were still extant, and that they would receive a yearly confirmation of the same pleasing fact.

But we are happy to believe, and that on the strongest grounds, that this and the other forms of nuisances above mentioned, are fast abating. With the exception of the honest gentleman who thought proper to make a spittoon of an Egyptian sarcophagus, we have not recently observed any one inclined to be offensive in these kinds. And as the public is more habituated to sight-seeing, it will learn to behave itself like any other tame

and decent animal. Indeed, one of the very reasons of its exorbitances has been that difficulty of access to things worth seeing, which has itself in a great measure resulted from the propensity of the public to mischief. One of the witnesses examined before the recent Parliamentary Committee, says, 'There is one 'important feature with respect to the British Museum in the 'mind of the public, that I am much pleased with-the general good feeling exhibited by them on all occasions. *

There is also, I may observe, no scribbling about the Museum; and the only instance in which I found any remark made was 'by some ignorant man who wrote with a piece of red chalk on 'the banisters leading to the King's Library, Museaum.'' The same witness, on being asked for information as to the comparative behaviour of the public of the present and of a former day, replied-The British Museum has only become very 'popular within the last few years-time was when we had not 'more than two hundred visitors a day; we have now 2000, '3000, 4000, 5000, and sometimes 6000 visitors a day.'

Another testimony on this subject is worth citing, as marking the improvement of the people in the provinces. It is from an intelligent visitor to the Museum at Newcastle, an institution open to the public without any charge whatever. He says,

'It was with the greatest pleasure that I heard it stated in the report of the Newcastle Society, that, notwithstanding articles of great value were exposed on the cases without any cover, they had never lost a single specimen, nor had any part of the collection been injured by visitors. This account quite agrees with my own experience in the British Museum, where there have been occasionally more than six thousand visitors in a single day. During the last twelve or thirteen years I have been in that institution, (and the greater part of this time I have had the immediate superintendence of the zoological part of the collection,) I do not recollect a single instance of wilful injury, and, indeed, hardly of carelessness, on the part of the visitors, though now and then a pane of glass may be cracked; but that is scarcely to be avoided from the frequently crowded state of the rooms, with glass cases in every direction. From my experience in the British Museum, and in other situations, I think that the English public have been most unjustly abused in this respect; partly arising from that delight which the English have in complaining of their countrymen, and praising foreigners at their expense, and partly by designing persons, who have profited by places being kept from public view, except on the payment of fees. For example: I do not think (though the accusation has been repeatedly made) that the English are more inclined to write on walls than our continental neighbours, except that they have not the constant dread of the surveillance of the police, which the French appear always to have before their eyes. In those places where it can be done with little chance of detection -as in the