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A Guide to the Exhibition Galleries of the British Museum, Bloomsbury (1884)
A Guide to the Exhibition Galleries of the British Museum Bloomsbury - 1884 Author:British Museum Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DEPARTMENT OF MANUSCRIPTS. The Collections of this Department have been formed partly by the acquisition of private libraries and partly by purchases and dona... more »tions accumulated from year to year. The Manuscripts of Sir Robert Cotton, of Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford, and of Sir Hans Sloan e, were among the first collections brought together by the Act of Parliament of 1753, to which the British Museum owes its origin. The other collections are : The Old Royal MSS. (incorporated with the early collections in 17 57), the King's MSS., collected by George ITI.; the Birch MSS., of the Rev. Thomas Birch, D.D.; the Lans- downe MSS., of William Petty, Marquess of Lansdowne ; the Arundel MSS., of Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel; the Burney MSS., of the Rev. Charles Burney, D.D.; the Hargrave MSS., of Francis Hargrave, Q.C.; the Egerton MSS., of Francis Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater, augmented by purchases made from funds bequeathed by the Earl and by Charles Long, Lord Farnborough; the Stowe MSS., of the Marquesses of Buckingham ; and the Additional MSS., the largest of all the collections, purchased from the annual parliamentary grant or acquired by donation or bequest. The Department contains upwards of 50,000 volumes, of which more than 8,500 are written in Oriental languages; 46,000 charters and rolls; nearly 7,000 detached seals and casts of seals ; and upwards of 100 ancient Greek, Coptic, and Latin papyri. THE MANUSCRIPT SALOON. This room, in which are exhibited specimens of Ancient and Illuminated Manuscripts, Autograph Letters, Charters, and Seals, is lined with bookcases, containing on the right, or south side, the Harleian MSS., on the left the Lans chapter{Section 4downe and Old Koyal collections, and on the east side the Cottonian Library. In the galleries above ...« less