Page:Notes on the Present and Future of the Archaeological Collections of the University of Oxford.djvu/10

 Arundelian Marbles, whereof the rest remain in a small chamber in the Court of the Schools. Lately the ruling spirits of the Natural History Museum, on the principle, probably, that "all is Fish that comes to their net," have commenced a rival Collection of Antiquities, which contains indeed some valuable and interesting specimens, but these are so jammed together that they cannot be seen or studied to advantage, while every canon of good taste is violated by the incongruity of their surroundings. Next, there are the ancient Sculptures of the Pomfret Collection stowed away out of sight and out of mind in the dreary vaults of the Taylor Buildings, or incongruously stuck about amongst the casts of the Chantrey statues. There may be seen a gigantic Mr. Pitt (in plaster of Paris), who completely dwarfs his neighbour, a middle-sized ancient Philosopher (in white marble), and the tail of the toga of the English Statesman (not of the Philosopher) hides two Roman sarcophagi. On the staircase two venerable slabs of Assyrian Sculpture from Nineveh look strangely out of place under a spic-and-span Muse made of white "compo.," and in the Avernus below a white marble bust of "S.Woodburne, Esq., by Behnes," surmounts the sarcophagus of a Roman child! But the most extraordinary thing remains to be told. A few years since the Cavalliere Alessandro Castellani of Rome presented some valuable Etruscan antiquities to the Ashmolean, and shortly afterwards the University purchased from the same gentleman a small but good collection of Greek and Etruscan terracottas and other kindred objects. This unwonted fit of liberality, by the way, seems to have so much alarmed the authorities of the University that it has never been repeated. Now anyone would have supposed that seeing that the first part of the Castellani Collection was exhibited in the Ashmolean, the second part would