[Sidenote: GROSLEY’S ACCOUNT OF THE MUSEUM IN 1765.] In 1765, Peter John GROSLEY, an accomplished and keen-eyed Frenchman, familiar with the Museums of Italy as well as with those of his own country, visited the new Museum, and recorded his impressions of it. With the building he was charmed. He had already seen many parts of England, but nowhere any house that he thought worthy to be compared with Montagu House. He calls it ‘the largest, the most stately, the best arranged, and most richly decorated’ structure of its kind in all England. He made repeated visits. What chiefly arrested his attention in the Natural History rooms were the beauty of the papillonacea—comprising, he thought, ‘all that either the old world or the new can supply in this kind’—and the strangeness of some mineral specimens brought from the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. The Printed Books he thought to be ‘the weakest part of this vast collection.’ In one of the principal rooms, ‘I saw,’ he continues, ‘not without astonishment, a very fine bust of Oliver CROMWELL, occupying a distinguished place!’ He praises the courtesy with which Drs. MATY and MORTON discharged, by turns, the duty of exhibition. ‘They show,’ he says, ‘the most obliging readiness to explain things to the visitor, but,’ he adds, with obvious truth, ‘their very courtesy is wont to make a stranger content himself with hasty and unsatisfactory glances, that he may not trespass on their politeness.’ And then he makes a wise practical suggestion, which was carried into effect, almost half a century afterwards. ‘In order really to carry out the intentions of Parliament,’ writes GROSLEY, in 1765, ‘it is to be wished that the Public should be admitted more liberally, and more easily, by placing a warder in every room, to be continually present during the public hours.’ Ten years afterwards, the difficulty on this score had so increased that a notification to the following effect was circulated: ‘British Museum, 9th August, 1776. The Applicants of the middle of April are not yet satisfied. [Sidenote: MS. ADDIT., 10,555, fol. 14.] Persons applying are requested to send weekly to the porter to know how near they are upon the List.’ [Sidenote: VISIT OF C. P. MORITZ IN 1782.]