A contemporary critic, very competent to give an opinion on such a matter, said of Mr. TOWNELEY: ‘His learning and sagacity in explaining works of ancient art was equal to his taste and judgment in selecting them.’[62] If, in any point, that eulogy is now open to some modification, the exception arises from the circumstance that early in life, or, at least, early in his collectorship, he had imbibed from his intercourse with D’HANCARVILLE somewhat of that writer’s love for mystical and supersubtle expositions of the symbolism of the Grecian and Egyptian artists. To D’HANCARVILLE, the least obvious of any two possible expositions of a subject was always the preferable one. Now and then TOWNELEY would fall into the same vein of recondite elaboration; as, for example, when he described his figure of an Egyptian ‘tumbler’ raising himself, upon his arms, from the back of a tame crocodile, as the ‘Genius of Production.’ During the riots of 1780, the Towneley Gallery (like the National Museum of which it was afterwards to become a part) was, for some time, in imminent peril. The Collector himself could have no enemies but those who were infuriated against his religious faith. Fanaticism and ignorance are meet allies, little likely to discriminate between a Towneley Venus and the tawdriest of Madonnas. Threats to destroy the house in Park Street were heard and reported. Mr. TOWNELEY put his gems and medals in a place of safety, together with a few other portable works of art. Then, taking ‘Clytie’ in his arms—with the words ‘I must take care of my wife’—he left his house, casting one last, longing, look at the marbles which, as he feared, would never charm his eyes again. But, happily, both the Towneley house and the British Museum escaped injury, amid the destruction of buildings, and of works of art and literature, in the close neighbourhood of both of them. [Sidenote: THE SCULPTURES ACQUIRED FROM THE VILLA MONTALTO AT ROME;] Liberal commissions and constant correspondence with Italy continued to enrich the Towneley Gallery, from time to time, after the Collector had made England his own usual place of abode. In 1786, Mr. JENKINS—who had long established himself as the banker of the English in Rome, and who continued to make considerable investments in works of ancient art, with no small amount of mercantile profit—purchased all the marbles of the Villa Montalto. From this source Mr. TOWNELEY obtained his _Bacchus visiting Icarus_ (engraved by BARTOLI almost a century before); his _Bacchus and Silenus_; the bust of _Hadrian_; the sarcophagus decorated with a _Bacchanalian procession_ (_A. M._, part x), and also that with a representation of the _Nine Muses_. [Sidenote: AND FROM NEW EXCAVATIONS.] By means of the same keen agent and explorer he heard, in or about the year 1790, that leave had been given to make a new excavation under circumstances of peculiar promise.