Should it seem, after full examination, that good government may be better maintained, and adequate space for growth be efficiently provided, by enlarging the existing Museum, would it be worthy of Britain to allow the additional expenditure of a few scores of thousands of pounds—an expenditure which would be spread over the taxation of many years—to preponderate in the final vote of Parliament over larger and more enduring considerations? In the session of 1866 Mr. Spencer WALPOLE spoke thus: ‘You must either determine to separate the Collections now in the Museum, or buy more land in Bloomsbury.... I have always been for keeping them together. I am, however, perfectly willing to take either course, provided you do not heap those stores one on another—as at present,’ (July, 1866)—‘in such a manner as to render them really not so available as they ought to be to those who wish to make them objects of study.’ Few men are so well entitled to speak, authoritatively, on the question—because few have given such an amount of time and labour to its consideration. By every available and legitimate expression of opinion the Trustees have acted in the spirit of this remark, made almost four years since, by one of the most eminent of their number. The words are, unfortunately, as apposite in March, 1870, as they were in July, 1866. THE END. GENERAL INDEX. Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canterbury, 66, 70 Abercorn, Earl of. _See_ Hamilton Abercromby, Sir Ralph, 548 Abyssinia, MSS., brought from, 707 Accessibility, Public, of the British Museum, Successive changes in the Regulations and Statistics of the, 323, 336, 338, 339, 341, 368, 520, 599 Adair, Sir Robert, 373 Æginæ, Vases and other Antiquities brought from, 386 _seqq._ Africa, Pre-historic and Ethnographical Collections from, 699 _seqq._ Agarde, Arthur, and Sir Robert Cotton, 85, 86 Albemarle, Duchess of. _See_ Monk Albums, Series of German, 457 Alexandria, Sarcophagus from, 365 _seqq._ Allan-Greg Cabinet of Minerals, 606 Almanzi, Joseph, Hebrew Library of, 42 Amadei, Victor, Marbles from the Collection of, 372 Amba-Bichoi, Biblical MSS. from the Monastery of, 615 _seqq._ America, Pre-historic and Ethnographical Collections from, 699 _seqq._ Anadhouly, Exploration by Sir Charles Fellows of, 644 _Ancient Marbles in the British Museum, Description of the_, 372 _seqq._ Anderson, Edmund (of Eyworth and Stratton), 132 Andréossi, Anthony Francis, Count, Researches in the Monasteries of Nitria of, 610 Angouleme, Duke of, 539 Anne, Queen of England, 207 _seqq._ Anne of Denmark, Queen Consort of James I, 153, 156, 166 Ansse de Villoisin, John Baptist, G. d’, 455 Antiphellus, Researches of Sir Charles Fellows at, 644 _Antiquités Étrusques, &c._, 352 _seqq._ Apotheosis of Homer, 401 Arcadia, Archæological Explorations in, 397 _seqq._