Excerpt from Art Treasures of the United Kingdom From the Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester

From the time when the nee-christians in their holy zeal commenced the destruction, as far as practicable, of the monuments of Pagan Art, down to within the last few centuries, the ruin or neglect of works of antiquity has been ever going on. It would be no uninteresting task to trace the various causes which led to the revival of antique Science, Art, and Literature, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Italy, by means of which a deep appreciation and love for antiquity was spread and nourished in the most powerful states, and amongst the greatest intellects of modern times. In England, however, with which we have especially to deal, it was not till the seventeenth century that this newly planted feeling bore fruit; even then, the principal collectors - royalty itself, and noblemen - employed people of education to select subjects for their galleries and museums and the treasures then obtained were valued almost entirely for their excellence as Works of Art with but little feeling, and less knowledge, of their importance as illustrating the life and intellect of past epochs of human existence.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the desire of such knowledge gradually increased, and Archaeology began to assume the form and method of a science, which threw its light, dim indeed and yet uncertain, not only on the long past days of ancient Greece and Rome, but on the yet more remote gloom of Egypt, and the cavernous obscurity of early European life: after a certain period of probation, the contempt with which such studies were regarded by the world generally passed away; and at the close of the eighteenth century, and still more after the commencement of the nineteenth, the Dryasdusts became recognized as a body of students whose researches were calculated to be of the highest importance, not to Art only, but for the general advancement and certitude of all historic knowledge. At present, this is peculiarly the case; for we live at a time when there is an almost universal desire to preserve whatever may tend to elucidate the entire history of the human race.

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