Excerpt from Memories of the British Museum Some of my readers will recollect the high red brick wall that faced Great Russell Street, with its quaint frenchified old-fashioned Lodge, guarded by two tall grenadiers. The entrance was through high folding wooden gates, with a smaller door in the centre for visitors on foot. This smaller door was at the time I am writing of, 18 3 5, opened by a porter, whose good-humoured round face beams upon me even now, and whom I always thought a good embodiment of an Englishman, and a fitting introduction to the British Museum; a lithograph engraving still exists of the old entrance-gate, with this jolly looking porter as its prominent feature, which will, I am sure, fully bear me out in what I have said of him. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.