Special Features - Voices

'Tis not this rare Museum's highest praise, by Horace Smith

George F. Richardson, whose poem about the Mantellian Museum can also be heard on this site, quoted this excerpt from a poem by Horace Smith in his Sketches in Prose and Verse, which contained Richardson's poems about topics other than the museum and natural history. Smith expresses the view that the museum is wonderful not only for itself, but because it exhibits the work of God the Creator.

‘Tis not this rare Museum’s highest praise

   To charm the learned and the scientific;

But that in all beholders it must raise

   Feelings and thoughts of holiness prolific!

For who that once within its verge hath trod,

   And of its prodigies been made spectator,

But ‘looks through nature up to nature’s God,’

   And in his creatures owns the great Creator!