As a career the museum, as it then was, can have presented but few attractions to a young man; but the department, as yet undivided, probably offered to Newton a wider range of comparative study in his subject than he could otherwise have acquired.

[1] In 1852, he was named vice-consul at Mytilene, and from April 1853 to January 1854 he was consul at Rhodes, with the definite duty, among others, of watching over the interests of the British Museum in the Levant.

[2] In 1854 and 1855, with funds advanced by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, he carried on excavations in Kalymnos, enriching the British Museum with an important series of inscriptions, and in the following year he was at length enabled to undertake his long-cherished scheme of identifying the site, and recovering for this country the chief remains, of the mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

[2] These works included particulars of other important discoveries, especially at Branchidae, where he disinterred the statues which had anciently lined the Sacred Way, and at Cnidos, where Pullan, acting under his direction, found the Lion of Knidos now in the British Museum.

[3] In 1860, he was named consul at Rome, but was the following year recalled to take up the newly created post of keeper of Greek and Roman antiquities at the British Museum.

[1] Newton's keepership at the museum was marked by an amassing wealth of important acquisitions, which were largely attributable to his personal influence or initiation.

Meanwhile, his work in the Levant, bringing to the museum the direct results of exploration and research, was being continued by his successors and friends: Biliotti in Rhodes, Smith and Porcher at Gyrene, Lang in Cyprus, Dennis in Sicily, in the Cyrenaica, and around Smyrna, Pullan at Priene, John Turtle Wood at Ephesus were all working more or less directly under Newton on behalf of the museum.

In 1880, however, the Yates chair of classical archaeology was created at University College, London, and by a special arrangement, Newton was enabled to hold it coincidentally with his museum appointment.