STUDIES ON MUSEUMS AND KINDRED INSTITUTIONS. 539 



VIII.— MANCHESTER. 



Manchester is an incredibly sinoky city, with over three-cjuarters of 

 a million inhabitants, Dresden, which suffers a like disadvantage in 

 German}', is a veritable paradise in comparison with it. We are 

 compelled to pity the development of culture which ripens under such 

 circumstances, and which transforms human habitations into hells. 

 A noble citizen of Manchester, T. C. Horsfall," took it upon himself 

 to attempt to improve the conditions by both voice and pen, although 

 there is no probability that he will be successful. 1 mention among 

 others the following of his writings: The Relation of Arts to the Wel- 

 fare of the Inhabitants of English Towns (1894, 26 pp.); The Govern- 

 ment of Manchester (1895, 46 pp.); An Ideal for Life in Manchester 

 Realizable if — (1900, 24 pp.), and The Use of Pictures in Education 

 (1902, 28 pp.). In the second paper mentioned he writes on page 10: 



I do not think that in any other country so large a part of the race has been 

 brought in stature and general build so far below the normal stature and l)uild of the 

 race as has been the case in east and south London and in the jjoorer parts of all our 

 large towns; b while the continued prevalence of drinking and licentiousness, and the 

 rapid spread of betting and gambling show that the average mental and moral state 

 is no better than the physical. * * * The vast Roman Empire fell for lack of 

 men and the vaster British Empire, however numerous the British people may be, 

 must also fall for want of men if we continue to allow the health of the bodies, brains, 

 and hearts of the people of our towns to be sapped as they are now being sapped in 

 a great part of Manchester. 



And in the last-mentioned paper, page 4: 



The condition of the town — the condition of all large English manufacturing 

 towns — is simply terrible. * * * Ever since I went abroad, for the first time 

 after reaching manhood, I have felt convinced that, whatever other reasons there 

 may be for our not being loved, the light apparently thrown on the true nature 

 of the belief, which England professes to hold, that she is the great civilizer of the 

 world, by what the greater part of London is and what Manchester and all other 

 large manufacturing towns are, and are allowed by the well-to-do classes in this, 

 the richest country in the world, to continue to be, is in itself sufhcient reason for 

 our not being loved or respected, and for our being regarded as the nation which 

 is of all the most wishful to deceive itself and others. * * * With all that is 

 sound in his (that is, theKingof Ashanti's " poor bloodthirsty KingPrempet") nature 

 he would know that the life of an unsacrificed Ashanti is preferable to, and only 

 nominally less civilized than, that of the Ancoats rough and of those rich persons 

 who are willing to allow their countrymen to be Ancoats roughs. 



Ancoats is a suburb to the east of Manchester and has a nmseum — 

 Manchester Art Museum at Ancoats — which, in imitation of the Beth- 

 nal Green Museum in London, provides musical performances and 



« Mr. Horsfall received the honorary title of doctor at the semicentennial celebra- 

 tion of the university in 190L 



b .T. M. Rhodes showed at the meeting of the British Medical Association in 1902, 

 that there die in Manchester 198 out of every 1,000 children, in London 154 of 1,000. 

 See Nation, LXXV, 1902, p. 142. 



