REPORT OF ASSISTANT SECRETARY. 19 



beuelit solely of persons engaged in research. Such men would lind 

 no welcome among us. 



The experience of Europe, with its magnificent public museums, and 

 the history of the several expositions in the United States should be 

 quite sufticient to satisfy anyone who has studied the matter, that the 

 museum is an educational power even more influential than the public 

 library. 



The venerable director of the South Kensington Museum, the late 

 Sir Philip Cuuliffe Owen, speaking from an experience of thirty-five 

 years, not only in his own establishment, but in the work of building 

 up the score of affiliated museums in the various provincial towns of 

 Great Britain, remarked to the writer: 



Wc educate our working people in the public schools, give them a love for refined 

 and beautiful objects, and stimulate in them a desire for information. They leave 

 school, go into the pursuits of town life, and have no means provided for the gratih- 

 catiou of the tastes which they have been forced to acquire. It is as much the duty 

 of the Government to provide them with museums and libraries for their higher 

 education as it is to establish schools for their primary instruction. 



In the same conversation Sir Philip insisted very strongly that a 

 museum not actually engaged in educational work of some kind could 

 not long survive, pointing to the great system of lectures and exam- 

 inations connected with the Science and Art Department of the Council 

 of Education, of which the South Kensington Museum was one of the 

 chief agencies.' 



'No new general statement relating to the history, organization, and activities of 

 the National Museum having been prepared by Dr. Goode prior to his death, the 

 foregoing paragraphs are repeated from the Report of 1895, with a few minor 

 changes, bringing the subject down to date. — Editok. 



