66 Memorial of George Brou'u Goode. 



written literature has grown up, and a distinct literary and scientific 

 class has been developed, that it is possible for the modern hbrary and 

 museum to come into existence. The museum of the present is more dis- 

 similar to its old-time representative than is our library to its prototype. 

 There were in the remote past galleries of pictures and sculpture, as 

 well as so-called museums. Public collections of paintings and statuary 

 were founded in Greece and Rome at a very early day. There was a 

 gallery of paintings (Pinacotheca) in one of the marble halls of the pro- 

 pylseum at Athens, and in Rome there were lavish public displays of 

 works of art. M. Dezobry, in his Rome in the Time of Augustus, has 

 described this phase of I^atin civilization in the first century before 

 Christ: 



For many years [remarks one of his characters] the taste for paintings has been 

 extending in a most extraordinary manner. In former times they were only to be 

 found in the temples, where they were placed less for purposes of ornament than 

 as an act of homage to the gods ; now they are everj-vs^here, not only in temples, in 

 private houses, and in public halls, but also on outside walls, exposed freely to air 

 and sunlight. Rome is one great picture gallery ; the Forum of Augustus is gor- 

 geous with paintings, and they may be seen also in the Forum of Caesar, in the 

 Roman Forum, under the peristyles of many of the temples, and especially in the 

 porticos used for public promenades, some of which are literally filled with them. 

 Thus ever3'body is enabled to enjoy them, and to enjoy them at all hours of the 

 day. 



The public men of Rome, at a later period in its history, were no less 

 mindful of the claims of art. They believed that the metropolis of a great 

 nation should be adorned with all the best products of civilization. We 

 are told by Pliny that when Caesar was dictator, he purchased, for 300,000 

 deniers, two Greek paintings, which he caused to be publicly displayed, 

 and that Agrippa placed many costly works of art in a hall which he built 

 and bequeathed to the Roman people. Constantine gathered together in 

 Constantinople the paintings and sculptures of the great masters, so that 

 the city, before its destruction, became a great museum, like Rome. 



The taste for works of art was generally prevalent throughout the 

 whole Mediterranean region in the days of the ancient civilizations, and 

 there is abundant reason to believe that there were prototypes of the 

 modern museum in Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, as well as in 

 Rome. Collections in natural history also undoubtedly existed, though 

 we have no positive descriptions of them. Natural curiosities, of course, 

 found their way into the private collections of monarchs, and were doubt- 

 less also in use for study among the savants in the Alexandrian museum . 

 Aristotle, in the fourth century before Christ, had, it is said, an enormous 

 grant of money for use in his scientific researches, and Alexander the 

 Great, his patron, "took care to send to him a great variety of zoological 

 specimens, collected in the countries which he had subdued," and also 

 ' ' placed at his dispo.sal several thousand persons, who were occupied 

 in hunting, fishing, and making the observations which were necessary 

 for completing his History of Animals." If human nature has not 



