72 Memorial of George Brocv 11 Goode. 



the people, and are more iutimatel}- intertwined with the poHcy of national 

 popular education. 



Sir Henry Cole, the working founder of the Department of Science and 

 Art, speaking of the purpose of the museums under his care, said to the 

 people of Birmingham in 1874: 



If you wish your schools of science and art to be effective, your health, the air, 

 and your food to be wholesome, your life to be long, your manufactures to improve, 

 your trade to increase, and your people to be civilized, you must have museums of 

 science and art to illustrate the principles of life, health, natiu-e, science, art, and 

 beaut}'. 



Again, in words as applicable to Americans of to-daj^ as to Britons in 



1874, said he: 



A thorough education and a knowledge of science and art are vital to the nation, 

 and to the place it holds at present in the ci\'ilized world. Science and art are the 

 lifeblood of successful production. All civilized nations are running a race wTith us, 

 and our national decline will date from the period when we go to sleep over the 

 work of education, science, and art. ^\^lat has been done is at the mere threshold 

 of the work yet to be done. 



The people's museum should be much more than a house full of speci- 

 mens in glass cases. It should be a house full of ideas, arranged with 

 the strictest attention to system. I once tried to express this thought 

 by saying: "An efficient educational museum ma)' be described as a col- 

 lection of instructive labels, each illustrated b}^ a well- selected specimen." 



The museum, let me add, should be more than a collection of speci- 

 mens, well arranged and well labeled. Like the library, it should be 

 under the constant supervision of one or more men, well informed, schol- 

 arly, and withal practical, and fitted by tastes and training to aid in the 

 educational work. I should not organize the museums primarily for the 

 use of people in their lar\-al or school-going stage of existence. The 

 pubhc school-teacher, with the illustrated text-books, diagrams, and other 

 appliances, has in these days a professional outfit which is usually' quite 

 sufficient to enable him to teach his pupils. 



School days last at the most onh* from four to fifteen 3'ears, and the)^ 

 end, with the majority of mankind, before their minds have reached the 

 stage of growth most favorable for the reception and assimilation of the 

 best and most useful thought. Why should we be crammed in the time 

 of infancy and kept in a state of mental star^-ation during the period 

 which follows, from maturity to old age — a state which is disheartening 

 and unnatural all the more because of the intellectual tastes which have 

 been stimulated and partially formed b}' school life? 



The museum idea is much broader than it was fifty or even twenty- 

 five years ago. The museum of to-day is no longer a chance assemblage 

 of curiosities, but rather a series of objects selected with reference to 

 their value to investigators, or their possibilities for public enlightenment. 

 The museum of the future may be made one of the chief agencies of the 

 higher civilization. 



