The Pruiciplcs of Museum Aduiinistratioii. 239 



gross injustice lo the (Icscc-iidaiits of tlie lartre-minde.l collectors) had not Parlia- 

 ment made certain pecuniary advances on account of them. While but for the 

 foundation of the British Museum and of the National Gallery, the collections of 

 Cracherode and Holwell Carr, of Beaumont, of vSir Joseph Banks, and of King George 

 III would have continued in the hands of individuals. 



e. PUBLIC APPKECIATION OF THE HIGHER FUNCTION OF MUvSKUMS. 



1. Museums, libraries, reading rooms, and parks have been referred 

 to by some wise person as "passionless reformers," and no l)etter term 

 can be emploj'ed to describe one of the most important of their uses. 



CoRiMKNT.— The appreciation of the utility of museums to the great pulslic lies 

 at the foundation of what is known as "the modern museum idea." No one has 

 written more elocjuently of the moral influence of museums than Mr. Ruskin, and 

 whatever may be thought of the manner in which he has carried his idea into prac- 

 tice in his workingmen's museum, near vSheffield, his influence has undoubtedly 

 done much to stimulate the development of the "people's museum." The same 

 spirit inspired vSir Henry Cole when he said to the people of Birmingham in 1894: 

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

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

 improve, your trade to increase, and your people to be civilized, you nmst have 

 museums of science and art to illustrate the principles of life, wealth, nature, 

 science, art, and beauty." 



And I never shall forget the words of the late Sir Philip Cunliffe Owen, who said 

 to me some years ago: "We educate our working people in the pviblic schools, gi\e 

 them a love for refined and beautiful objects, and stinmlate them in a desire for 

 information. They leave school, go into the pursuits of town life, and have no 

 means provided for the gratification of the tastes they have been forced to acquire. 

 It is as much the duty of the Government to provide them with nmseums and 

 libraries for their higher education as it is to establish schools for their primary 

 instruction." 



2. The development of the modern museum idea is due to Great Britain 

 in much greater degree than to any other nation, and the movement dates 

 from the period of the great exhibition of 1851, which is recognized upon 

 the western side of the Atlantic as marking an epoch in the intellectual 

 progress of English-speaking peoples. -The munificence with wdiich the 

 national museums of Great Britain have been supported, and the liberal- 

 minded manner in which they have been utilized in the cause of popular 

 education and for the promotion of the highest intellectual ideals, has 

 been and still is a source of inspiration to all in America who are laboring 

 for similar results. 



3. The future of the museum, as of all similar public institutions, is 

 inseparably associated with the continuance of modern civilization, ])y 

 means of which those sources of enjoyment which were formerly accessi- 

 ble to the rich only, are now, more and more, placed in the possession 

 and ownership of all the people (an adaption of what Jevons has called 

 ' ' the principle of the multiplication of utility " ) , with the result that 

 objects which were formerly accessible only to the wealthy, and seen by 



