The Miiseiinis of tJw fuhirc. 25 1 



ways through its power to stimidate interest in books, thus increasing 

 the general popularity of the library and enlarging its endowment. 



Many books, and valuable ones, would be required in the first kind 

 of museum work, but it is not intended to enter into competition with 

 the library. (When necessary, volumes could be duplicated.) It is 

 very often the case, however, that books are more useful and safer in the 

 museum than on the library shelves, for in the nuiseum they may be seen 

 daily by thousands, while in the library their very existence is forgotten 

 b}- all except their custodian. 



Audubon's Birds of North America is a l)Ook which everyone has 

 heard of and which everyone wants to see at least once in his lifetime. 

 In a library, it probably is not examined by ten persons in a year; in a 

 museum, the volumes exposed to view in a glass case, a few of the most 

 striking plates attractivel}' framed and hung upon the wall near at hand, 

 it teaches a lesson to every passer-by. 



The library may be called upon for aid by the museum in many direc- 

 tions. Pictures are often l^etter than specimens to illustrate certain ideas. 

 The races of man and their distribution can only be shown by pictures 

 and maps. Atlases of ethnological portraits and maps are out of place in 

 a library if there is a museum near by in which they can be displayed. 

 They are not even members of the class described by Lamb as ' ' books 

 which are not books. ' ' They are not books, but museum specimens mas- 

 querading in the dress of books. 



There is another kind of depository which, though in external features 

 so similar to the museum, and often confused with it in name as well as 

 in thought, is really very unlike it. This is the art gallery. The scien- 

 tific tendencies of modern thought have permeated every department of 

 human activity, even influencing the artist. Many art galleries are now 

 called museums, and the assumption of the name usually tends toward 

 the adoption in some degree of a scientific method of installation. The 

 difference between a museum and a gallery is solely one of method of 

 management. The Musee des Thermes — the Cluny Museum — in Paris 

 is, notwithstanding its name, simply a gallerj^ of curious objects. Its 

 contents are arranged primarily with reference to their effect. The old 

 monastery in which they are placed affords a magnificent example of 

 the interior decorative art of the Middle Ages. 



The Cluny Museum is a most fascinating and instructive place. I 

 would not have it otherwise than it is, but it will always be unique, the 

 sole representative of its kind. The features which render it attractive 

 v'ould be ruinous to any museum. It is, more than any other that I 

 know, a collection arranged from the standpoint of the artist. The same 

 material, in the hands of a Klemm or a Pitt-Rivers, arranged to show 

 the history of human thought, would, however, be much more interest- 

 ing, and, if the work were judiciously done, would lose none of its 

 aesthetic allurements. 



