254 Memorial of George Broivn Goode. 



bition, in a fireproof building, and these are known to be carefully guarded by night 

 and day, there can be no need to wait long for treasures to flow into it. Above all, 

 let your men take care of the interior and not set out wasting their strength and 

 money on external grandeur and decoration. The inward built up rightly, the out- 

 ward will be added in due season.' 



Much will, of course, be given to any museum which has the con- 

 fideuce of the public — much that is of great value, and much that is 

 useless. 



The Trojans of old distrusted the Greeks when they came bearing 

 gifts. The museum administrator must be on his guard against every 

 one who proffers gifts. An unconditional donation may be usually 

 accepted without hesitation, but a gift coupled with conditions is, except 

 in very extraordinary cases, far from a benefaction. 



A donor demands that his collection shall be exhibited as a whole, and 

 kept separate from all others. When his collection is monographic in 

 character and very complete, it is sometimes desirable to accept it on 

 such conditions. As a rule, however, it is best to try to induce the 

 donor to allow his collections to be merged in the general series — each 

 object being separately and distinctively labeled. I would not be under- 

 stood to say that the gift of collections is not, under careful manage- 

 ment, a most beneficial source of increase to a public collection. I 

 simply wivSh to call attention to the fact that a museum which accepts 

 without reserve gifts of every description, and fails to reenforce thes^ 

 gifts by extensive and judicious purchasing, is certain to develop in an 

 unsystematical and ill-balanced way. 



Furthermore, unless a museum be supported by liberal and constantly 

 increasing grants from some State or municipal treasury, it will ulti- 

 mately become suffocated. It is essential that every museum, whether 

 of science or art, should from the start make provision for laboratories 

 and storage galleries as well as for exhibition halls. 



All intellectual work may be divided into two classes, the one tending 

 toward the increase of knowledge, the other toward its diffusion — the 

 one toward investigation and discovery, the other toward the education of 

 the people and the application of known facts to promoting their material 

 welfare. The efforts of learned men are sometimes applied solely to one 

 of these departments of effort, sometimes to both, and it is generally 

 admitted by the most advanced teachers that, for their students as well as 

 for themselves, the happiest results are reached by investigation and 

 instruction simultaneously. Still more is this true of institutions of 

 learning. The college which imparts only secondhand knowledge to its 

 students belongs to a stage of civilization which is fast being left behind. 

 The museum likewise must, in order to perform its proper functions, 

 contribute to the advancement of learning through the increase as well 

 as through the diffusion of knowledge. 



'Conway, Travels in South Kensington, p. 26. 



