THE MUSEUMS OF THE ITTl RE 135 



museum than on the library shelves, for in the museum thej may be 

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

 forgotten by all except their custodian. 



Audubon's " Birds of North America" is a book which every one has 

 heard oi' and which every one wants to see at least once in his lifetime. 

 In a library, it probably is uot 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 attractively 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 di- 

 rections. Pictures are often better 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 masquerading in the dress of books. 



There is another kind of depository which, though in external fea- 

 tures 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 scientific tendencies of modern thought have permeated every de- 

 partment 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 gal- 

 lery is solely one of method of management. The Musee des Thermes, 

 the Cluny Museum in Paris is, notwithstanding its name, simply a gal- 

 lery of (anions objects. Its contents are arranged primarily with ref- 

 erence to their effect. The old monastery in which they are placed, 

 affords a magnificent example of the interior decorative art of the Mid- 

 dle Ages. 



The Cluny Museum is a most fascinating and instructive place. 1 

 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 at- 

 tractive would be ruinous to any museum. It is, more than any other 

 that 1 know, a collection arrauged from the stand-point of the artist. 

 The same material, in the hands of a Klennn or a Pitt Kivers, arranged 

 to show the history of human thought, would, however, be much more 

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

 its aesthetic allurements. 



Another collection of the same general character as the one just de- 

 scribed is the Soane Museum in London. Another, the famous collec 

 tion of crown jewels and metal work in the Green Vaults al Dresden, 

 i counterparl of which maj he cited in the collection in the Tower of 



London. Che .Museum of the I lolieii/.ollerns in Berlin and the .Museum 

 Of the Oity Of Paris are Of necessity Unique. Such collections can not 



