436 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1889. 



be created. They grow in obedience to the action of natural law, just 

 as a tree or a sponge may grow. 



The city which is in the possession of such an heirloom is blessed 

 just as is the possessor of an historic surname, or he who inherits the 

 cumulative genius of generations of gifted forefathers. The possession 

 of one or a score of such shrines does not, however, free any community 

 from the obligation to form a museum for purposes of education and sci- 

 entific research. 



The founding of a public museum in a city like Brooklyn, is a work 

 whose importance can scarcely be overestimated. The founders of in- 

 stitutions of this character do not often realize how much they are doing 

 for the future. Opportunity such as that which is now open to the 

 members of the Brooklyn Institute occur only once in the lifetime of a 

 nation. It is by no means improbable that the persons now in this room 

 have it in their power to decide whether in the future intellectual prog- 

 ress of this nation, Brooklyn is to lead or to follow far in the rear. 



Many of my hearers are doubtless familiar with that densely popu- 

 lated wilderness, the east end of London, twice as large as Brooklyn, 

 yet with scarce an intellectual oasis in its midst. Who can say how 

 differeut might have been its condition today if Walter Besant's apos- 

 tolic labors had begun a century sooner, and if the People's Palace, 

 that wonderful materialization of a poet's dream, had been for three 

 generations brightening the lives of the citizens of the Lower Hamlets 

 and Hackney. 



Libraries and museums do not necessarily spring up where they are 

 needed. Our governments, Federal, State, and municipal, are not 

 "paternal " in spirit. They are less so even in practical working than 

 in England, when, notwithstanding the theory that all should be left to 

 private effort, the government, under the leadership of the late Prince 

 Consort and of the Prince of Wales, has done wonderful things for all 

 the provincial cities, as well as for London, in the encouragement of 

 libraries, museums, art, and industrial education. 



However much the state may help, the private individual must lead, 

 organize, and prepare the way. " It is universally admitted," said the 

 Marquis of Lansdowne in 1847, "that governments are the worst of 

 cultivators, the worst of manufacturers, the worst of traders," and Sir 

 Kobert Peel said in similar strain that "the action of government is tor- 

 pid at best." 



In beginning a museum the endowment is of course the most essen- 

 tial thing, especially in a great city like Brooklyn, which has a high 

 ideal of what is due to the intelligence ot its populace and to the civic 

 dignity. 



Unremunerated service in museum administration, though it maybe 

 enthusiastically offered and conscientiously performed, will in the end 

 fail to be satisfactory. Still more is it impossible for a respectable 



