438 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1880. 



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 outward will be added in due season.' 1 * 



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

 dence of the public — much that is of great value, and much that is use- 

 less. 



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 wish to call attention to the fact that a museum which accepts 

 without reserve gifts of every description, and fails to re-enforce these 

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

 au un systematical and ill-balanced way. 



Furthermore, unless a museum be supported by liberal and constantly 

 increasing grants from some State or muuicipial 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 

 towards the increase of knowledge, the other towards 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 stu- 

 dents as well as for themselves, the happiest results are reached by in- 

 vestigation and instruction simultaneously. Still more is this true of 

 institutions of learning. The college which imparts only second-hand 

 knowledge to its students belongs to a stage of civilization which is fast 

 being left behiud. 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. 



We speak of educational museums and of the educational method of 

 installation so frequently that there may be danger of inconsistency in 

 the use of the term. An educational museum, as it is usually spoken 



Conway : Travels in South Kensington, 26. 



