I PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



familiar with the great advantages derivable from a collective exhibi- 

 tion, the work of building up a national museum was actively taken up 

 by Prof. Spencer F. Baird, at that time assistant-secretary of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, by whose tii-eless energy the great natural history 

 collections of the Institution had already been accumulated . There was 

 an abundance of material already on hand, an accumulation of riches, 

 but what was wanting was room to put it in. 



Kow, museums to-day differ in conception as much as does the writing 

 of history from the plans in vogue fifty years ago. If Macaulay was 

 among the first to draw the history of a x^eople, with but slight allusions 

 to kings and queens, and Green compiled the story of England, giving 

 sovereigns but a passing notice, museums to-day, though they include 

 in them such objects as are rare and jirecious which may have decked 

 kings and queens, no longer seek for such matter exclusively. They no 

 louger care for an audience which will simply gape and stare. It has 

 grown as rapidly in the minds of those who establish museums and those 

 who visit them that, although the pleasure to be derived from seeing a 

 beautiful or a rare object is not to be made light of, the emotional in- 

 stinct is not alone to be awakened. Imitative or inventive faculties 

 must be stimulated. It is the fostering of one element, the practical 

 one, that of positive object teaching, which all museums must strive 

 for. The leaven must work in the most sluggish mind, and the instruc- 

 tion of the masses must be constantly undertaken. The South Ken- 

 sington Museum has its highly {esthetic side, but it must be at one and 

 the same time not only the school of the artist but of the artisan. 



The National Museum in Washington, known perhaps for the first 

 time as the locality where the late President's inauguration ball took 

 place, is now open to the public. In its conception may be found one 

 of the grandest of all schemes for instruction. Such a i)h^u may be 

 comprehended in a certain way when it is stated that it takes man for 

 its central pivot, and around this is to revolve everything that man has 

 done in the past or in the i)resent in the w orld he lives m. Those depths 

 which he has plumbed in the seas will contribute their quota, and 

 where he has sought for light in the realms of heavenly space such 

 slight information as he has gleaned will all be presented here. Xot a 

 science is there which man has studied which will not find its represent- 

 ative objects. This museum, besides, is to enter into every detail of 

 human life, not only of the present but of the past, and is to be the 

 custodian of its future. Its mission is to keep going on collecting for 

 ever and ever. It will show to our great-great-grandchildren how their 

 forefathers dressed, how they lived, cooked and ate their food, how they 

 amused themselves, and 1992 will learn of the toys the children of 1882 

 played with. There is nothing, ever so trivial, which is thought un- 

 worthy of notice. The study of the evolution of anything is supposed 

 to impart its lesson, and the spinning-wheel of a past time is to lead up 

 by many stages to the more perfected meclianisms of today. Such a 

 grand work as is prospected will, of course, take years to perfect. The 



(564) 



