NA TURR 



^^1 



THURSDAY, JANUARY lo, 1878 



THE SALARIES OF THE OFFICERS IN THE 

 BRITISH MUSEUM 



THE inadequacy of the salaries of the officers of the 

 British Museum has long been a standing grievance. 

 It is manifestly impossible to give any valid reasons why 

 the literary and scientific men of this great national estab- 

 lishment should not receive emoluments at least equal 

 to those granted in the ordin try branches of the Civil 

 Service. The obstinacy of the trustees in clinging to 

 obsolete principles of priority, and in endeavouring to 

 keep entirely in their own hands the right of nomination 

 to all the more important posts, has, no doubt, been the 

 main cause why the Treasury have until recently refused 

 to do justice to a most meritorious and ill-treated branch 

 of the public service. From the '' Correspondence be- 

 tween the Trustees of the British Museum and the 

 Treasury," which has lately been issued as a Parliamentary 

 Paper, we are glad to find that in this instance, as on 

 former occasions, the present Ministry has been induced 

 to do justice where their predecessors in office have per- 

 sistently ignored righteous claims. After a long corre- 

 spondence, commenced in May, 1876, and extending over 

 some fifteen months, it seems to hav^ been finally settled 

 that the salaries of the keepers of the various depart- 

 ments shall be raised to 750/. per annum afcer five years' 

 service, instead of stopping at 600/., the former limit, and 

 that the salaries of the assistant-keepers shall rise to 600/. 

 after five years' service, instead of being restricted 

 to 450/. as heretofore. The assistants in the various 

 departments will, in future, be divided into two classes, 

 the first, or upper class, with salaries commencing at 250/. 

 per annum, and rising by annual increments of 15/. to 

 450/. ; those of the second, or lower class, commencing 

 at 120/., and rising by increments of 10/. to 240/. This 

 will create a considerable general improvement in the 

 position of these subordinates, of whom the junior 

 assistants, as they are called, have hitherto commenced 

 at 90/., and the senior assistants have never risen beyond 

 400/. But the trustees have agreed to regard the new 

 second class for the future as an " educational class," 

 from which those persons who show special aptitude for 

 the work of the d fiferent departments may be promoted 

 to the first class, whilst those who have no extraordinary 

 abilities must remain content with the maximum salary of 

 the lower class. Another concession that the trustees 

 have been compelled to make in order to obtain the 

 above-mentioned advantages is a reduction in the number 

 of the assistants of the upper class. The Treasury justly 

 point out to the trustees that the scheme of having a first 

 class of assistants double the number of that of the 

 second class, is " inconsistent with all ordinary classi- 

 fication," and that the comparative numbers of the two 

 classes " ought to be exactly reversed." This the 

 trustees have, as it appears, somewhat unwillingly 

 undertaken to effect, by a gradual reduction of the num- 

 ber of first-class assistants as vacancies occur, and by 

 making all future appointments into the second class, 

 except when " an opportunity occurs of securing the ser- 

 vices of a person possessing very special qualifications." 

 Vol, xvii. — No, t^ 



A third point which the trustees " are prepared to re- 

 consider " is the number of keeperships, now amounting 

 to thirteen, and in order that the Treasury may have 

 greater control in this matter, they have undertaken not 

 to fill up any keepership which may hereafter become 

 vacant, " without the previous concurrence of the Trea- 

 sury." A still more important proposal made by the 

 Treasury and " conceded by the trustees," is that the 

 position of keeper should be considered as a " staff ap- 

 pointment, to which no officer withm the Museum should 

 have any right of succession by seniority." This " con- 

 cession" will, we trust, do away with the practice of 

 putting round men into square holes, in order to obtai \ 

 for them an additional saliry, which in former years ha , 

 we fear, been followed in some instances at the British 

 Museum. 



One remaining point, which has much exercised the 

 well-known economy of the Secretary of the Treasury, 

 we are pleased to see he has been obliged to give up It 

 was proposed that the keepers who occupy the residences 

 attached to the British Museum ought to give up a certain 

 portion of their salaries in lieu of rent. In reply to this in- 

 genious suggestion, the trustees very justly urge that those 

 keepers vho res de on the premises have important duties 

 to per orm, in having to take in turn the general charge of 

 the whole museum under the principal librarian, for which 

 the accommodation of a residence is no more than a fair 

 equivalent. This contenti in was ultimately allowed to 

 prevail, and on the whole, we think, there is every reason 

 to b^ grateful to the Government for the improvements 

 effected by the new schecriC in the position of the employes 

 at the Britisli Museum. Even in these hard times it 

 cannot be said that a place of 750/. per annum with a 

 good residence attached and a pension in future when 

 work is no longer possible, is not such a prospect as may 

 well attract some of the cleverest youths of the period 

 who have a leaning towards literature or science to seek 

 the place of "junior assistant" in the British Museum. 



JULES VERNE 



Hector ServadaCf or the Career 0/ a Comet. — From the 

 Earth to the Moon. — Around the Moon.— Twenty 

 Thousand Leagues tender the Sea. — Around the World 

 in Eighty Days. — The Fur Country. — A Wijtter amid 

 the Ice, &c., &c. (London : Sampson Low and Co.) 



THESE remarkable works, which we owe to the 

 genius of Jules Verne, the first-named being that 

 which has last appeared, are well deserving of notice at 

 our hands, for in the author we have a science teacher 

 of a new kind. He has forsaken the beaten track, bien 

 entendu; but acknowledging in him a travelled Frenchman 

 with a keen eye and vivid imagination — and no slight 

 knowledge of the elements of science — we do not see how 

 he could have more usefully employed his talents. He 

 will at once forgive us for saying that when we compare 

 his romances of the ordinary type, such as " Martin Paz," 

 with those we have given above, we think that he, as well 

 as his readers, is to be congratulated upon the new line he 

 has opened out. 



There have been many books before his time in which 

 the interest has centred in some vast convulsion of nature, 

 or in nature generally being put out of joint, but in these 



