[ XX ] 



-interred an inestimable boon on this community, by directing their attention 

 thus early to procuring good casts of the most celebrated Statues and Bassi- 

 Relievi of ancient and modern times ; and I most earnestly trust that the 

 Gallery of Sculpture, about to be thrown open, may be destined to form the 

 foundation of a Museum of the Fine Arts, suited alike to the wants and the 

 resources of the Australian Continent. 



It is the first step at any rate, as you have pointed out, towards the 

 establishment of a School of Design, in which the future artificers and manufac- 

 turers of Victoria may be imbued with purity of taste and correct principles 

 of beauty. 



Its enjoyments, however, will extend to all classes and all ages, from the 

 Students in our Schools or at our University, who may here realize the poetic 

 fancies of classical literature, and gather illustrations of what they read in 

 Hesiod or in Homer, in Virgil or in Ovid to the accomplished citizen of the 

 world, who will rejoice to be thus reminded in this distant realm, where he has 

 perhaps come to spend the evening of his life, of those forms of beauty and 

 masterpieces of art, with which he was so familiar in younger days amid kindred 

 climes of Greece or Italy. 



Congratulating the Trustees on the auspicious commencement of so grand 

 a design, I now formally declare the Museum of Art open to the Public. 



The history of the Institution, thus brought down to the 24th of June, 

 1861, is continued in the Prefaces to the First and Supplemental Catalogues, 

 which follow. 



