JULY 2 1, 1892 J 



NA TUKJi 



281 



problem, as we all know, is not an easy one. It has, however, 

 to be faced in most of the museums of this country. Whether 

 it has been solved or not in Manchester, it is not for me to say. 

 Prof. Huxley, in addressing us some years ago on the question 

 of technical education, said that he did not know exactly what 

 shape it should take, but that Manchester was a good place in 

 which to make an experiment for the good of the Commonweal. 

 Fiat expeHinevium in corpore Mancunensi. The result of our 

 experiment in museum organization is here and speaks for 

 itself. 



Before, however, I deal with this special attempt to meet the 

 needs of Manchester I must touch on the general question of 

 museums. 



The Museum Idea and its Place in Culture. 



A museum was to the Greeks a place haunted by the Muses, 

 and in a secondary sense a building in which liberal studies were 

 carried on such as that at Alexandria, which was a great 

 University endowed by the State, divided into colleges, and 

 frequented by men of science and letters. This museum 

 included picture galleries and statuary, and it is not at all im- 

 probable that it contained also collections of Natural History. 

 Aristotle, it must be noted, made vast collections, which he 

 used in his history of animals, by the aid of his friend Alexander 

 the Great, and it is hard to believe that the impulse which he 

 gave to the study of natural history should not have been felt in 

 Alexandria, where his memory was venerated. With the de- 

 struction of this museum in the days of Aurelian in the last 

 quarter of the third century after Christ, the name as applied to 

 a public institution gradually dropped out of use, and was only 

 revived with the revival of learning in the West in the times of 

 the Renascence. We owe the first idea of a great national 

 museum of science and art to the "New Atlantis " of Lord Bacon, 

 the first scientific museum in this country to Elias Ashmole, 

 who founded the museum which bears his name in 1667 at 

 Oxford. It consisted mainly of the natural history collections 

 made by the Tradescants, and miscellaneous objects of 

 antiquarian interest, which in the course of time swamped the 

 natural history. Now, under the care of Mr. Arthur Evans, 

 reorganized and rearranged, it is taking its place among the 

 educational institutions of the University. It was not until 82 

 years after the foundation of the Ashmolean that museums were 

 recognized by the Government of this country in the establish- 

 ment of the British Museum in 1749 by Act of Parliament. 



The modern museum is the outcome of the Renascence, and 

 must keep pace with th«e great accessions to our knowledge 

 of the history of Nature and of Man which distinguish the 

 new from the old learning of to-day. If it cease to grow it is 

 dead, and should be removed. Ttiere is no finality in museum 

 work any more than there is finality in the acquisition of 

 knowledge. 



The Muses should not be forgotten in museum arrangements, 

 and form, beauty, and symmetry should be studied as well as 

 the outlines of a rigid classification. As an illustration of this 

 I would refer to the groups of birds in the Natural History 

 Museum at South Kensington, or to some of those in the 

 museum at Newcastle. " A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." 

 There is no reason why things beautiful in themselves should be 

 treated so as to repel rather than attract. The element of fit 

 association, too, is one of the important principles. In the case 

 of the temporary exhibition of pictures in the Academy, the fit 

 association of subjects cannot be studied, but there is no reason 

 why in an art gallery the Muses should be scared by a Venus 

 being placed close to local worthies, or a Madonna close to a 

 party of Bacchanals. In museums as in armies the results are 

 largely dependent on the leaders, who leave the impress of their 

 personal character on their commands. The impulse to the new 

 learning given by Ashmole, Hunter, Flower, and by Franks 

 and Newton in this country, by Leidy, Dana, Marsh, and 

 Agassiz in the United States, will last as long as the museums 

 which they founded and organized. In Paris the name of 

 Cuvier is inseparably bound up with the Museum of Natural 

 History in the Jardin des Plantes. In Berlin the Ethnological 

 Museum, and the anatomical collection at the Charite, will keep 

 fresh the memory of Bastian and Virchow in a far distant future 

 when the names of the great political leaders of these times are 

 fading away. It is, therefore, of primary impirtance to choose 

 good leaders for museum work, and to offer those inducements 

 which will command the services of the best men. 



The Old Local Museums\in Britain. 



When I first began to study the question, some thirty years 

 ago, most of the local collections in this country were in a 

 deplorable state. They consisted largely of miscellaneous 

 objects huddled together with more or less care, and more or 

 less — generally le^s — named. In one you saw a large plaster 

 cast of a heathen divinity, surrounded by stuffed crocodiles, 

 fossils, and models of Chinese junks, which looked like tha 

 offerings of devout worshippers. In another I remember a 

 small glass case containing a fragment of human skull, labelled 

 "human skull," and a piece of oatcake, labelled "oatcake," 

 while underneath was a general label with the inscription, " A 

 piece of human skull very much like a piece of oatcake." In a 

 third wax models were exhibited of a pound weight of veal, 

 pork, and mutton chops, codfish, turnips, parsnips, carrots, 

 and potatoes, which must have cost the values of their 

 originals fifty times over. They bad labels explaining how 

 much flesh and fat they would make — theoretically — for we 

 who are either lean or fat know that the personal equation 

 has to do with the actual results. They were as carefully 

 modelled as the most delicate preparations of human anatomy. 

 I quote them merely as illustrations of the misapplication of 

 time, money, and museum space. 



In many collections art was not separated from natural history, 

 nor from ethnology, and the eye took in at a glance the picture 

 of a local worthy, a big fossil, a few cups and saucers, a piece 

 of cloth from the South Seas, a model of a machine, and pro- 

 bably also a mummy. These objects would be all very well in 

 their places, but being matter in the wrong place, they were 

 covered by the Palmerstonian definition of rubbish. Such col- 

 lections as these neither please nor instruct. They have no more 

 right to the name of a museum than a mob has to be called an 

 army. Most of us, I think, are acquainted with this type of 

 collection, which is rapidly becoming extinct with the spread of 

 knowledge. I merely quote them as examples of a state of 

 things from which we have fortunately escaped. 



The Place of Museums in the New Learning. 



The rapid increase of knowledge makes it more and more 

 necessary for museums to be organized, so as to be in harmony 

 with the swiftly changing conditions. The study of things as 

 well as books is daily growing in importance. The historian, 

 for example, formerly content with written records, now counts 

 the results of archzeological discovery among the most valuable 

 and trustworthy of his materials in dealing with the history of 

 the past. The story of Ancient Greece is incomplete if the 

 explorations at Mykenae and Ilios, in Athens, in the Greek 

 islands, and in the Egyptian cities and tombs be left out of 

 account. To the historian the collections of Schliemann, Flinders 

 Petrie, and others are most precious. Nor are they less precious 

 to him who studies art, or to the ethnologist who studies 

 civilization, or to the naturalist who is interested in the distribu- 

 tion of the various types of mankind, or to the technologist who 

 looks to the evolution of handicrafts. The public mind is be- 

 ginning to realize the value of well-organized museums for 

 purposes of special research as well as of general culture, and 

 thus they appeal to the interest of the many, while books and a 

 taste for books interest a narrower circle. To contemplate in 

 the British Museum the frieze of the Pantheon is of itself an 

 education in Greek art and in Greek ideas of beauty, and the 

 most unlettered visitor to the Natural History Galleries cannot 

 fail to carry away new ideas about the realm of nature. It is 

 obvious, therefore, that in museums we have an instrument of 

 great educational value, if they be organized to meet the in- 

 creasing demands of modern investigation. 



The Classification of the Museums of To-day. 



The museums of to-day fall naturally into four groups. (\\ 

 The Art Museum, which includes also antiquities arranged from 

 the art point of view. (2) The Natural History, which illus- 

 trates the history of nature in its widest sense, and of man in 

 his physical aspects. (3) The Archaeological and Ethnological, 

 which deals with the works of man and his progress in civiliza- 

 tion. (4) The Technical, in which objects are arranged in 

 relation to industry. The leading idea of the first is art, of the 

 second nature, of the third civilization, and of the last the con- 

 quest of mind over matter. 



NO. II 86, VOL. 46] 



