PICTURE GALLERIES AND MUSEUMS 315 



may be divided into four kinds, according to the nature 

 of the public or private bodies by which they have 

 been set up and carried on. There are, first of all, 

 national museums maintained and continually increased 

 by the expenditure of a great State, and placed in the 

 capital city ; secondly, provincial or local museums, sup- 

 ported by a municipality or by local munificence ; thirdly, 

 academic museums, which are those related to the 

 instruction and investigations carried on in a university 

 or a school, and forming part of its regular provision for 

 study ; and, fourthly, the museums of private individuals 

 (which as a rule, become eventually transferred by gift or 

 purchase to some existing public museum). 



The word " museum " would, and often does, fitly 

 include picture galleries, but very usually in Great Britain 

 a museum is not considered as comprising a picture 

 gallery, and a picture gallery is treated and managed as 

 something distinct from " a museum." The distinction 

 is recognised in London, where we have as separate insti- 

 tutions the British Museum and the National Gallery. 

 Probably the distinct method of exhibiting and caring for 

 pictures, and the very large amount of special knowledge 

 connected with the reasonable employment of public funds 

 in the purchase of these very high-priced objects, as well 

 as the example of private collectors of pictures, are the 

 causes which have led in the past to the complete 

 separation of " picture galleries " from " museums." It 

 is, however, a curious fact that the British Museum 

 (which once possessed some oil paintings, now removed to 

 other public galleries) retains and expends money on its 

 splendid collections of water-colour pictures, drawings, 

 and engravings, whilst in the latter half of the last century 

 (in opposition to the custom of separating pictures from 

 other museum objects) there grew up in London, under 

 the State Department of Education, a vast collection of all 



