208 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. II. No. 34. 



omy of the Fine Arts in England,' as fol- 

 lows : 



' ' In addition to the broad principle tliat public 

 funds can never be better employed thiln in the estab- 

 lishment of institutions tending at once to refine the 

 feelings and to improve the industry of the whole 

 population, there is the subordinate but yet impor- 

 tant ground o£ inducing and enabling private persons 

 greatly to benefit the public by contributing towards 

 the same end." 



',' No country, ' ' he continues, ' ' has more cause to 

 be proud of that munificent spirit of liberality which 

 leads private individuals to present or bequeath to 

 the community valuable collections which it has been 

 the labor of their lives to form ; but to give due effect 

 to this liberality and to make that effect permanent, 

 it is necessary that the state step in and contribute 

 its sanction and its assistance ; and in many cases the 

 very munificence of spirit which has formed an im- 

 mense collection, and given birth to the wish to make 

 it national, has, by its own excess, made that wish 

 powerless without the active aid of the legislature. 

 The actual cost, and still more the inherent value of 

 the collections of Sloane, Elgin and Angerstein, made 

 them in reality gifts to the nation, although they 

 could never have been acquired (without gross in- 

 justice to the descendants of the large minded col- 

 lectors) had not Parliament made certain pecuniary 

 advances on account of them. Whilst but for the 

 foundation of the British Museum and of the National 

 Gallery, the collections of Cracherode and Holwell 

 Carr, of Beaumont, of Sir Joseph Banks and of King 

 George III., would have continued in the hands of 

 individuals." 



C. Public Appreciation of the Higher Function 



of Museums. 

 ' 1. Museums, libraries, reading rooms and 

 parks have been referred to by some wise 

 person as 'passionless reformers,' and no 

 better term can be employed to describe one 

 of the most important of their uses. 



The appreciation of the utility of mu- 

 seums to the great public lies at the foun- 

 dation of what is known as ' the modern 

 museum idea.' No one has written more 

 eloquently of the moral influence of mu- 

 seums than Mr. Ruskin, and whatever may 

 be thought of the manner in which he has 

 carried his ideas into practice in his work- 

 ingmen's museum, near Sheffield, his influ- 



ence has undoubtedly done much to stimu- 

 late the development of the ' people's mu- 

 seum.' The same spirit inspired Sir Henry 

 Cole when he said to the people of Bir- 

 mingham in 1874: 



' ' If you wish your schools of science and art to be 

 effective, your health, your air and your food to be 

 wholesome, your life to be long and your manufactures 

 to improve, your trade to increase and your people to 

 be civilized, you must have museums of science and 

 art to illustrate the principles of life, wealth, nature, 

 science, art and beauty." 



I myself never shall forget the words of 

 the late Sir Philip Cunliffe Owen, of South 

 Kensington, who said to me some years ago: 



"We educate our working people in the public 

 schools, give them a love for refined and beautiful ob- 

 jects, and stimulate in them a desire for information. 

 They leave school, go into the pursuits of town life, 

 and have no means provided for the gratification of 

 the tastes which they have been forced to acquire, and 

 are condemned to a monotonous, depressing life in 

 the midst of smoky chimneys and dingy walls. It is- 

 as much the duty of the government to provide them 

 mth museums and libraries for higher education as it 

 is to establish schools for their primary instruction." 



The development of the modern museum 

 idea is indeed due to Great Britain in much 

 greater degree than to any other nation, 

 and the movement dates from the period of 

 the great Exhibition of 1851, which marked 

 an epoch in the intellectual progress of 

 English speaking peoples. 



2. The future of the museum, as of all 

 similar public institutions, is inseparably 

 associated with the continuance of modern 

 civilization, by means of which those sources 

 of enjoyment which were formerly accessi- 

 ble to the rich only are now, more and 

 more, placed in the possession and owner- 

 ship of all the people (an adaptation of what 

 Jevons has called ' the principle of the mul- 

 tiplication of utility') with the result that 

 objects which -were formerly accessible only 

 to the wealthy, and seen by a very small 

 number of people each year, are now held 

 in common ownership and enjoyed by hun- 

 dreds of thousands. 



