January 31, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



155 



to wMch they belong, other things being 

 equal, are the most useful and are usually 

 the most famous. 



[Since the founding in Florence by Cosmo 

 -de' Medici, at thie beginning of the sixteenth 

 "century, of the Museum of the Uffizi, per- 

 haps the oldest museum of art now in exist- 

 ence, every great city in the civilized world 

 has become the seat of a museum or gal- 

 lery of art. Besides the great general col- 

 lections of art, there are special museums de- 

 voted to the work of single masters, such as the 

 Thorwaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, and the 

 one at Brussels containing only the works of the 

 «ccentric painter, Wiertz ; the Donatello Mu- 

 seum in the Bargello at Florence, and the 

 Michael Angelo collections in the Florence 

 Academy of Fine Arts and in the Casa Buonar- 

 rotti.] 



B. Sistorical Museums. 



1. The Museum of History preserves 

 those material objects which are associated 

 with events in the history of individuals, 

 nations or races, or which illustrate their 

 condition at different periods in their na- 

 tional life. 



2. Every museum of art and every arch- 

 aeological museum is also a museum of his- 

 tory, since it contains portraits of his- 

 torical personages, pictures of historical 

 events, and delineations of customs, cos- 

 tumes, architecture and race characteristics. 



[Historical museums are manifold in charac- 

 ter, and of necessity local in interest. Some 

 relate to the histories of provinces and cities. 

 One of the oldest and best of these is the Pro- 

 vincial Museum of the Mark of Brandenburg in 

 Berlin. Of the same class are the Museum of 

 the City of Paris in the Hotel Canavelet, and 

 the museums of the City of Brussels and the 

 City of Antwerp. 



Others illustrate the early history of a race or 

 country, such as the Musee Gallo-Romain at St. 

 Germain, the Romano-German Museum at 

 Maiiiz, the Etruscan Museums at Florence aud 

 Cologna, the Ghizeh Museum near Cairo, the 

 Acropolis Museum at Athens, and the Mu- 

 seums iu Constantinople. 



Such institutions as the Bavarian National 

 Museum at Nuremberg and the German Na- 

 tional Museum in Munich have to do with later 

 periods of history, and there are throughout 

 Europe numerous collections of armor, furni- 

 ture, costumes and architectural and other ob- 

 jects, illustrating the life and arts of the mid- 

 dle ages and the later periods, which are even 

 more significant from the standpoint of the his- 

 torian than from that of the artist. Important 

 among these are the Royal Irish Academy in 

 Dublin, and the Musee des Thermes — the 

 ' Cluny Museum ' — in Paris. 



Many of the cathedrals of Europe are essen- 

 tially either civic or national museums, and 

 such edifices as Saint Paul's and Westminster 

 Abbey belong preeminently to the latter class. 

 There are biographical museums, either de- 

 voted to single men — like the Galileo, Dante, 

 and Buonarrotti Museums in Florence, or the 

 Goethe Museum in Weimar, and the Beethoven 

 Museum in Bonn; to the great men of a nation, 

 as the National Portrait Gallery of Great Brit- 

 ain, the German Valhalla at Ratisbon, etc. ; or 

 to great men of a special profession, such as the 

 Gallery of Artists in the Pitti Museum of Flor- 

 ence. 



In this connection would come also collections 

 of autographs and manuscripts (like the Dyce- 

 Forster Collection at South Kensington), and 

 collections of personal relics. 



Midway between the Museum of History and 

 that of Biography stands the Dynastic or Family 

 Museum, such as the Museum of the Hohen- 

 zollerns in Berlin, and that section of the Kunst- 

 historisches Museum in Vienna, which illustrates 

 the history of the Hapsburgs. The Musee His- 

 torique de Versailles is similar in its aims.] 

 C. Anthropological Museums. 



1. The Museum of Anthropology includes 

 such objects as illustrate the natural his- 

 tory of Man, his classiiication in races and 

 tribes, his geographical distribution, past 

 and present, and the origin, history and 

 methods of his arts, industries, customs and 

 opinions, particularly among primitive and 

 semi-civilized peoples. 



2. Museums of Anthropology and History 

 meet on common ground in the iield of 



