July 8, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



31 



But this state of affairs has sensibly van- 

 ished. Except in those horrifying aggi-e- 

 gates of things in heaven, and on tlie earth, 

 and in the waters under the earth, to which 

 a commercial spirit has j)romptly affixed the 

 name of dime museums, such disordered col- 

 lections are only met with in juvenile clubs 

 and country lyceums, where the bucolic ap- 

 petite feeds rejoicingly on wonders. To- 

 day enlightenment growing with each rising 

 and setting sun, curiosity whetted by the 

 unfailing experience and reading of every 

 hour, delight animated by renewed acces- 

 sions of pleasure at each new object of in- 

 terest, each new principle of nature, each 

 new sign of scientific conquest of the world 

 — all these, enlightenment, curiosity, de- 

 light, demand that the Museum shall be- 

 come a teacher, an expounder, a camera. 

 They demand from it speech and learning 

 and illustration, philosophy and order and 

 a deepened willingness to lead the daily run 

 of men and women into avenues of beaiaty, 

 into avenues of knowledge, into avenues of 

 stimulating suggestion. They ask that it 

 be a conspectus of things, such as embodies 

 the consensus of modern scholarship. 



To the great multitude which from cir- 

 cumstances of life, from neglect, from 

 penury, from the hard fulfillment of ma- 

 terial tasks, from lethargy, from congenital 

 deficiency, or from whatever other cause in 

 the wide prospect of contingency which be- 

 sets us all, have not received the gift of edu- 

 cation — to this multitude the great Museum 

 comes with some sort of recompense for 

 its denial. Great indeed ! above college or 

 university or pulpit or cathedral if from the 

 mind of that multitude, thankful and pa- 

 tient, it dispells darkness and by the mere 

 spectacle of art or nature or science, in its 

 luminous thought-giving halls, pours upon 

 them the light of recognition and of knowl- 

 edge. 



Yet the functions of a museum are far 

 from exhausted when it has expended all its 



available power to instruct and cultivate 

 the people. It must minister to the needs 

 of the investigator, stimulate his efforts and 

 publish his results. The Smithsonian In- 

 stitution of Washington, so far as it held 

 for years undeveloped and poorly material- 

 ized the germ of the present National Mu- 

 seum, began its most beneficent career as 

 an instrumentality of research. Its bene- 

 ficial relations to the public as a curator of 

 collections which it arranges, labels and 

 displays appeared long subsequent to its 

 office as a means of scientific investigation. 

 In fact, in the new idea assuming more large 

 and ambitious proportions each day, the 

 museum in its wide relation to the world 

 around it embodies the character of the col- 

 lector, expositor or lecturer and the original 

 investigator. 



In character museums can be as various 

 as the diverse fields of interest society or 

 nature present. Art museums, in a modern 

 sense, began with that of Cosmo de Medici 

 in Florence, at the beginning of the six- 

 teenth century, the Museum of the Uffizi. 

 These rapidly multiplied and with their 

 multiplication underwent specific differ- 

 entiation. Museums arose devoted to the 

 work of one man, as the Thorwaldsen Mu- 

 seum in Copenhagen, the Wiertz Museum 

 at Brussels, the Donatello and Michel 

 Angelo Museums in Florence. Museums 

 of art became cabinets of curiosities, 

 rarities, gems, handicraft, as the Cluny Mu- 

 seum in Paris, the Green Vaults at Dres- 

 den, the collection in the Tower of London, 

 the Museum of the Hohenzollerns in Berlin, 

 and that of the city of Paris, of all of which 

 Dr. Goode says : " Such collections cannot 

 be created. They grow in obedience to the 

 action of natural law, just as a tree or a 

 sponge may grow." Historical museums 

 attach themselves natui-ally to the fore- 

 going, and of these the list is long and intri- 

 cate. Groups represent the histories of 

 cities or provinces, as that of the Mark of 



