THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. I07 



I have hurriedly and imperfectly laid down, there must be a perma- 

 nent paid curator. Voluntary assistance was valuable, and we have 

 had splendid examples of what it can do, but we cannot depend on 

 that for any long continuance. A museum would never be what it 

 ought or do all that might legitimately be expected of it until the 

 curator's profession was properly remunerated. 



This brings me to the last point I wish to make. How was the 

 permanence of a museum like this to be secured ? I have said in 

 the early part of this paper that museums were once all the private 

 property of individuals. Then associations or societies of individuals 

 took them up. Now it was gradually being recognized that it was 

 the duty of government and municipahties to maintain them. Nearly 

 all the London societies formerly possessed museums, but as the col- 

 lections grew the expense of keeping them became a burden, and 

 they had been gradually transferred to government or other institu- 

 tions. 



The marvellous spread of free libraries, partly state supported 

 and rate supported in our Dominion, especially in this Province, 

 which had taken place during the last few years, appeared to be 

 only the prelude to museums maintained in the same way. The 

 underlying idea of a library and a museum was precisely the same. 

 They were both instruments of intellectual culture, the one as much 

 as the other. That idea has been illustrated on a magnificent scale 

 in the great national Library and Museum in London, and on this 

 side of the ocean at Washington in the great Smithsonian Institute, 

 Library and Museum. I hope that we shall soon find that an 

 orderly well arranged and well-labelled museum would be acknow- 

 ledged as a necessity in any well considered scheme of educational 

 progress. Then the museum and the library would go hand in 

 hand as necessary complements to each other in the advancement 

 of science and art, and the intelligent development generally. A 

 book without illustrations is of comparatively little value in teaching 

 many of the most important subjects now comprised in general edu- 

 cation. A museum should be a book, or rather a library of books, 

 illustrated not by pictures only but by actual specimens of the ob- 

 jects named. The great principle of expending public money upon 

 purposes of education, though comparatively new, is now con- 

 ceded upon all sides. The cost of supporting a few really efificient 



