The Aims and Scope of a Provincial Museum. 27 



schools, and their various learned societies were full of life and 

 energy. Their City Council, which had shown so much vigour 

 in many departments, was about to erect a new municipal museum 

 and art gallery which, they hoped, would be worthy of this 

 progressive community. Their society had made arrangements 

 for handing over its collections to this museum when it was 

 ready to receive them. Nothing could be more fitting than at 

 this important juncture they should seek and obtain the advice 

 and guidance of their distinguished guest of that evening. 



Dr. ScHARP^F, at the outset of his address, referred to the 

 origin of museums and their gradual evolution. He said the 

 first scientific museum actually founded was begun at Oxford in 

 1667 by Elias Ashmole, which to the present day was known as 

 the Ashmolean Museum. They found that a little later Sir 

 Henry Sloane had gathered together a great collection of 

 curiosities as well as books and manuscripts. On his death in 

 1 749 this vast store (jf valuable property was bequeathed to the 

 nation, and formed the nucleus of what was still the finest and 

 largest museum in the world — the British Museum, In the same 

 century this newly-opened vista of popular education spread like 

 wildfire through almost every country in Europe. In Ireland the 

 Royal Dublin Society took the lead, and actually opened to the 

 public the doors of its newly-established museum in February, 

 1733. Reference was then made by the lecturer to the great 

 exhibition in London in 185 1, as the outcome of which a great 

 system of educational museums arose throughout the United 

 Kingdom. There were now nearly 200 of them in the British 

 islands, most of them being active and useful. The old popular 

 conception of a museum as a repository for curiosities had passed 

 away, and a new order of things had been established. The 

 new functions of museums were now thoroughly understood, and 

 if people could not always carry out their ideas they at any rate 

 knew what they wanted. Dealing with the construction of a 

 museum building, Dr. Scharff said few museums had not 



