312 MUSEUMS 



London) for a " conversazione," enlivened by brass bands 

 and songs. 



Apollo was said to be the leader and master of the 

 Muses, but was not related to them. They were in origin 

 the "nymphs" or " genii " of mountain streams worshipped 

 by an ancient bardic race (resembling our own sweet-singing 

 Welsh folk), the Thracians. At first the number of the 

 Muses was indefinite, and they had no names. Then three 

 were named — one of Meditation (Melet^), one of Memory 

 (Mneme),andoneofSong(Aoide) — amuchprettierembodi- 

 ment of the impression made on a poetical mind by rock- 

 pools and cascades and leafy gorges than the formal and 

 redundant nine of later times. One can associate the 

 primitive three with a museum of natural history ; but the 

 later official goddesses, each insisting on her own depart- 

 ment of poetry, are too clearly representative of the all- 

 appropriating pretensions of literature in modern seats of 

 learning. They remind me of the enumeration of studies 

 which a dear old head of an Oxford college innocently 

 regarded as complete and reasonable when he assured me 

 that all branches of knowledge were fairly and equally 

 represented on the college staff. " We have," he said, 

 " a lecturer on Greek literature, one on Latin literature, 

 one on Greek history, one on Roman history, one on 

 classical philology, one on modern history, one on mathe- 

 matics and one on the natural sciences." What more, he 

 asked, could you v;ir.h for ? 



It appears that, without any special reference to the 

 attributes of the Muses, the word " museum " has been 

 adopted in recent times for a building in which collections 

 of works of art and specimens of natural history are 

 housed, and even for the collections themselves — in con- 

 sequence of the foundation by the Ptolemaic Kings of 

 Egypt of a splendid institution at Alexandria to which the 

 name museum (mouseion) was given. It included the 



