MUSEUMS OF HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS. 617 



with it. . . . And, as I sate still under it, and let it alone, a living 

 hope arose in me, and a true voice arose in me which said, There 

 is a living God who made all things. And immediately the 

 cloud and the temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all, 

 and my heart was glad and I praised the Living God" (p. 13). 



If George Fox could speak as he proves in this and some other 

 passages he could write, his astounding influence on the con- 

 temporaries of Milton and of Cromwell is no mystery. But this 

 modern reproduction of the ancient prophet, with his " Thus saith 

 the Lord," " This is the work of the Lord," steeped in supernatu- 

 ralism and glorying in blind faith, is the mental antipodes of the 

 philosopher, founded in naturalism and a fanatic for evidence, to 

 whom these affirmations inevitably suggest the previous ques- 

 tion : " How do you know that the Lord saith it ? " " How do you 

 know that the Lord doeth it ? " and who is compelled to demand 

 that rational ground for belief without which, to the man of 

 science, assent is merely an immoral pretense. 



And it is this rational ground of belief which the writers of 

 the Gospels, no less than Paul, and Eginhard, and Fox, so little 

 dream of offering that they would regard the demand for it as a 

 kind of blasphemy. — Nineteenth Century. 



4»» 



MUSEUMS OF HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS. 



By KUDOLF VIKCHOW. 



THE publication of a plan for establishing, in the capital of the 

 German Empire, a " Museum of Popular Costumes and Prod- 

 ucts of Home Industry," has aroused so earnest and general an 

 interest that the realization of the thought may be regarded as 

 assured. It may, it is true, be possible to carry it out at first only 

 to a very limited extent, for neither sufficient means nor space can 

 be secured at once for setting up a comprehensive institution. 

 But the initial purpose of the authors of the enterprise will have 

 been accomplished when they have exhibited a series of objects 

 illustrative of their plan. They confidently hope that these ex- 

 amples will satisfy their fellow-citizens of the usefulness and even 

 the need of such a museum ; and that the Government will assist 

 it as it has assisted the technical museum, and will eventually take 

 it under official care. 



Herr von Gossler, the Prussian Minister of Worship, has 

 already given the costume museum free temporary quarters in the 

 old Industrial Academy, the present Hygienic Institute, in the 

 Kloster-Strasse. The first acquisitions, which were made in the 

 peninsula of Monkgut, in Riigen, satified him that profitable re- 



