620 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



goods will, therefore, close the gaps between ethnological and pre- 

 historic museums on the one side and between ethnological and 

 historical museums on the other side. It will do for our own peo- 

 ple what ethnological museums have done in relation to foreign 

 peoples, particularly to savages; it will seek out objects of the 

 present as historical museums have recovered them from the 

 tombs and dwelling-places of primitive times ; and will give for 

 the common life and conduct of the peoples what historical mu- 

 seums have furnished as to their ecclesiastical and courtly life. 



We have a right, therefore, to expect much from the museum 

 of costumes and household goods. Experience has contradicted 

 the objection that it is too late to carry out such a purpose. Our 

 beginnings have already taught us that even in Germany one has 

 only to inquire and exert himself earnestly to obtain a great 

 number of objects of antique tradition. In other countries brill- 

 iant success has been achieved, especially in Sweden, which, 

 through the indefatigable industry of Herr Hazelius, has had a 

 model museum of this kind in Stockholm for many years. There 

 are also notable collections of similar character in Moscow and 

 Amsterdam ; but the expectations should not be raised too high. 

 Thus it is evident that what we perhaps too ambitiously call 

 national costumes do not reach back into prehistoric times. 

 There was then nothing like them. Such characteristic styles 

 can exist only among those peoples of whom some of the tribes 

 have continued in a kind of natural condition, and these are 

 found in Europe only among those of the Finnish stock. With 

 all the Aryan peoples of Europe the national costume is a rela- 

 tively late, almost a modern, product. In Germany such cos- 

 tumes can be found only in limited districts, sometimes only in 

 particular villages, and are seldom of earlier origin than the fif- 

 teenth century. Not a few of them were first fixed by the Refor- 

 mation. The actual collection of the material may open the way 

 to comparative studies that will furnish earlier dates, but this is 

 likely to be the case only as applies to single parts of the dress. 



Men are more permanent in their house construction, methods 

 of tillage and of domesticating animals, in their furnishings and 

 tools, than in their dress. Articles of stone, bone, horn, and clay, 

 in particular, incline to be fixed in character. The groundwork 

 of house arrangement persists through all the additions which the 

 extension of the scale and the larger estate may entail ; and it is, 

 in respect to the family, as permanent as are the topography and 

 flora to whole districts. 



Whole houses can hardly be brought into museums except as 

 they may be represented by models or drawings. Consideration 

 will be given to these. Rooms and chambers may be introduced 

 in complete arrangement, and we hope at the opening of the 



