RELATION TO COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE. 321 



able to the general public, for the testing of mechanical inventions, 

 as the laboratories are for the testing chemical products and manufac- 

 tures. Certainly, whether in connection with industrial museums, or 

 with other institutions, it is very desirable that ingenious workmen and 

 others of limited means should be able, at a moderate cost, to ascertain 

 confidentially the value of embryo inventions before expending labour, 

 time, and money on their perhaps unwise elaboration. Meanwhile, 

 however, I only name the workshop as a subsidiary appendage to the 

 laboratory. 



VI. The libraries of our industrial museums, as at present organised, 

 are chiefly intended for the officers of these institutions, including to 

 some extent the students in daily attendance for each session. Nor is it 

 necessary or desirable than an industrial museum should provide reading 

 for the general public, which is, or, if it chooses, may be , well cared for 

 in the way of libraries. But a collection of books on applied science in 

 French, German, and English, including the records of the patent offices 

 or similar institutions of the civilised countries of the world, geographi- 

 cal, geological, and mining maps and sections, illustrated works on 

 architecture, ship-building, and machinery, and the like, would greatly 

 add to the utility of an industrial museum , if arranged in its library, so 

 as to be accessible for reference and consultation'by practical men. Such 

 a library, it cannot be doubted, would receive many donations, and in all 

 likelihood would prove the least costly, though not the least useful, com- 

 plement of the museum. 



Such, then, is the fourfold idea embodied in the galleries, labora- 

 tory, library, and lecture-room, which together constitute an industrial 

 museum. As the counterpart of this, the merchants of the world have 

 a fourfold duty to discharge : — 



1. To gather workable materials from the ends of the earth. 



2. To send forth finished products, derived from those, to the four 

 quarters of the heavens. 



3. To employ the most perfect mechanical and chemical appliances 

 which can change the one into the other, and facilitate their transmission 

 throughout the world. 



4. To encourage new arts and hope for still newer ones. 

 Before I close, let me indulge in two brief moralitdngs. 



What are the ends of commercial enterprise ? I will name but two : 

 — 1. The making of money. 2. The civilising of the world. 



Firstly, I suppose you will not blame me for saying that the immediate 

 end is the making of money, or for adding, that this money-making seems 

 to me one of the most honest, innocent, and pleasant of occupations. I 

 am not fortified in this original opinion by remembrance of any passage 

 in Adam Smith's ' Wealth of Nations,' which indeed I never read. 1 am 

 thinking of a passage in one of the writings of the poet Southey, who, 

 like myself, never lost the pleasure of money-making by having a surfeit 



VOL. IV. r> D 



