142 The Origin and Development of Museums.  [March, 
and collections for some time, till both were ready for the study 
and use of the public, just as an artist is not accessible till his 
work is accomplished. : 
The great impulse given to science by Cuyier was felt through 
the whole world, and every naturalist realized the necessity of a 
renewed and earnest study to enable him to follow the rapid 
progress of the master. The new way led directly to a compar- 
ative anatomy as basis for a comparative zoölogy. The admi- 
rable collections for this kind of study made and established in 
the Jardin des Plantes by Cuvier and his faithful associate, Lau- 
rillard, were at the time unrivaled, and show the immense 
amount of labor performed before the results could be published. 
The aim of Cuvier was so expansive that even his masterpiece, 
the Règne Animal, was considered by him only as a tool neces- 
sary to be manufactured before he could work out the principles 
of natural history according to his ideas. 
The result of this kind of revolution soon manifested itself in 
every museum, and the French ones under the eye of the master 
were far in advance. The new era developing the rights of man 
led directly to the necessity that everybody should be enabled to 
have his share in this advance of science. Museums were again 
thrown open to the public, and the peculiar taste for exhibition 
and show made the French museum, for more than a quarter of 
a century, the leading and most refined in the world ; the other 
countries followed more or less slowly but steadily in their own 
way. It is a remarkable fact that even in the Jardin des Plantes, 
where the low, old-fashioned rooms were very soon overcrowded 
with objects, it was apparent that such a multitude of facts could 
be neither agreeable nor useful for public instruction. It was 
deemed advisable to prepare a separate collection, selected and 
arranged in a manner to be interesting to the public, which, being 
prepared according to French taste, was superior to all former 
ones. It is proper to mention here that just at this time, when 
Paris was the centre of science for the world, one of the most 
prominent of the army of ardent disciples of Cuvier was a young 
student from Neufchatel, Switzerland, — Louis Agassiz. The 
time of Cuvier is the date of the beginning of most of the large 
museums now in existence; some of them, indeed, were started 
before, but in a different and far inferior manner, so that few of 
the contents could be retained when the new start began which 
influenced so powerfully those of London, Vienna, Berlin, C0- 
penhagen, Stockholm, Munich, and St. Petersburg. 
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