Annual Address. 



33 



articles or of money, and that those who may have collec- 

 tions or single works of art, rare books, coins, antiquities, 

 specimens of fine potteries, porcelains, and the like, which 

 they may not wish to part with permanently and yet may be 

 willing to place where they may be temporarily available 

 to the benefit of the public, shall deposit them with us for 

 that purpose. Some of the most interesting departments 

 of the Kensington Museum are supplied in this way, espe- 

 cially that of the modern porcelains, many of the most 

 beautiful specimens of which are thus furnished by the 

 manufacturers and withdrawn and changed from time to 

 time. 



In all these ways, a collection may grow up with a ra- 

 pidity that will astonish us and soon become a source of 

 pleasure to ourselves and an object of interest to all who 

 may visit our city. 



No people of equal general intelligence and who are so 

 well at ease in respect to the supply of their material wants, 

 have so few resources, outside of business and politics, for 

 their leisure hours, as we have. None need more than we 

 do, the refining and quieting pleasures which the fine arts 

 afford. We have all felt the blessed power that the works 

 of the poet and the novelist have to soothe the wearied 

 spirit, to *charm away the cares and vexations of life and 

 to carry us into their own serener region : not less power # 

 to the same end, have the works of the great masters of 

 the chisel and the pencil, whose creations once seen and 

 understood, dwell ever afterwards in the chambers of 

 memory, go with us in our journeyings, glance in upon us 

 like well loved faces in the intervals of labor, wait on us in 

 our leisure or retirement in forms of unchanging beauty, 

 lift our thoughts and conversation out of the pettinesses 

 and conventionalities of our local life and interests, and 

 bring us into a wider sympathy and companionship with 



[Trans. vii.~\ 5 



