28 



Annual Address. 



ing the taste and giving an impulse to the industries of a 

 people. It is at once a museum and a school of art in all 

 its applications, and it has already served as a model for 

 similar institutions in several of the other great capitals of 

 Europe. I shall not detain you with any account of the 

 systematic instructions given to pupils of both sexes in 

 every department of art bearing upon manufactures, but 

 refer briefly to the nature of its collections. They com- 

 prise specimens in every department of ancient, mediaeval 

 and modern workmanship and art, all arranged, classified 

 and labeled so as to give at a glance and without reference 

 to a catalogue, all needful information, and to illustrate the 

 changing tastes and the relative knowledge and skill of 

 each successive age. Here we may find in one depart- 

 ment, architectural models, drawings and engravings ; in 

 another, an art library; in another, articles of domestic 

 and personal use and ornament of past and present 

 times — such as curiously wrought furniture, armor, 

 weapons, stained glass, tapestry, plate, dress and jew- 

 elry — in another terra cotta or electrotype copies of the 

 finest altars, tombs, fountains, bronzes, and other rare 

 works of mediaeval art in stone or metal from the old 

 English and continental cities, cathedrals and churches ; 

 in another, the unequalled collection of the potteries, 

 porcelains and glass of every age and country, exhibiting 

 the whole progress of art in that line, from the beautiful 

 old Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan and Roman vases, from 

 which modern pottery has drawn its most graceful and 

 classic forms — through the majolicas and faiences of 

 mediaeval Italy and France — Palissy's curious ware, the 

 exquisite enamels of Limoges, the delicate old glass of 

 Venice, the oriental porcelains of China and Japan, down 

 to the productions of the modern factories of Sevres, 

 of Dresden, and of England ; among which those of Eng- 

 land and especially those of Copeland and of Min- 



