4 8 



A few years ago the Elgin marble room was extended — 

 certainly a very necessary improvement. The extension, 

 however, amounted only to an addition of forty-four feet ; 

 there were no houses to be pulled down, and no compensa- 

 tions to be given away. What did the confiding public pay 

 for these forty-four feet of a room ? Why, between 



12,000 and 16,000 1 Enough to have built a museum, 

 and actually one third of the sum paid for the original mu- 

 seum, including the cost of the site ! 



" House expenses " have increased at the rate of about 

 ^50 a year ; but the item of " Salaries, Wages, Police, and 

 Retired Allowances" for the last ten years, stand at 

 ^"486,000, as against ^879,000 for the previous hundred 

 and ten years ! Making every allowance for development, 

 is not this a little startling? Nobody grudges well-spent 

 money ; and there are plenty of people in the Museum who 

 are getting too little, but are there not a good many 

 getting vastly too much ? 



Besides the "maintenance," about ^40,000 a year goes 

 in purchases. This money need not be grudged, if 

 judiciously spent, but that can hardly be when th> things 

 purchased are hidden away to rot where no one can see 

 them. 



Hitherto in this chapter I have but quoted figures which, 

 viewed in the light of the previous pages, seem to suggest 

 the necessity for searching inquiry. I now come to one or 

 two particular items, which seem to teach the same lesson, 

 only more emphatically. Here, for instance, is the little 

 item of bookbinding, So far as I can gather it comes to 

 ^4,500 a year, and represents the binding of 8,745 

 volumes and 539 pamphlets. This makes the average cost 

 9s. 6d. a volume or pamphlet, for binding alone — a rather 

 portentous sum. Take another. The British Museum 



