MUSEUMS. 
321 
establishment) is left to pure chance. Thus, the 
members tell the public that they will be thankful 
for private donations. They often deposit speci- 
mens of their own in the museum ; and authorise 
their curator to pick up what he can, at different 
public sales. The lavish expenditure on the outside 
of the temple, and parsimony with regard to the 
internal decorations, is giving, as it were, too much 
to the body, and too little to the soul. 
Still, the directors do not see the thing in this 
light. They go jogging on in the old beaten path ; 
and I don't know whether it be very prudent in me 
to hint that it is high time for them both to 
digress, and to mend their pace. I am much more 
cautious now, than I used formerly to be, in giving 
my opinion, when I enter a museum. The burnt 
child generally dreads the fire. 
Some years ago, curiosity led me to stray into a 
very spacious museum.^ As I passed through a 
kind of antechamber, I observed a huge mass of out- 
stretched skin, which once had evidently been an 
elephant. I turned round to gaze at the " monstrum 
horrendum informe," when a person came up, and 
asked me what I thought of their elephant. " If," 
said I, " you will give me two cow-skins, with that 
of a calf in addition to them, I will engage to make 
you a better elephant." This unlucky and off-hand 
proposal was within an ace of getting me into 
trouble. The sages of the establishment took cogni- 
sance of it at one of their meetings ; and somebody 
proposed that a written reprimand should be sent 
to me. However, a prudent voice in the assembly 
Y 
