274 
Dr, G, Brown Goode s Paper, 
[518 
tory, not only historical topography, the architecture, the 
utensils, weapons, and other appurtenances of domestic, 
military, ecclesiastical, and governmental routine, but the 
men and women who made the history, the lowest as well 
as the most powerful, and the very performers of the deeds 
themselves, the faces bearing the impress of the passions by 
which they were moved. 
These things are intelligible to those who are trained to 
observe them. To others they convey but half the lesson 
they might, or mayhap only a very small part indeed. 
The historical museums now in existence contain, as a 
rule, chance accumulations, like too many natural-history 
museums of the present, like all in the past. I do not 
mean any disrespect by the word chance — but simply that, 
though the managers are willing to expend large sums for 
any specimens which please them, many most instructive 
ones have been excluded by some artificial limitation. 
The National Portrait Gallery in London is an instance. 
Many illustrious men are not represented upon its walls, 
solely because no contemporary pictures of theirs, reaching 
a certain ideal standard of merit, are in existence. 
So, also, the collection of musical instruments at South 
Kensington, which admits no specimen which is devoid of 
artistic suggestions — thus barring out the rude and primi- 
tive forms which would give added interest to all. The 
naturalist’s axiom, “ any specimen is better than no speci- 
men,” should be borne in mind in the formation of histori- 
cal museums, if not rigidly enforced. 
Another source of weakness in all museums is one to 
which attention has already been directed, namely, that they 
have resigned, without a struggle, to the library material 
invaluable for the completion of their exhibition series. 
Pictures are quite as available for museum work as speci- 
mens, and it is unwise to leave so many finely illustrated 
books, lost to sight and memory, on the shelves of the. 
libraries. 
That libraries can do good work through the adoption of 
museum methods has been clearly shown in the British 
