MUSEUM-HISTORY AND MUSEUMS OF 
HISTORY. 
By G. Brown Goode, LL.D., Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion in charge of the National Museum. 
The true significance of the word MUSEUM may perhaps 
best be brought to our apprehension by an allusion to the 
ages which preceded its origin — when our ancestors, hun- 
dreds of generations removed, were in the midst of those 
great migrations which peopled Europe with races origi- 
nally seated farther to the east. 
It has been well said that the story of early Greece is 
the first chapter in the history of the political and intel- 
lectual life of Europe. 
To the history of Greece let us go for the origin of the 
museum-idea, which in its present form seems to have found 
its only congenial home among the European off-shoots of 
the Indo-Germanic division of the world’s inhabitants. 
Museums, in the language of ancient Greece, were the 
homes of the muses. The first were in the groves of Par- 
nassus and Helicon, and later they were temples in various 
parts of Hellas. Soon, however, the meaning of the word 
changed, and it was used to describe a place of study, or a 
school, Athenaeus described Athens in the second century 
as “ the museum of Greece,” and the name of museum was 
definitely applied to that portion of the palace of Alex- 
andria which was set apart for the study of the sciences, 
and which contained the famous Alexandrian library. The 
museum of Alexandria was a great university, the abiding- 
place of men of science and letters, who were divided into 
many companies or colleges, and for whose support a 
handsome revenue was allotted. 
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