DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION. 
7 
Sylvius) “throughout the world for its size and excellence. Of 
the many memorials which it contains, of its stained glass, its 
monuments, and the valuables of its Record Room and Treasury, 
I need not speak to those who know. 
To the city wall, only less complete than that of Chester, to 
its gates and bars, in which it is without a rival, I need not again 
refer, and in regard to its churches and examples of domestic 
architecture from the Middle Ages onward, I will only say that in 
no other town in England (and I speak from a rather extensive 
knowledge) is the picturesqueness of the streets so often remark¬ 
able. But on this spot, in the gardens of the Yorkshire Philo¬ 
sophical Society, we are surrounded by memories of the past. Of 
the Roman walls I have already spoken; the stronghold of the 
Danish chiefs has indeed disappeared, but their memory is per¬ 
petuated in the dedication of the neighbouring church. Close at 
hand are the ruins, beautiful in their decay, of St. Mary’s Abbey, 
once the glory of Yorkshire. You can now, thanks to careful 
exhumation, study much which was formerly hid from sight, and 
can even trace out the apse of that earlier church, which Abbot 
Stephen built in the days of William Rufus. The ruined vestibule 
to its chapter-house is enclosed beneath the spacious lecture 
theatre, in which we are assembled, and will in future be protected, 
with many choice fragments of those ancient buildings, from the 
corrosive touch of the elements. This disused site of an institution 
which in its day helped to lift the minds of men above the baser 
ends of life, could hardly be better employed than in the service of 
learning and the advancement of true civilization, while the col¬ 
lections, so amply illustrating each aspect of your shire and the 
annals of its inhabitants, shew that science and history meet here 
on common ground and seek to learn lessons for the future from 
the study of the past. 
And this brings me back to the object which has gathered 
us here. This lecture theatre, Dr. Tempest Anderson’s noble 
gift, is, of course, intended for direct instruction, but its adjuncts, 
the excellent work-room and other chambers below, are import¬ 
ant aids to the display and development of the collections in your 
Museum. Those collections are worthy of a great city and have 
been wisely gathered. It would be hopeless, and it would be 
useless, for a local museum to vie with those national collections 
which have their proper place in the metropolis, but a local museum 
should frankly accept and carry out to the utmost of its powers, 
