remain to this day-namely, "a Dodar from the Island of Mauritius"; the head and foot of this dodo, the only remains of the famous bird known, if I am not mistaken, are now treasured in the University Museum of Oxford. Even as Elias Ashmole's gift formed the nucleus of the museum known by his name at Oxford, so did the collections of Sir Hans Sloane contribute to form that of the British Museum. Public collections were unknown in the seventeenth century, but the few large collections made by private individuals were accessible to those who might wish to see them. Sir Hans Sloane's was the most remarkable of the time; and from the somewhat cursory account of it which appears in the Gentleman's Magazine of 1748, we are justified in assuming that Sir Hans Sloane recognized the educative possibilities of a museum, and endeavored to make his collection instructive. When the then Prince and Princess of Wales paid Sir Hans a visit at Chelsea, his collection consisted of over 200,000 objects of various kinds. Natural history specimens collected during fifteeen months' residence in Jamaica, where he had held the appointment of physician to the Governor (the Duke of Albermarle) in 1687-8, appear to have formed the beginning; and for about sixty-five years he had continually added to his treasures. There were "tables spread out with drawers fitted with all sorts of precious stones in their native beds" for example; collections of coins, medals, fossils (or "remains of the antediluvian world," to quote the contemporary account); Greek, Roman, British, and Egyptian antiquities; dried plants and insects, shells, feathers, and other specimens. The Gentleman's Magazine refers to the "immense treasures of the valuable and instructive productions of nature and art." The italics are mine: the words clearly indicate that this was a collection put together not to appeal only to idle curiosity. When Sir Hans' museum and his large library became, under the owner's will, the property of the nation, they were deemed sufficiently valuable to be worthy of a proper home: and the collections were placed in Montagu House, which was purchased for the purpose; these, with the Cottonian and Harleian Manuscripts, formed the basis upon which the national collections have been reared. The educative purpose of Sir Hans Sloane's collections no doubt developed as his museum grew, but we cannot doubt that the original idea was to collect for the sake of collecting. It is impossible for one man to be an expert in every department of science. art, and industry; and to possess any valuable educative quality a collection must be made by one who has closely studied the subject to which it refers, and knows the worth and interest of each item. Medical men and naturalists were the first to make collections with the definite purpose of gaining and imparting instruction. The famous surgeon John Hunter, for about thirty years, 1763-1793, preserved anything he considered likely to prove useful for subsequent reference to members of his own profession, and his collections became the nucleus of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The origin of the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art is traced to the famous physicians Sir Andrew Balfour (1630-1694) and Robert Sibbald (16411722); both were enthusiastic collectors, the former of natural curiosities generally, the latter devoting himself more particularly to zoological specimens, as might be expected of so keen a naturalist. Sir John Soane (1753-1837) made his collection of paintings, drawings and sculpture, we may fairly assume, in the spirit of a connoisseur, without educative purpose; he deserves passing mention as one of the public-spirited men who presented the fruits of his taste and industry to the nation during his life-time. The furniture in the house in Lincoln's Inn Fields is now considered the part of the gift best worth seeing, though there are some excellent pictures, notably Hogarth's Rake's Progress. The attitude of the public towards museums generally during our own time was reflected in the speeches made in Parliament when the idea of opening these institutions on Sunday was first mooted. No small measure of progress in management and classification of collections had been made before the year 1879, when Lord Thurlow's motion to permit access to museums and picture galleries on Sunday afternoons was vetoed in the House of Lords; but those who successfully opposed the innovation had not, it would seem, realized that museum or picture gallery could be otherwise than a place of recreation; of intellectual recreation it is true, but still a place of amusement, and therefore a resort which it would be improper to throw open on Sundays. "Open your museums," they said in effect, "and clamor for the opening of theatres and music halls must inevitably follow"; as though the museum and the music hall existed for identical purposes and what was applicable to the one was applicable to the other. Some stress was laid by peers who spoke upon the fact that Sunday work would be thrown upon attendants and officials, and this perhaps was the only sound argument advanced; the opponents of the step based their main objection on the plea that it would destroy the character of the British Sunday by affording opportunities of recreation which would pave the way to the "Continental Sunday" with its work as well as its pleasure. A few speakers referred to museums in broader terms; Viscount Midleton incidentally spoke of them as "places of public instruction and amusement": and when the subject was debated in the House of Commons in 1896, Mr. Thomas Lough, the member for West Islington, spoke of the "useless lessons" to be learned in a museum. Now I am not prepared to say that they were wrong who insisted upon the "innocent recreation" a visit to the museum on Sunday implies. Assuredly far more people visit museums, whether on Sunday or any of the other six days of the week, in search of pleasure, than visit them for instruction: I have merely glanced at this phase of the subject by way of showing how little the educative possibilities of the museum were realized within the memory of persons not yet middle-aged. One of our national inconsistencies, and not the least glaring, was swept away when the British Museum and others were made accessible to the public on Sunday afternoons. It was a wise measure, one that had been far too long delayed, but was fully appreciated when it came. It materially widened the scope of usefulness of these institutions; they had been opened three evenings per week till ten o'clock at night as a method of enabling the working classes to visit them; but the average worker did not take sufficient interest in what he might see in a museum to make an expedition thereto after a long day's work. Who shall venture to assert that the visitor of ordinary intelligence, whether he be workman or schoolboy, who strolls through any one of the great galleries in the Victoria and Albert Museum, whether among pictures, sculpture, wood carving, armor, porce. lain, textiles, or what you will, does not carry away therefrom some new impression? Who can say of the large majority that what they see does not kindle the spark of a new interest and turn their thoughts in a new direction? Much more do the children, more impressionable than the parents they accompany, gain new ideas from this glimpse of strange worlds; the ideas may be vague and nebulous, but the seed has been sown and a crop may follow. Dr. John Edward Grey, one of the pioneers of what I may call the modern museum movement, said in the address he delivered before the British Association (Section D) at Bath in 1864, that the purposes for which a museum was establishel were two: first the diffusion of instruction and rational amusement among the mass of the people, and secondly to afford the scientific student every possible means of examining and studying the specimens of which the collections consist. We may take it that if a collection of any kind is to convey instruction, it must be properly classified and displayed; its arrangement must be such as to enable the uninformed visitor to trace the progress which has been made in the course of centuries. An admirable example of chronological arrangement occurs to mind in the series of rooms in the Victoria and Albert Museum wherein are exhibited the earthenware and porcelain of various ages and countries, from the pottery of Ancient Egypt to the Worcester and Chelsea products of our own age. Not every collection lends itself to chronological arrangement with perfect facility; but the instructional value of any, whether of art, arms, or domestic appliances, depends SO largely upon arrangement that those who realize the true purpose of a museum lay the greatest stress upon it. The custodians of our national col lections are unfortunately handicapped The dona in this part of their work. tions and bequests which are received from private individuals form no small part of the public possessions, and these are frequently given or bequeathed with the stipulation that the collection shall be kept together as a complete unit. Such stipulation, natural as it is. must, as I venture to think, do something to retard the progress of the modern museum ideal; which, as the late Sir W. H. Flower said in his presidential address to the Museums Association in 1893, is "not only the simple preservation of the objects contained in it, but also their arrangement in such a manner as to provide for the instruction of those who visit it." Our national collections profit enormously from private munificence in the shape of gift, bequest and loan, but it is to be regretted that gifts and bequests should so often be accompanied by a stipulation which prevents the greatest educational use being obtained from them. A striking instance of the control exercised by testators over their bequests may be cited. A certain valuable collection of paintings was bequeathed to the nation with the proviso that the. pictures should not be exhibited on Sunday. The works comprised in the collection might be, and are, distributed in appropriate rooms; and the Sunday afternoon visitor is confronted by green baize coverings with which the canvases on that day are shrouded in order to comply with the terms of the bequest. So far I have referred only to the incidental educational uses of a museum; to the effect the exhibits may produce, it may be almost insensibly, upon the visitor who resorts thither without idea of gaining advantage in the shape of mental improvement. There is another class for whom the museum caters; a much smaller class, but one whose importance is not to be estimated by its numerical strength. Dr. Grey, whose name was mentioned on a former page, laid it down as the secondary object of a museum that it should afford facilities to the student-the man or woman who goes regularly to the galleries with a definite educative purpose in view. The importance of considering the needs of the student has long been recognized by setting apart certain days of the week on which special facilities are given for study by the exclusion of the general public-or more accurately by the levying of a small fee which limits the attendance of the crowd. I have not been able to ascertain when the system of "student days" was introduced; but it has obtained, so far as the British Museum is concerned, for at least seventy-five years. The art student of the eighteenth century enjoyed no such opportunities as are accessible to the art student of a later age. He counted himself fortunate if, by favor of influential friends, his promise as an artist obtained for him the privilege of admis sion to the studio of some great painter whose works he might study and whose methods he could copy. Apart from such opportunity he might, also by influence, obtain access to the private gallery of some wealthy collector and patron of art: but these opportunities were insignificant by comparison with the range of study open to the young artist of to-day. The eighteenth-century student, unless he had means and could travel, was confined to observation of works necessarily limited in number and in style. It is permissible to think that this limitation of opportunity for study may, to some extent at least, explain why English art lagged in its development: why, until about the middle of the eighteenth century, the major ity of great painters who worked in England were of foreign birth and training. Whatever the talent or means of the student of the present day our national collections afford equal opportunities to all: thanks to our museums and art galleries no beginner, however humble, need lack the models nor the examples of great masters to cultivate his style. It may not be generally realized how much of improvement in the public taste we owe to our national collections. When Sir Richard. then Mr., Westmacott. R.A., was examined before the Select Committee before mentioned in 1835, he made some interesting and significant statements regarding the use made of the Elgin marbles; "I think," he said, "that the improvement of the taste of the country since the acquisition of the Elgin marbles is quite extraordinary." Sir Richard was also asked whether much improvement followed in any other department of art from the purchase of the Hamilton vases. He replied that a great variety of domestic articles were improved in shape and form: the models offered by these vases had "improved the potteries and gave new and more elegant forms to the productions of the potteries." The Elgin marbles, it is hardly necessary to say, were acquired by the nation in the year 1816; the less familiar "Hamilton Vases" were acquired from Sir William Hamilton, the diplomat and archæologist, in 1772; the collection consisted of Greek antiquities, and formed a very valuable addition to the Museum. Of necessity it rarely happens that an addition to the Museum is productive of such direct influence upon the taste and the art of the time, but it cannot be doubted that the taste of those who visit the collections is, sensibly or insensibly, formed and elevated, though it may not be possible to point to any definite stimulus such as cited by Sir Richard Westmacott in 1835. A very heavy responsibility rests upon those who buy for, and upon the experts who are in charge of, our great collections. Few probably of those who enter the British Museum or other of our great national treasure houses, are aware that the exhibits represent only a small proportion of the objects housed under that roof; that there are, packed away for lack of space to show them, vast quantities of articles of all kinds. Fewer still perhaps realize how great is the knowledge and discrimination possessed by those upon whom rests the task of selecting objects for exhibition from among the stores at their disposal. The museum curator must be a specialist in his department, whether it be modern art, ancient leather work, arms or coins; and he must be something more: he must possess understanding of popular taste and seek to educate while he gratifies it; he has, as it were, to edit the collections under his charge and make the most and, at the same time, the best of them in the space, always limited, at his disposal. Looking round the magnificent halls of the Victoria and Albert Museum the visitor might be pardoned if he reflected that here the curator's demand for space and more space was at last satisfied. No doubt it is satisfied for a time, but it can only be for а time. The greatest, the fundamental difficulty of conducting a museum is that of finding space for the exhibition of collections which it is the primary duty of the curators to enlarge. "A finished museum is a dead museum," to quote the pithy remark of a great American authority. A museum to which well-chosen additions are not being continually made, museum which is not kept up to a date, loses its educative value, and for instructional purposes is no more use than an uncompleted book. Hence the ideal museum building would be one whose conspicuous quality was elasticity; one built upon a site which would allow of periodical addition as circumstances required: an ideal obviously impossible of attainment when the first condition of utility is that the museum shall be accessible to the greatest number of visitors-in other words, be situated in a large city where land is sold by the square foot. This space question of course is of greatest moment to our national collections, which embrace exhibits of every description from Egyptian mummies to postage stamps; and this suggests the reflection that the national museum and the provincial museum have, or should have, different scope. It is out of the question for the local museum to emulate the national with any but ludicrous results; it has neither the funds nor the opportunity to make its collections all-embracing; it is the willingness with which the countytown museum has accepted gifts of all sorts and descriptions which makes it the heterogeneous jumble we so frequently find. The local museum, as I venture to think, should be modestly local in its aims. It should seek to acquire collections of articles of local interest, natural, antiquarian, industrial, and artistic. Fossils, ancient Roman re mains and natural history specimens obtained in the neighborhood possess stronger interest when shown on the spot than when sent to some distant city, and they are appropriate to the local museum. Examples of local industries, ironwork, wood carving, lace, or what not, displayed in proper chronological order, would possess both interest and utility-an interest and utility which must increase as time passes, when so |