e of the museum would be plain enough
and comparatively easy to carry out.

Most museums which have come into existence within the last 200 years
suffer from the fact that they are mere enlargements of the ancient
collector's "cabinet of rare and curious things," brought together and
arranged without rhyme or reason. No one has ever attempted to say
what is precisely the aim and intention as a public enterprise of any
of our great museums, and accordingly there has been no consideration,
discussion, or agreement as to the methods of collection, selection,
arrangement, exhibition, and storage of the objects assembled within
their walls. Thousands, even millions of pounds, have been expended on
the building of museums, on the purchase of specimens, on cases and
cataloguing, and on the salaries of directors, and keepers, and
assistants, yet the museums remain, so far as any declaration of
purpose and principle is concerned, mere "repositories," as in the
words of the old Act of Parliament constituting the British
Museum--for the use and enjoyment of the public, it is true, but
without any expression of a conception of how that use and enjoyment
is to be limited so as to make them something better than a dime-show,
or how any serious purpose is to be achieved by their costly housing
and up-keep. No doubt various directors and keepers have from time to
time shown intelligence and laboured to make museums not only places
of enjoyment and "edification," but also the means of increasing
knowledge and rendering service to the State. But the scope of our
public museums, and the principles and methods by which it may be
realised, have never been agreed upon, and consequently are not
definitely recognised by the State nor by the curiously ill-chosen
committees of managers, or trustees, to whose tender mercies the
ultimate control of these institutions is confided--apparently by
haphazard or misapprehension.

The notion of a town corporation, or of the central government at this
or that date, has been that museums are best controlled and public
money expended in connection with them by persons who know nothing
about the real importance of the collections, and receive no guidance
from any scheme or statutable declaration of specific purpose drawn up
by a competent authority. I will endeavour to state what those
purposes should be.

When one tries to estimate what is really the value to the community
of public "museums," one is le