word, to the disorderly and rude populace. Everything in its _own_
place, everything looking its best because it is there, nothing crowded,
nothing unnecessary, nothing puzzling. Therefore, after a room has been
once arranged, there must be no change in it. For new possessions there
must be new rooms, and after twenty years' absence--coming back to the
room in which one learned one's bird or beast alphabet, we should be
able to show our children the old bird on the old perch in the
accustomed corner. But--first of all, let the room be beautifully
complete, _i.e._ complete enough for its proper business.

193. In the British Museum, at the top of the stairs, we encounter in a
terrific alliance a giraffe, a hippopotamus, and a basking shark. The
public--young and old--pass with a start and a stare, and remain as wise
as they were before about all the three creatures. The day before
yesterday I was standing by the big fish--a father came up to it with
his little boy. "That's a shark," says he; "it turns on its side when it
wants to eat you," and so went on--literally as wise as he was before;
for he had read in a book that sharks turn on their side to bite, and he
never looked at the ticket, which told him this particular shark only
ate small fish. Now he never looked at the ticket, because he didn't
expect to find anything on it except that this was the Sharkogobalus
Smith-Jonesianius. But if, round the walls of the room, there had been
all the _well-known_ kinds of shark, going down, in graduated sizes,
from that basking one to our waggling dog-fish, and if every one of
these had had a plain English ticket, with ten words of common sense on
it, saying where and how the beast lived, and a number (unchangeable)
referring to a properly arranged manual of the shark tribe (sold by the
Museum publisher, who ought to have his little shop close by the
porter's lodge), both father and son must have been much below the level
of average English man and boy in mother wit if they did not go out of
the room by the door in front of them very distinctly, and--to
themselves--amazingly, wiser than they had come in by the door behind
them.

194. If I venture to give instances of fault from the British Museum, it
is because, on the whole, it is the best-ordered and pleasantest
institution in all England, and the grandest concentration of the means
of human knowledge in the world. And I am heartily sorry for the
break-up of it, and augur no