craftsmen, makes clumsy atonement by sweeping together
the fragments of their work and calling the collection a museum. From
the four corners of the earth these relics have been gathered. Our
hungry minds are bidden to make choice according to fancy, for here is
variety of food! Here are opportunities, never before enjoyed by mortal,
for an intellectual feast!--and of a kind which might be considered
god-like, were it not for the suspicion of some gigantic joke. That out
of all this huge mass of chaotic material we have not as yet been able
to make for ourselves some living form of art, must indeed be to the
gods a continual subject of merriment.

Museums of art are in no respect the unmixed blessings which they appear
to be. They have, to be sure, all the advantages of handy reference;
but at the same time, on account of the great diversity in the character
of their exhibits, they tend to encourage the spread of a patchy kind of
knowledge, far from being helpful to the arts in the interests of which
they are established. It must be remembered that, in these collections,
all specimens of architecture and architectural carving are invariably
seen in false positions. All have been wrenched from their proper
settings, and placed, more or less at random, in lights and
relationships never contemplated by their designers. To the environment
of a piece of architecture, and the position and surroundings of carved
decorations, are due quite half of their interest as works of art.
Deprive them of these associations, and little is left but fragmentary
specimens of handicraft, more or less unintelligible in their lonely
detachment, misleading to the eye, and dangerous as objects of
imitation, in proportion to the dependence they once had upon those
absent and unknown associations.

The educational purpose which these collections are intended to serve is
liable to be construed into an unreasoning assumption that every
specimen exhibited is equally worthy of admiration. How often the
plodding student is to be seen carefully drawing and measuring work of
the dullest imaginable quality, with no other apparent reason for his
pathetically wasted industry!

It would be strange, indeed, if all in this vast record of past activity
was of equal value; if merely to belong to the past was a sure warrant
that such work was the best of its kind. Far from this being the case,
it requires the constant use of a more or less trained and critical