LOCAL MUSEUMS[7]

Attention has already been directed, in several letters which have recently appeared in the newspapers, to the desirability of a central institution in which the numerous historical documents and objects of interest connected with the county might not only be preserved from destruction, but also made available for study and reference. Many of these, which may be considered trifles now, will be of great value in after time, as illustrating the history and mode of life of generations passed or passing away. Many customs change with great rapidity, and all evidences of their existence disappear, or only remain in literary allusions, often difficult to understand without actual illustrations. Take for instance the old flint and steel and brimstone match, the universal source of illumination in even my early days. Most living people, accustomed to the daily use of one of the greatest triumphs of applied science, know nothing of the difficulties their grandfathers had to contend with in supplying this most necessary want of common life. I doubt if many of our generation were to see the old apparatus, whether they would know what it was for or how used, and though one must have existed in every cottage in the county fifty years ago, it is possible that it would be very difficult to procure one, even for a museum, at the present time. The candle-snuffers, without which we could not exist in my childhood, are now as extinct as the Dodo. Take again the threshing-flail, an instrument in universal use, with little change for thousands of years, now rapidly disappearing in many districts; or the stocks, once such an important social institution in rural life, but of which I know now only one in the neighbourhood of Aylesbury,--that which still remains in the picturesque village of Dinton. Specimens of all these, and many others which will readily suggest themselves, should be preserved in every local museum.

Then again, the natural history, the birds, the butterflies, the wild flowers, and the fossils and minerals of the neighbourhood, so arranged and named that any one can identify every creature or plant he may chance to meet with in his walk, are essential features in a local museum.

But now let me give a necessary warning. There are museums and museums. A good one well arranged, and well kept, clean, neat, and attractive, may be the means of conveying instruction and giving interest and pleasure to the lives of thousands of our fellow-creatures. But such museums do not grow of themselves; money, time, knowledge, and loving and sympathetic care must be expended upon them, both in their foundation and their maintenance, and unless all these can be provided for with tolerable certainty, it is useless to begin. Voluntary assistance is, no doubt, often valuable. There are many splendid examples of what it may do in country museums, but it can never be depended on for any long continuance. Death or removals, flagging zeal, and other causes tell severely in the long run against this resource. A museum must have an endowment adequate to defray its expenses, and especially to ensure the staff of intelligent, educated, and paid curators required to maintain it in a state of efficiency. You might as well build a church and expect it to perform the duties required of it without a minister, or a school without a schoolmaster, or a garden without a gardener, as to build a museum and not provide a competent staff to take care of it.

It is not the objects placed in a museum that constitute its value, so much as the method in which they are displayed, and the use made of them for the purpose of instruction.

The scope of the museum should be strictly defined and limited; there must be nothing like the general miscellaneous collection of all kinds of “curiosities,” thrown indiscriminately together which constituted the old-fashioned country museum. I think we are all agreed as to the local character predominating. One section should contain antiquities and illustrations of local manners and customs; another section local natural history, zoology, botany, and geology. The boundaries of the county will afford a good limit for both. Everything not occurring in a state of nature within that boundary should be rigorously excluded. In addition to this, it may be desirable to have a small general collection designed and arranged specially for elementary instruction in science. This part might be brought into connection with the technical instruction given in the county, and will be a valuable--indeed, a necessary adjunct to it. Every branch of such instruction should have its special collection of objects to illustrate it; the teaching will then be made far more real and practical than it otherwise would be.

Agricultural chemistry and geology, dairy-farming, fruit-growing, and such like subjects, might each have its collection. And these various collections, though kept quite distinct, in different rooms if possible, might be all associated in the County Museum and under the same general management. Thus some of the funds devoted by the county to the purposes of technical education might most profitably assist in the formation and maintenance of the County Museum; indeed, I think myself that if a portion of this money had been in the first place directly allocated to the endowment of a museum in each county more good would have been done for the advancement of education than by most of the schemes at present under discussion. At any rate, the classrooms and laboratories required for the teaching now contemplated should be associated with the museum, if possible under the same roof, and the staff of teachers should assist in the curatorial work, thus forming a sort of central college in every county for technical education, which might send out ramifications into the various districts in which the need of special instruction was most felt, and also might be the parent of smaller branch museums of the same kind wherever they seem required.

This is the kind of institution which I hope will, before long, be established in every county in the land. The marvellous spread of state-supported and rate-supported libraries which has taken place during the last few years appears to be only the prelude to museums supported in the same way. The underlying idea of a library and a museum is precisely the same. They are both instruments of intellectual culture, the one as much as the other. We have this illustrated on a magnificent scale in our great National Library and Museum in London. Before long a well-arranged and well-labelled museum will be acknowledged as a necessity in any well-considered scheme of educational progress. The museum and library will go hand in hand as essential complements to each other in the advancement of science and art, and intellectual development generally. A book without illustrations is of comparatively little value in teaching many of the most important subjects now comprised in general education. A museum should be a book or rather library of books, illustrated not by pictures only, but by actual specimens of the objects spoken of. The great principle of expending public money upon purposes of education, though a comparatively new one, is now conceded upon all sides. The cost of supporting really efficient museums in all our principal local centres would be but a trifling addition to the millions spent upon other methods (some probably of far less value) of educating and elevating the people. But in all cases let us remember, as Professor Brown Goode, the Director of the United States National Museum, in an admirable essay on “The Museums of the Future,” says, “One thing should be kept prominently in mind by any organisation which intends to found and maintain a museum, that the work will never be finished, that when the collections cease to grow they begin to decay. A finished museum is a dead museum, and a dead museum is a useless museum.”