DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26753#0039
35
we are still inferior to even such a second-class place as Munich,
and cannot see our way to rival either Rome, Paris, Vienna, qr
indeed any first-class city.
Had the enormously disproportionate expenditure been incur-
red in the far-sighted policy of erecting a class of buildings which
should be capable of containing not only the present collection,
but the probable additions during the next century, it would in
the long-run have proved a wise economy, which no one could
blame : but what is the true state of the case ? When the pre-
sent collection is moved into it, the Museum is not only filled,
but crowded, and extension impossible. Already the library
has been patched and eked out by every conceivable contrivance,
and will not now contain the present collection. The Natural
History department cannot be extended. The Trustees have
been forced to refuse a collection, so much wanted, of national
antiquities, because they have no room. They are by no means
anxious that the rest of Mr. Layard’s collection should come
home, or his excavations be extended, because they do not know
what to do with what they have got already. No Indian depart-
ment can be added, from this cause; and, in short, though the
public are thirsting for knowledge, and unlimited wealth is
offered to us on all hands, we are chained, Tantalus like, to the
pillars of our Museum, and cannot slake our thirst from the
waters we see everywhere around us.
Had the Government been able to take an enlarged view of
the matter at the time the Museum was founded, the whole of
the 108,000/. spent on the old buildings might now have been
available. There is scarcely a capital in Europe (Paris and
Rome for instance) where the bulk of the museum buildings are
not more than a hundred years old, and they probably will serve
for a much longer period yet. But in consequence of the vicious
system of providing only temporary expedients, which prevails
in these matters in this country, the whole of this money is
literally thrown away, though a considerable portion of it was
spent within the present century, all of which at least might
have formed part of a great scheme; but nothing of the kind
was ever dreamt of; and literally not one brick of these build-
ings now remains upon another; and so far from learning a
lesson from this experience, we are now repeating the same
mistake, only on a more extensive and more expensive scale.
D 2
we are still inferior to even such a second-class place as Munich,
and cannot see our way to rival either Rome, Paris, Vienna, qr
indeed any first-class city.
Had the enormously disproportionate expenditure been incur-
red in the far-sighted policy of erecting a class of buildings which
should be capable of containing not only the present collection,
but the probable additions during the next century, it would in
the long-run have proved a wise economy, which no one could
blame : but what is the true state of the case ? When the pre-
sent collection is moved into it, the Museum is not only filled,
but crowded, and extension impossible. Already the library
has been patched and eked out by every conceivable contrivance,
and will not now contain the present collection. The Natural
History department cannot be extended. The Trustees have
been forced to refuse a collection, so much wanted, of national
antiquities, because they have no room. They are by no means
anxious that the rest of Mr. Layard’s collection should come
home, or his excavations be extended, because they do not know
what to do with what they have got already. No Indian depart-
ment can be added, from this cause; and, in short, though the
public are thirsting for knowledge, and unlimited wealth is
offered to us on all hands, we are chained, Tantalus like, to the
pillars of our Museum, and cannot slake our thirst from the
waters we see everywhere around us.
Had the Government been able to take an enlarged view of
the matter at the time the Museum was founded, the whole of
the 108,000/. spent on the old buildings might now have been
available. There is scarcely a capital in Europe (Paris and
Rome for instance) where the bulk of the museum buildings are
not more than a hundred years old, and they probably will serve
for a much longer period yet. But in consequence of the vicious
system of providing only temporary expedients, which prevails
in these matters in this country, the whole of this money is
literally thrown away, though a considerable portion of it was
spent within the present century, all of which at least might
have formed part of a great scheme; but nothing of the kind
was ever dreamt of; and literally not one brick of these build-
ings now remains upon another; and so far from learning a
lesson from this experience, we are now repeating the same
mistake, only on a more extensive and more expensive scale.
D 2