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56 METHODS OF SOCIAL REFORM.
as the shops of Reget~t Street or HolLorn. The well-known
fact that the attendance at Bfusenms is grcntest ou wet days is
very instructive.
Not only b CL very largo collection of various objects illsuited
€or educational purposes, but it is apt to create altogether
erroneous ideas abuut the true method of educatiou.
Tho least consideration, indeed, ought to convince any sensible
person that to comprehend the purpose, construction, mode of
use, and history of a single novel object or machine, would
usually require from (say) half-an-hour up to several hours or
days of careful study. A good lecturer can always make a
lecture of an hour’s duration out of anything falling within his
range of suljoct. How thenis it possible that person^ glancing
over some thousands of unfamiliar specimens in the British
Nuscum or tho South Kensington Courts, can acquire, in the
momont dovoted to each, tho slightcst comprehension of what
thoy witness ? To children especially the glancing at rr great
multitude of diverso things is not only useless but actually
pernicious, bccauso it tends to destroy that habit of concentration
of attention, which is the first condition of mental
acquisition. It is no unmmmon thing to see troops of little
schoolboys filing through the long galleries of a Museum. No
more senseless employment could be imagined. They would
be fur better employed in flattening their noses for an
hour or two against the grocer’s shop window where there
is D steam mill grinding coffee, or matching tho very
active bootmsker who professes to sole your boots while you
wait.
A great doal has been said and mritten about the unities
of the drama, and ‘r canow” are said to havo been laid down
on the subject. It does not seem, however, to have occurred
to the creators and managers of Museums, that so far aa
education ia aimed at, a certain unity of effect is essential.
There may be many specimens exhibited, but they ought to
have that degree of relation that they may conduce to the
-me general mental impression. It is in this way, I believe,
that tho Thormaldsen SIuseum at Copenhagen exercises a
peculiarly impressive cffcct upon the multitudes of all classes