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THE USE AND ABUSE OF MUS&U&fS. 59
I
prevented for a short time, as I hope, by the present owe
about the bastad Queen Anne style.
The worst possible conception of the mode of arranging
Museums is exemplified st South Kensington, especially iu
those interminable exhibition galleries which tho lato Captain
Fowke erected around the Horticultural Society’s unfortunate
gardens. When I went, for instance, to see the admirnblo
collection of early printed books, at the Caxton Loan Exhibition,
I had to enter at the south-eastern entrance, and after
successfully passing the turnstiles found myself in the midst
of a perplexing mult.itude of blackboards, diagrams, &b&Guses,
chairs and tables, models of all sorts of things, forming, I
believe, the educational collections of the Science and Art
Department. Having overcome tendencies to diverge into a
dozen different lines of thought, I passed on only to find
myself among certain ancient machines and complicated models
which it mas impossible not to pause at. Having torn myself
away, however, I fell among an extensive series of naval
models, with all kids of diagrams and things relating to
them. Here forgetfulness of the Caxton Exhibition seemed to
fall upon all the visitors; a good quarter of an hour, and tho
best, because the freshest, quarter of an hour, wm spent, if
not wasted. But when at length it occurred to people tht it
was time to see that which they came to see, the only result
was to fall from Scylla into Charybdis in the form of the late
Mr. Frank Bucklaud’s admirable Fishery Colle&ion. Now at
the Norwich Fisheries Exhibition, and under various other
circumstances, nothing can be better and more appropriate and
interesting than the collection of fish-cnltnro apparatus, tho
models of big salmon and the like. But anything less congruous
to old Caxton editions cannot be imagined. As a
matter of fact, I observed that nearly all the visitors succumbed
to these fish, and for a time at least forgot altogether what
they were come about. When at length the Loan Exhibition
was reached, the already distracted spectator was ill fitted
to cope with the very extensive series of objects which he
wished seriously to inapect. In returning, moreover, he had
again to run the gauntlet of the big fish, the complicated