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THE USE AND ABUSE OF MUSEUdfS. 457
suited to the wank of a, manufacturing district, with a special
reference to Birmingham and the neighbourhood." *
It is forgotten that if such B technical exhibition were to
he so complete and minute as to af€ord every information to
those engaged in each particular trade, it would bo fer vrrstar
In aggregate extent than any Great lnternntionnl Exhibition
yet held. If it wero to be a permanent Museum, tcn years
would hardly elapse before its contents would become ObSOletQ,
owing to tho progress of invent.ion. Either, then, the Museum
would have to be constantly expanded so as to contain the
new alongside of the old, or else the new would have to
push out the old. In the latter case the Museum would
approximate to a shop, or at best to the periodic exhibitions
of which we have so many, and which are of 8 different
character and purpose from tho permanent typical collections
which we call Museums. The fact is, howevor, that the real
technical exhibitions of tho country aro to be found in tho
shop windows and the factories; and when tho newest phases
of productive ingenuity may be readily examined in tho
reality of life, it is a waste of good money to establish grcnt
buildings and great staffs of officers to carry on what is,
comparatively speaking, chiId's play. If anybody wanta to
see t.he newest notions of the day in tho may of machinery,
domestic atensils, tools, toys, and the infinite objects of
ordinary me, he has only to saunter down Holborn from
Bloomsbury to the Holborn Viaduct. He will there find an
almost unbroken succession of remarkable shop-window
exhibitions, with which no exhibition, even under the most
distinguished patronage, can possibly compete.
From this point of view I think it is a happy thing that tho
Loan Exhibition of Scientific Instruments was dispersed nnd
not converted into a permanent Museum, &B some scientific
men wished. The collection was indeed an admirable one, and
every ten or fifteen years we might wish to see 8 like one.
But the greater part of the contents could not have that finality
and permanent interest demanding their perpetnsl exhibition,
*
Social Science Association, Birminghem, 1868, p. p49.
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