Arrangement and Planning

The

word "museum" is much older than the thing which it now denotes. Its meaning (Gr. yovcrEiov) is "a temple of the Muses." It could be applied metaphorically to any place where literature and the arts were cultivated, and its most famous use in antiquity was as the title of the Museum of Alexandria, founded and endowed by Alexander as a great library and home for schol ars and for literary study. Its application to a collection of an tiquities or natural history or science is necessarily quite modern, because the thing itself is modern. In antiquity and in the middle ages private individuals may occasionally have gathered together objects of art or of curiosity; but it was not a common custom, nor were museums recognized institutions until quite modern times. Their present status has been the work of the last two or three generations.

Origins.

The origin of museums, as we now know them, may, be found in the Renaissance. The revival of interest in the classics led to an interest in the relics of classical antiquity which impelled individuals to collect them; while the growth of the spirit of curiosity, likewise the result of the Renaissance, led to the col lection of objects connected with natural history or with science as then understood. In the collections made by princes, nobles, or humanists in the 16th and still more in the 17th century may be found, not merely the prototypes, but the actual beginnings, of some of the great museums of today. Thus the museum of Bologna may be traced back to the collections of the naturalist U. Aldrovandi (1527-1605) ; the armour, coins, and other an tiquities collected by archduke Ferdinand II. at the end of the 16th century are at Vienna; the coins and natural history collec tions of Gaston, duke of Orleans (16o8-6o) are among the ori gins of the present national museums of these objects in Paris; N. Fabride Peiresc (158o-1637), to whom has been ascribed the foundation of the study of antiquity in France, collected plants and coins as well as books, and some of his medals passed to the Abbey of St. Genevieve ; Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1586 1646), collected not only the Arundel mss., now in the British Museum, but the Arundel Marbles, now at Oxford, and the Marl borough gems, now scattered among various collections ; the col lections of the two Tradescants (d. respectively 1638 and 1662), which constituted the first museum in England, and to which the name of museum seems first to have been applied, were acquired by Elias Ashmole in 1659 and are the basis of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Later in the same century began the collec tions of Sir Hans Sloane (166o-1753) which, together with the mss. collected earlier by Sir Robert Cotton and later by the two Harleys, are the nucleus of the British Museum.

Very few, however, of the collections made in the 17th cen tury have survived. They were the hobbies of individuals and were generally dispersed at their death. In the 18th century collecting became more methodical. Many of the princes of

Germany and Italy formed collections of objects of art which became permanent ornaments of their courts. Young English nobles, making the grand tour, acquired objects of art and antiq uity as well as pictures. The Ashmolean museum had become the property of the university in 1677; and in 1753 the bequest of Sir Hans Sloane's great collections to the nation led to the founda tion of the British Museum. The great museums of Europe for the most part owe their origin to royal and princely collections, which in the course of political changes have become the property of the greater kingdoms or republics of today. To these must be added the museums belonging to municipalities, which are for the most part the outcome of the 19th century. These, as institutions, are deliberate growths, owing their origin to the spread of the desire for education ; but in their contents they are often the victims of haphazard accumulations, being composed partly of local antiquities of all ages found in the neighbourhood, and partly (especially in England) of objects fortuitously collected by travel lers and transferred to the local museum when they ceased to interest their owners. Natural history museums have frequently grown up in the same way ; but the great national and university museums, together with some that have been formed by scientific societies, have been formed of set purpose and under scientific direction.

Development.

Within the last century progress has been sys tematized, and museums have acquired a recognized place in the national life.

The first Museums Act was passed in England in 1845, and was followed by others; but the majority of the municipal museums owe their origin to the Act of 1891, now repealed and superseded by the Public Libraries Act of 1919. The recent (1928) report of Sir H. Miers to the Carnegie Trustees states that there were then museums in England, 62 in Scotland, 26 in Wales, 8 in North ern Ireland, and 3 each in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man,—a total of 53o, great and small, including the national museums. In size and quality they vary very greatly, from large museums with collections of outstanding importance, such as Liv erpool, Glasgow, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester (where the museum is shared by the university and the city), Norwich, Hull, Exeter, Leicester and Sheffield, or smaller museums distinguished by special collections, such as York, Newcastle, Colchester (shared between a society and the Corporation), Taunton, Ipswich and Shrewsbury, or museums with a special purpose, such as the Horniman museum of ethnology in London or the Tolson museum of local history (natural and human) at Huddersfield, to small, neglected assemblages of fortuitous collections, badly housed, ill arranged and understaffed, which are too frequent throughout the country. An admirable survey of the whole field, with full statistics, is given in Sir H. Miers' report.