said to be enjoyed by any and every public institution or association, temporary or otherwise, offering sufficient guarantees, throughout the kingdom. Usually the nucleus lent by South Kensington becomes the heart and mainspring, as it were, of such provincial exhibitions— and in many cases alone renders them possible. So great and so rapidly growing indeed is the amount of business of this kind which the South Kensington administration is now called upon to transact, that it has rendered necessary a numerous special staff of officers, and the most complete and extensive appliances; and whatever fault may be found with other matters of South Kensington management, there can be no doubt of the efficiency and excellent organisation of this department. Precious works of art of all kinds and dimensions, fragile and minute, or cumbrous and unwieldy as the case may be, are in fact now daily culled from the collections of the Museum itself, or from those of private owners, sent off to all parts of the kingdom, and in due time collected again and brought back to London and returned to their proper places of deposit, with an ease, celerity, and safety which might almost be compared with the circulation of books from a lending library.

Not less important than the reception of loans and the circulation of works of art, is their reproduction by casting and moulding, photography, hand-copying, etc. The work already accomplished in this direction, although it has been somewhat intermittent, and has been characterised to some extent by conspicuous mistakes and failures, has yet been very considerable in amount. The foundations at all events have been laid for systematic and greatly extended action in this matter. The reasons which will necessitate this increased action will be dwelt upon hereafter; they lie at the very root of my argumentfor the present it will be sufficient to allude in a general manner to what has been done. Until the present generation, plaster casts of antique statues, generally confined to a few stereotyped models and a limited series of casts of ornamental details for the use of architects, formed the sum and substance of all plastic productions to be obtained. Copies of a few celebrated pictures in Continental galleries, generally the same hackneyed types repeated ad nauseam, and engravings of a more or less inaccurate style, afforded but a meagre representation of pictorial art, whilst the arts decorative, to which so much consideration is now being paid, were represented only in a few costly illustrated works, mainly of an architectural character.

The Apollo Belvedere, the Venus dei Medici, the Corinthian capitals of Jupiter Stator, a few Gothic crockets and finials, the Madonna della Sedia or Guido's everlasting Beatrice Cenci, Stuart's Athens, and Hamilton's Greek Vases-such were the well-worn types of our own early days. But the world has been opened, as it were, within the last five-and-twenty years; entirely new classes of art pro

ductions have risen into public estimation, a vast number of galleries, museums, architectural monuments, etc. have become accessible. Everybody travels, sketches, and collects, and at the same time marvellous discoveries of science have enabled new machinery of unlimited power and adaptability to be brought to bear in the special field of reproduction. Photography, the electro-deposit process, chromo-lithography and a host of other inventions, have at last rendered possible the most admirable and perfect copies of all kinds of art objects, to be made and brought within reach of the humblest student or the slenderest purse-the prospect is vast, and the field as yet comparatively untrodden.

It has been an object at South Kensington to obtain casts and other reproductions of the most notable treasures of Continental museums and galleries, of monuments in situ in churches, palaces, etc., and in general to secure the best possible representation of those great masterpieces of art, the originals of which, or their like, can never be acquired; this, with the primary intention of rendering the museum collections more complete and instructive, but also in order further to multiply these same types for the use of other public institutions or for individuals.

The principal original specimens in its own possession have also been reproduced with the like intentions, and, lastly, well considered arrangements have been made, by which, without in any way trenching on the legitimate province of outside trade, the public are enabled to purchase these reproductions of every description at fixed reasonable tariff rates. It need scarcely be pointed out that the one essential requisite for the success of this system is that guiding knowledge, judgment and taste in selection, by which, as by unerring instinct, that which is bad, merely curious, or trivial, shall be eliminated and left out of count in this work of multiplying, as it were, the world's highest art. The enterprise is no doubt a most arduous and difficult one, but the end is noble and of the highest moment; it is the bringing home to the masses of the land the means and appliances of high art-culture, the promotion of a great social force, by the help of which coming generations of this country will be powerfully assisted in holding their own in the race with the other ancient nations, and to escape being overwhelmed by the surging population and brute wealth of new worlds.

It will be thought perhaps from the foregoing statements and remarks, that the writer is entirely hostile to the system of management of museums by Boards of Trustees-but such is far from the case; and a word or two in conclusion on this may not perhaps be out of place. On the contrary, the writer believes that generally speaking this system is the best possible one for this country, and that in the long run all our national science and art institutions will be so assisted. Certain fundamental alterations in the constitution of these bodies as heretofore organised will, however, be necessary.

They are briefly: firstly, the abolition of all ex-officio and 'family' trustees; secondly, the appointment of all trustees for definite stated periods, and not for life; thirdly, the association in the trusts, with persons of high social or political position, of eminent professional authorities in their appropriate specialities; and lastly, the augmentation of the relative position and power of the permanent officials on whom the real work of museums is incumbent. Boards of trustees, in short, should have the status of official advising bodies to the directors and custodians of our museums, and not that of their absolute masters.

It would be interesting to trace back and further illustrate the special influences, which pervaded and modified the general culture of this country, at the respective epochs of the foundation of the three great national collections under consideration, and to show how distinctly the characteristics of these initial forces have been impressed on the collections which have gradually been accumulated-it would throw a strong light on their anomalies and shortcomings, and illustrate in an instructive manner the general reasons of existence of these institutions at the present moment; this, however, would furnish matter for a volume.

It is at all events very important, now that we have arrived at a period when the growing population and requirements of this country and of the colonies even, have necessitated the creation of museums and galleries of art in every great provincial centre, that definite and intelligible principles should be laid down for at least any action which the State is to exercise in regard to them. Even the most uncompromising partisan of one or other of the great imperial establishments would surely hesitate to hold his own institution up as a model for any new creation of the like nature.

On the other hand, the provincial movers in such matters certainly require intelligent aid and guidance, if their efforts, which in in any case will continue to be made, are to result in anything better than the gathering together of crude accumulations of incongruous matter, calculated rather to lower and vitiate the public taste than to raise and refine it.

It must be borne in mind also, that the persons for whom they mainly purvey are in great measure exempt from the old associations, predilections and prejudices, which have pervaded and modified for good or evil the great imperial institutions, and also that, from the mere force of things (the impossibility for instance of again forming certain classes of collections, simply because specimens are no longer to be procured), provincial museums must in any case be made to follow different lines of direction from those of the old established institutions. What may be reasonably aimed at by provincial museums, and in what manner the state can practically assist them, however, will furnish matter for another article.

J. C. ROBINSON.

FAMILIAR CONVERSATIONS ON MODERN ENGLAND.

II.

WHAT are you doing here?' said a friend, who found me taking notes out of some periodicals in the great hall of the Athenæum Club. You are surely not collecting materials for your French History in England?'

"Perhaps I might do worse,' I answered; at present, however, I am not busy with the France of Louis-Philippe. I have opened a parenthesis in my work just now, and am studying German history of the sixteenth century.'

'How so?' asked my friend, a half-continentalised Englishman. 'Are there any special documents to be found in England? And, if so, would they be hidden in the monthly or weekly papers?'

'Not precisely, I should think. Besides, you know that I have no great faith in documents, though I respect them and even use them, albeit with great caution. Have I not always maintained against my parchment-worshipping countrymen that the one allimportant source of history is life? You must see and hear the people who make history. All the books and despatches are dead for us if we cannot read them by the light of life. Great geniuses alone possess the second sight which discovers life long ago extinct, as they alone have the creative power which makes it revive for others. Even they, however, had better confine themselves to contemporary history or to times near to them, of which the living tradition is not yet vanished, as almost all the great ancients did.'

What are you aiming at in all this?' my friend replied; and what has it to do with your studying Luther's times and country in our England of 1879?'

6

The nexus is simple enough, as it seems to me. Is not England the only country in Europe where the passions, interests, and ideas which animated the contemporaries and countrymen of Luther are still living? Is it not the only country where people still read and listen to discussions upon questions of theology and ritual which have long become things of the past on the Continent?'

"Very much as it is the only country,' interrupted my friend,

'where people already busy themselves about, and show an interest in, biological matters which have not yet begun to exist for the Continent. I always wonder, when I come back to my country, to see that, after the weather, the two things which are most talked of in English society are the surplice and candle question, or the problem of bracing air or relaxing air, clay soil or gravelly soil-both preoccupations which seem not even to exist for you foreigners.'

You see then what I mean,' I answered. To have a living idea of what his forefathers felt when they fought for this is or this means, a continental of to-day must come to this island.'

'Pretty much as an Englishman must now-a-days go to the Continent if he wishes to understand how people could cut each other's throats a hundred years ago for the suspensive veto or the absolute We English are at a loss to comprehend intelligent men on the Continent, who know their history as well as we do, and fight for the scrutin de liste or for a hundred-and-twentieth law on the press, as if such forms had not proved entirely irrelevant for the essence of political life. Or had we in this country no true representation of the nation before 1832 ? Was not our press the freest in the world in spite of law texts more Draconian than those of any state on the Continent, just as your philosophical thought in Germany moves as freely as if consistory and synod never existed?'

'Maybe you are right,' I replied. I am sometimes myself afraid, lest, while discussing political forms and letters so eagerly, we should lose the little political sense we have, just as certain English devotees seem to me to have lost a good deal of Christian spirit in disputing about questions of dogma, constitution, and costume.'

Hush! This really is not the place to talk à fond about all that. But come and let us have a good chat "with our feet under the table," as the French have it,' and I had almost added, our backs to the fire,' so chilly and damp is the season. 'Come and dine with me, à la fortune du pot, if you have no engagement.'

"What will your wife say if you bring a guest home without giving her notice, and a guest, too, in morning-dress?'

'Never mind. I shall have to fight that out. You had better accept at once. It is perhaps the only chance you will have, before you leave, of enjoying a good old English joint and after-dinnertalk over a glass of claret.'

My friend was so full of the subject I had touched upon, that he did not even wait till the cloth was removed,' to bring the conversation again to the point where we had left it at the Club. Are you not, as a true German,' he resumed, 'somewhat rash in generalisation? Is not the theological interest you spoke of limited in this country to very small circles, or at any rate to such circles as do not represent the movement of English thought?'

'I have believed so more than once,' I answered; but when I see