498
11
• I
10
THE INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM
concern as a Merchant Company, whatever claims it may possess upon other sections of the community. That it is, however, eminently deserving of your fostering care and sympathy, I hope to be able to show without trespassing to any great extent on your time or patience.
I will begin by drawing your attention to the important fact, that the Industrial Museum of Scotland, like all the similar museums of the country, has not arisen in obedience to any sudden romantic impulse of educational enthusiasts or hypothetical philosophers, but has slowly grown into a visible reality, and forced itself on the notice of the practical intellects of the country. How this has been, a few words will explain.
The long peace which followed Waterloo gave us leisure to neglect war; to apply the sciences to the useful arts; and to interchange with our brethren of mankind on all sides, the important discoveries and inventions which they and we had severally achieved. When the French Revolution awoke Europe from its perilous slumber, it awoke the philosopher as well as the soldier and the statesman, and Watt's steam engines and Davy's voltaic batteries were fruits of the same energy which dethroned the Bourbons, and won Waterloo. When peace at length came,
AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE.
discovery followed discovery, and invention invention, with a rapidity such as the world never witnessed before. Four of those, partly discoveries, partly inventions, namely, steamships, railroads, locomotives, and electric telegraphs, the beginnings of which were long before the peace, but their practical evolution not till long after it, were of themselves sufficient to have necessitated Industrial Museums, by their effect in abridging Space and Time. Keats the poet, in his Eve of St. Agnes, imagines with exquisite fancy the possibility of a full-blown rose becoming "a bud again." We have seen something of the kind happen.
The great globe has seemed before our eyes to contract into smaller dimensions, and all the cities on its surface to come closer together and almost to look in at each other's windows. When such things have occurred as the simultaneous announcement to every capital of Europe, that Czar Nicholas was dead, who has not felt as if the cities of the globe were visibly separated by no other barrier than the almost imperceptible wire-fence of the electric telegraph?
The feeling of increased neighbourhood with the whole earth, which has thus been startlingly brought before us, grows familiar and even pleasant with every excursion we make. What a strange difference has
498
11
• I
10
THE INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM
concern as a Merchant Company, whatever claims it may possess upon other sections of the community. That it is, however, eminently deserving of your fostering care and sympathy, I hope to be able to show without trespassing to any great extent on your time or patience.
I will begin by drawing your attention to the important fact, that the Industrial Museum of Scotland, like all the similar museums of the country, has not arisen in obedience to any sudden romantic impulse of educational enthusiasts or hypothetical philosophers, but has slowly grown into a visible reality, and forced itself on the notice of the practical intellects of the country. How this has been, a few words will explain.
The long peace which followed Waterloo gave us leisure to neglect war; to apply the sciences to the useful arts; and to interchange with our brethren of mankind on all sides, the important discoveries and inventions which they and we had severally achieved. When the French Revolution awoke Europe from its perilous slumber, it awoke the philosopher as well as the soldier and the statesman, and Watt's steam engines and Davy's voltaic batteries were fruits of the same energy which dethroned the Bourbons, and won Waterloo. When peace at length care,
AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE.
discovery followed discovery, and invention inven- tion, with a rapidity such as the world never witnessed before. Four of those, partly discoveries, partly inventions, namely, steamships, railroads, locomotives, and electric telegraphs, the beginnings of which were long before the peace, but their practical evolution not till long after it, were of them- selves sufficient to have necessitated Industrial Museums, by their effect in abridging Space and Time. Keats the poet, in his Eve of St. Agnes, imagines with exquisite fancy the possibility of a full blown rose becoming "a bul again." We have seen something of the kind happen.
The great globe has seemed before our eyes to contract into smaller dimensions, and all the cities on its surface to come closer together and almost to look in at each other's windows. When such things have occurred as the simultaneous announcement to every capital of Europe, that Czar Nicholas was dead, who has not felt as if the cities of the globe were visibly separated by no other barrier than the almost imperceptible wire-fence of the electric telegraph ?
The feeling of increased neighbourhood with the whole earth, which has thus been startlingly brought before us, grows familiar and even pleasant with every excursion we make. What a strange difference has
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