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# THE INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM
a moment suppose that I mean to say that the museums referred to suddenly came into existence without human help. On the other hand, each of them owes its development to the labours of many energetic men, who found these labours no light task. But it is most remarkable that alike Sir Henry De la Beche, in describing the origin of the Industrial Geological Museum in Jermyn Street, London; Sir William Hooker, in describing the origin of the Industrial Botanical Museum at Kew; and Sir Robert Kane, in describing the origin of the Industrial Museum at Dublin, state explicitly, that it was because materials accumulated around them, not because they looked about for materials, that their respective museums came into being. In no case, moreover, did government come to their assistance, till it was placed beyond doubt that, in possession or near prospect, specimens were largely available for each of these museums; and in conformity with this, when government resolved to establish an Industrial Museum here, it made the collection of specimens the first thing, the building of a permanent museum the second. I dwell upon these points because they are scarcely known to the general public whom you represent, and because I cannot but think that the independent origin of the three non-Scottish Industrial Museums
## AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE.
affords a powerful threefold argument in favour of the value of such institutions, as things for which the time was ripe, and by neglecting which we shall certainly suffer.
As for our own Industrial Museum, I will only observe, that in no part of the empire has the value of museums, as important aids in practical education, been longer or more fully recognised than in Edinburgh, so that I may say that, with one consent, and having the interests of all Scotland in view, the whole of our public bodies have come forward to encourage the Industrial Museum; various of them, as the Town Council, the Senate of the University, and the Highland and Agricultural Society, making sacrifices to aid its establishment, and all, without exception, giving proofs of their good will.
In what follows, I shall limit myself to our own museum, in its relation to commercial enterprise.
The Industrial Museum, like the College, the Court of Session, or the House of Commons, is at once a walled-in space and an embodied idea or cluster of ideas. The walled-in space takes its character from the idea which it embodies, and that idea is fourfold. It includes the conception of
1. An ample Exhibitional Gallery, where the raw or workable and other materials of industrial art,
503
21
20
THE INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM
a moment suppose that I mean to say that the museums referred to suddenly came into existence without human help. On the other hand, each of them owes its development to the labours of many energetic men, who found these labours no light task. But it is most remarkable that alike Sir Henry De la Beche, in describing the origin of the Industrial Geological Museum in Jermyn Street, London; Sir William Hooker, in describing the origin of the Indus- trial Botanical Museum at Kew; and Sir Robert Kane, in describing the origin of the Industrial Museum at Dublin, state explicitly, that it was because materials accumulated around them, not because they looked about for materials, that their respective museums came into being. In no case, moreover, did government come to their assistance, till it was placed beyond doubt that, in possession or near prospect, specimens were largely available for each of these museums; and in conformity with this, when government resolved to establish an Industrial Museum here, it made the collection of specimens the first thing, the building of a permanent museum the second, I dwell upon those points because they are scarcely known to the general public whom you represent, and because I cannot but think that the independent origin of the three non-Scottish Industrial Museums
AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE.
affords a powerful threefold argument in favour of the value of such institutions, as things for which the time was ripe, and by neglecting which we shall certainly suffer.
As for our own Industrial Museum, I will only observe, that in no part of the empire has the value of museums, as important aids in practical education, been longer or more fully recognised than in Edin- burgh, so that I may say that, with one consent, and having the interests of all Scotland in view, the whole of our public bodies have come forward to encourage the Industrial Museum; various of them, as the Town Council, the Senate of the University, and the Highland and Agricultural Society, making sacrifices to aid its establishment, and all, without exception, giving proofs of their good will.
In what follows, I shall limit myself to our own museum, in its relation to commercial enterprise.
The Industrial Museum, like the College, the Court of Session, or the House of Commons, is at once a walled-in space and an embodied idea or cluster of ideas. The walled-in space takes its charactor from the idea which it embodies, and that idea is fourfold. It includes the conception of
1. An ample Exhibitional Gallery, where the raw or workable and other materials of industrial art,
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