# THE INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM
AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE
impatient of change; nor, on the other hand, must we overlook the influence of novelty and curiosity in exciting inventive ingenuity. The great improvers of the arts are either their devoted followers, or total strangers to them; the indifferent general public prove, when they offer advice, only ignorant intermeddlers. The Huntingdon brewer, called Oliver Cromwell, could teach a military trick or two to Prince Rupert and his cavaliers. The Newcastle collier George Stephenson was so wonderful at engineering, that they would not make him a civil engineer. The gardener John Paxton, because he knew nothing of architecture, became Sir John as the architect of the Crystal Palace. I am not certain, indeed, that the industrial arts have not been as much advanced by strangers as by acquaintances.
At all events, one of the chief, and I confess unexpected, obstacles which I encounter in seeking to fill the Industrial Museum with examples of Art, is the too humble estimate which men form of their own callings. I cannot persuade a shoe-maker that shoes are of interest to any but shoe-makers and the barefooted public, although he looks with eager curiosity at my collection of hats in all their stages.
I tried in vain to induce a very intelligent glassmaker to send me certain specimens of glass, till I showed him a full series of illustrations of brush-making. His eyes brightened with interest, and he admired the ingenious and unsuspected devices which an art strange to him revealed. Well, said I, be sure the brush-maker will be as much interested in your glass as you are in his brushes, so send me what I ask.
I cannot, accordingly, help inferring that a stranger's curiosity will often make up for his defective experience, and that the Industrial Museum would secure his services for all the arts it represented.
But whether such services be rendered by experts or by novices, this at least is most certain, that not one of the great Industrial Arts can stand still. In proportion as they are flourishing, every day witnesses old processes altered and new ones introduced.
When the duty upon common salt was removed, and our practical chemists began to make soda from it, they threw into the air all the muriatic acid evolved from the salt. Their neighbours complained of the acid fumes, and, at immense expense, the chemists built gigantic chimneys to send the vapours nearer the stars. By and by the price of sulphur, with which they cannot dispense, rose, and they changed the construction of their furnaces so as to burn iron pyrites in them. Then the price of soda
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THE INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM
impatient of change; nor, on the other hand, must we overlook the influence of novelty and curiosity in exciting inventive ingenuity. The great improvers of the arts are either their devoted followers, or total strangers to them; the indifferent general public prove, when they offer advice, only ignorant inter- ineddlers. The Huntingdon brewer, called Oliver Cromwell, could teach a military trick or two to Prince Rupert and his cavaliers. The Newcastle collier George Stephenson was so wonderful at engineering, that they would not make him a civil engineer. The gardener John Paxton, because he knew nothing of architecture, became Sir John as the architect of the Crystal Palace. I am not certain, indeed, that the industrial arts have not been as much advanced by strangers as by acquaintances.
At all events, one of the chief, and I confess unexpected, obstacles which I encounter in seeking to fill the Industrial Museum with examples of Art, is the too humble estimate which men form of their own callings. I cannot persuade a shoe- maker that shoes are of interest to any but shoe- makers and the barefooted public, although he looks with eager curiosity at my collection of hats in all their stages.
I tried in vain to induce a very intelligent glassmaker to send me certain specimens
AND COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE
of glass, till I showed him a full series of illustrations of brush-making. His eyes brightened with interest, and he admired the ingenious and unsuspected devices which an art strange to him revealed. Well, said I, be sure the brush-maker will be as much interested in your glass as you are in his brushes, so send me what I ask.
I cannot, accordingly, help inferring that a stranger's curiosity will often make up for his defective experience, and that the Industrial Museum would secure his services for all the arts it represented.
But whether such services be rendered by experts or by novices, this at least is most certain, that not one of the great Industrial Arts can stand still. In proportion as they are flourishing, every day witnesses old processes altered and new ones introduced.
When the duty upon common salt was removed, and our practical chemists began to make soda from it, they threw into the air all the muriatic acid evolved from the salt. Their neighbours complained
of the acid fumes, and, at immense expense, the chemists built gigantic chimneys to send the vapours nearer the stars. By and by the price of sulphur, with which they cannot dispense, rose, and they changed the construction of their furnaces so as to burn iron pyrites in them. Then the price of soda
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