The Edinburgh Review (Volume 123); Or Critical Journal (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Art. III.Irresponsible Boards. A Speech delivered by Lord Henry Gordon Lennox, M.P., in the House of Commons, on Tuesday, 18th March, 1862. Chichester and London: 1862. Tx was not until some time after the passing of the Reform Bill that the nation began to interest itself actively in demanding public institutions for promoting science, art, and education. The contrast between the positive apathy on these subjects which existed half a century ago and the feeling which is now shown both in and out of Parliament will appear very striking when we recall a few of the circumstances of the last fifty years. At the beginning of that period the sole public repository which existed for preserving objects of art and science, the property of the nation and supported by Parliament, was the British Museum. It is only about thirty years since the late Mr. John Wilson Croker and others, when the British Museum was discussed in Parliament, used to jeer at Blooms- bury as a terra incognita, and Charles Buller's wit sparkled in an article describing a voyage to those parts and the manners and customs of the natives. About a hundred visitors a day on an average, in parties of five persons only, were admitted to gape at the unlabelled ' rarities and curiosities deposited in Montague House. A very small public, indeed, studied or even regarded them as illustrations of the fine arts, or of science and of human culture and intelligence. The state of things outside the British Museum was analogous. Westminster Abbey was closed except for divine service and to show a closet of wax-work. Admittance to the public monuments in St. Paul's and other churches was irksome to obtain and costly: even the Tower of London could not be seen for less than six shillings. The private picture-galleries were most d...