-nigh every important and progressive country, save our own, the
great questions of civics have already been fully opened, and vividly
brought before their public, by these great contemporary museums with
their associated congresses.

With our present Chairman, the Rt. Hon. Charles Booth, with Canon
Barnett, Mr. Horsfall, and so many other eminent civic workers among us;
with our committee and its most organising of secretaries, might not a
real impulse be given in this way by this Society towards civic
education and action?

Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every important
exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits
have been more instructive and more popular than have been (1) the
picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of
their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present
conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering
them.

Even as a show then, I venture to submit that such a "Towneries" might
readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, the
excellent "Fisheries," "Healtheries", and other successful exhibitions
in the record and recent memory of London. The advantages of such an
exhibition are indeed too numerous for even an outline here; but they
may be easily thought out more and more fully. Indeed, I purposely
abstain for the present from more concrete suggestion; for the
discussion of its elements, methods, plans, and scale will be found to
raise the whole range of civic questions, and to set these in freshening
lights.

[Page: 111] At this time of social transition, when we all more or less
feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of
sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the continual
appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic
Exhibition would surely be specially valuable. In the interest, then, of
the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic
Exhibition.[14]

[14] Since the preceding paper was read, it is encouraging to note the
practical beginnings of a movement towards a civic exhibition,
appropriately arising, like so many other valuable contributions to
civic betterment, from Toynbee Hall. The Cottages Exhibition initiated
by Mr. St. Loe Strachey at Garden City, and of course also that
admirable scheme itself, must also be mentioned as importance forces in
the directions of progr