nversation, you will presently discover with how much intelligence
they are studying the artistic work before them.

The failure of Bethnal Green should teach us what to avoid. Let us
therefore walk round the halls and galleries of this museum. In the
central hall there is placed, each object with a ticket containing a
brief description of it, a really noble collection of cabinets, carved
and painted; with these are rare and costly vases, of English,
Russian, Danish, and German workmanship; there are a few statuettes,
some paintings on china, things in glazed earthenware, and glass cases
containing Syrian and Albanian necklaces and jewellery. In the lower
side galleries there is, first, a collection of food products, showing
specimens of wheat, rice, starch, salt, and so forth, with models of
vegetables and fruit executed in wax; and next, a collection of
woollen stuff and fabrics of all kinds, with feathers, stags' heads,
antlers, and so forth. In the upper galleries there is a collection of
paintings and engravings. Here and there are suspended tablets which
are inscribed with bits of information, chiefly statistical. On my
last visit to the place I could not observe that anyone was studying
these tablets. This is, roughly speaking, all that the Bethnal Green
Museum contains. The directors of this institution, opened with so
much promise, which was going to educate the people and endow them
with a sense of Art and a love of beauty, think they have done all
they promised when they show a collection of cabinets and vases, a few
bottles containing rice and wheat, a few turnips in wax, a few cases
with pretty fabrics, and collection of pictures. There is no music;
there is no sculpture; none of the small arts are represented at all;
there is not the slightest attempt made to educate anybody. If you
want any other information or help besides that given by the tablets
you will not get it, because there is nobody to give it. A policeman
mounts guard over the cases, a woman sells the publications of the
South Kensington Department, and you can rend on a board the number of
visitors for every day in the year. But there is no one to go round
with you and talk about the things on exhibition. There are no
lectures nor any classes, there are no handbooks to teach the history
of the Fine Arts and to illustrate the collection in the museum. There
is not, incredible to say, even a catalogue. _There is no catalogue_.
Imagine an exhibi