tion without even an official guide to its contents.
Here, says the Department, is the Bethnal Green Museum with its doors
wide open: let the people walk in and inspect the contents.

So, if we invited the people to inspect a collection of cuneiform
inscriptions, we might just as well expect them to carry away a
knowledge of Assyrian history; or by exhibiting an electrical machine
we might as well expect them to understand the appliances of
electricity. It is not enough, in fact, to exhibit pictures: they must
be explained. It is with paintings and drawings as with everything
else, those who come to see them having no knowledge carry none away
with them. The visitors to a museum are like travellers in a foreign
country, of whom Emerson truly says that when they leave it they take
nothing away but what they brought with them. The finest wood carving,
the most beautiful vase, the richest classic painting, produces on the
uncultivated eye no more valuable or lasting impression than the sight
of a sailing ship for the first time produces on the mind of a savage.
That is to say, the impression at the best is of wonder, not of
delight or curiosity at all. In the picture galleries, it is true, the
dull eyes are lifted and the weary faces brighten, because here, if
you plea, we touch upon that art which every human being all over the
world can appreciate. It is the art of story-telling. The visitors go
from picture to picture and they read the stories. As for landscapes,
figures, portraits, or slabs, they pass them by. What they love is a
picture of life in action, a picture that tells a story and quicken
their pulses. You may observe this in every picture gallery--even at
the Grosvenor and the Royal Academy--even among the classes who are
supposed to know something of Art: for one who studies a portrait by
Millsis, or a head by Leighton, there are crowds who stand before a
picture which tells a story. At the Royal Academy the story is
generally, but not always, read in silence; at Bethnal Green it is
read aloud. You will perhaps observe the importance of this
difference. It is because at the Royal Academy everybody has the
feeling that he is present in the character of a critic, and must
therefore affect, at least, to be considering the workmanship, and
passing a judgment on the artist. But at Bethnal Green the visitors
feel that they have been invited to be pleased, to wonder, and to
admire the beautiful stories represented o