General Museums.—These are collections of a miscellaneous kind, comprising art, science, archæological and other objects, and aiming more or less at universality. The British Museum was at one time a universal collection, but since it was divided into art, ethnological, natural history and industrial departments, it no longer forms a general collection under one roof. Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, is a general museum, and there are many others in the provinces.
National Museums.—Collections illustrative of the arts, manufactures, antiquities, literature and history of a nation. These range in extent from the great German, Hungarian and French museums, down to museums of national antiquities, like those of the Societies of Antiquaries of England, Scotland and Ireland.
Science Museums.—Comprising Anatomical, Botanical, Geological, Chemical, Physical, General Natural History, Astronomical, Ethnological and other varieties. Typical examples are the Hunterian Museum of Anatomy at the Royal College of Surgeons, London; the Herbarium at Kew; the Museum of Practical Geology; the Pharmaceutical Society; the Natural History Museum at South Kensington; the United Service Museum (Naval and Military) at Whitehall; and the historical collections of the British Museum which include Ethnology.
Local Museums.—These are to be found in all parts of the country, and they usually serve to illustrate and preserve the natural history and antiquities of a particular district; and they differ from national museums, in being restricted to a particular locality.
Special Museums.—Of these there is practically no end. They have been formed to illustrate certain restricted departments of science, art or history, such as Hygiene, Numismatics, Watch-making, Heraldry, Costume, etc., and they resemble exhibitions of a special kind, save that they are permanent.
553.
553. Generally speaking, a museum is a collection of the objects which go towards the formation of a subject, just as a library is a collection of the literature connected with a subject or subjects. The museum is necessary to the material conception of a subject, just as literature is essential as the permanent record of the subject. For example, in tracing the evolution of the printed book from its manuscript forms, one can form an idea of the appearance of such books by reading up the relative literature, and examining a few facsimiles, and so on; but, in order to realize in a perfect way the aspect, atmosphere and details of early writing and printing, one must go to the great exhibitions or museums of such books at the British Museum or John Rylands Library, Manchester. It is the same with machinery. While a diagram of a machine as it appears in a book may be comprehensible to a few specially educated minds, it would be a mere puzzle to an ordinary human being unless he could go to a museum like that at South Kensington and see a working model of the machine in operation. He could then realize in a practical and concrete way the merely graphic or theoretical view afforded by the book.
554.
554. All the great State museums in the country have been established under the provisions of special Acts of Parliament. Some of these, like the various acts establishing the British Museum, date from the eighteenth century, while others are much more recent. It is not proposed to deal with the legislation and history of the State museums, nor is it necessary to do more than describe, later on, their relations with the municipal museums which may now be considered.