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 242 applied to artistic and literary purposes, extend far beyond the actual purchasers of photographs, inasmuch as the present restrictions act injuriously and indeed prohibitively upon undertakings of admitted general utility, both public and private.

In illustration of the impediments which the present system opposes to such undertakings, I may instance the difficulty of meeting the legitimate demands of provincial museums. Residents in the provinces, equally with residents in the metropolis, contribute to the support of institutions like the British Museum, and are entitled to expect that they should, as far as possible, participate in its advantages. There are, I believe, many well-meaning people so impressed with the justice of this demand that to give it satisfaction they are prepared to permanently dislocate the national collection, or to despatch portion after portion on an itinerating tour throughout the provinces. I need not seek to convince you that this specious suggestion is unsound; that the moral and historical and artistic significance of the collection depend upon its universality and the preservation of the delicate links and gradations of its several parts, and that the loss of the metropolis would by no means be the gain of the provinces. It is nevertheless the duty of the central institution to compensate the provinces in every possible way for their inevitable disadvantages, and though photography will not do everything in this respect, it will do much. In sculpture, coins, engravings, and drawings in outline or of neutral tint, the smallest town in the kingdom might