Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/22

31, 1859.] tickets, which it often took a month to obtain, it has at length found a home worthy of our country—a home whose doors are open to all comers at all times, and is now the finest general collection in England. The Geological Museum, first established in a single room in Craig’s Court, owing to the untiring energy of the late Sir Henry De la Beche, after years of ceaseless labour, obtained from Government the grant of a suitable building in Jermyn Street, and is now one of the most popular educational institutions in England.

Again, the museum of the products of the Vegetable Kingdom, now for the first time lodged in a building in Kew Gardens, capable of affording the necessary facilities for a classified arrangement, is attributable to the energy of Sir William Hooker, whose private collections form the nucleus of this now national institution.

The British Museum, the National Gallery, the Geological Museum, and the Vegetable Collection at Kew, were all established previous to 1851. The museum at South Kensington, however, has been called into existence since that date, and the Society of Arts may be said to be the founders of the new museum-which consists of educational apparatus, animal products, and mechanical appliances, with the addition of specimens of the English school of art. At the close of the Exhibition of 1851, it was felt that if England was to maintain her position in the race of industrial competition, it was necessary that an increased amount of attention should be paid to the education of her artisans. To effect this point, the Society of Arts, in 1854, exhibited in St. Martin’s Hall the educational appliances both of England and the Continent, so far as they could collect them; and this collection is the basis of the Educational Museum of South Kensington.

A museum of Industrial Products in England was an acknowledged want, and the donations of exhibitors in 1851 were solicited and obtained, as the basis of a collection of that class; but there still existed another want, which the Society of Arts, jointly with the Royal Commissioners, determined to supply, namely, a collection of the products of the Animal Kingdom. This, under the superintendence of Mr. Edward Solly, at that time Secretary of the Society of Arts, was obtained and exhibited by the Society, and it now forms the foundation of the animal collection at South Kensington.

Machinery and mechanical appliances still remained unprovided; and here the Society of Arts have again been the instigators of the measures which have enabled the Commissioners of Patents, under the able superintendence of Mr. Bennett Woodcroft, to form the collection of Patented Inventions now exhibited at South Kensington. The condition of the Patent Laws engaged the attention of the Society of Arts as far back as 1850; and the Bill which constitutes the amended law, and under which the appointment of Mr. Woodcroft, and the publication of the specifications, took place, was based on the principles laid down in the reports made by the Society’s Committee. But the Society’s action neither began nor finished there; for in 1848 it opened, and has since held yearly, an Exhibition of the Models of Machinery and Patented Inventions, and want of space alone has prevented the establishment of a permanent mechanical museum of reference.

In advancing the foregoing facts, there is no desire to detract from the merit due to the energetic management under which the accumulated collection has been brought together at South Kensington by Mr. Henry Cole; but the importance of the small beginnings instituted by the Society of Arts should not be lost sight of at a time when it is proposed by that Society to take steps for the establishment of a second Universal Exhibition in 1862, and which proposition includes the erection of a permanent building on the ground which was purchased with the surplus money obtained from the Exhibition of 1851.

It is not our intention now to enter upon the discussion of the merits of the proposition put forward, nor to consider the condition of the political atmosphere of Europe; but it may be well to impress on the mind of the public the important results which have already flowed from the Exhibition of 1851. England now possesses an Industrial, Art, and Educational Museum. An Art Museum, which illustrates more fully and worthily than has ever before been done, the character of the English School; an Educational Museum, which it never before possessed, and which includes within it the products of the animal kingdom, and which, when added to the Geological Museum in Jermyn Street, and the Vegetable Museum of Kew, places the products of the three kingdoms of nature before the student for ready reference; and an Industrial Collection, which embraces within its wide-spread arms the products of the potter’s wheel, the loom, and the last improved form of the mighty steam-engine, while it at the same time illustrates the means available for constructing healthy homes and increasing the comfort derivable by the working-man in the economic use and treatment of food substances.

If such results have already been reaped in eight years from a single Exhibition—if such increased facilities for the instruction of the artisan have been created—to what results may we not look forward as likely to flow from a second Exhibition to be held in 1862? H. G. H.

.—The late Lord Charles Manners was an excellent horseman. Whilst serving in a horse regiment in the Peninsula, he came unexpectedly on a French cavalry piquet, who forthwith gave him chase, until he reached a brook which he cleared in true Melton style, taking off his hat, and bidding the Frenchmen “Adieu, Messieurs!” The Frenchmen, none of whom could take the leap, were chivalrously forbidden by their commanding officer to fire upon an unarmed foe. A caricature descriptive of the event, now scarce, was published at the time; it is called “A Belvoir Leap, or teaching the French Good Manners.”