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Travel and Recollections of Travel with a Chat Upon Various Subjects ...
Travel and Recollections of Travel with a Chat Upon Various Subjects Author:John Shaw Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. Museums and their Collections—Incapacity of the Attendants —Fish out of their Element—Connexion of the Sciences as developed in Nature. In visi... more »ting our National Gallery and British Museum many years ago, I was invariably struck with the circumstance of the extreme paucity of attendance of those, who, at that time, were scarcely ever to be seen within their precincts, viz., the lowest classes and working population of our country —those classes which form the basis of all our manufacturing, agricultural and commercial pursuits, and who have enabled England to take that high position which makes her stand unrivalled among the nations of the world. Since that, however, I have perceived a gradual increase in the numbers of our working people to my very great gratification. Upon one occasion, observing a far greater number of working people than ordinary in the National Gallery, I observed to one of the officials what a delightful circumstance it was to see that class of people flocking to the gallery to improve their taste. He replied, " I am sorry to say we have far too many of those dirty creatures." I replied, " The more the better." Surely this was a most unfit person to have the care and charge of any establishment so well calculated to improve the bad taste and the unfortunately lost condition of many of the poor people of this most wealthy country. This man must have been one of the rabble himself elevated to his position, whose heart, mind, taste and education had been utterly neglected,And the parties who placed him there, whoever they may be, stand guilty of a gross offence to the entire community of Englishmen from the lords, spiritual and temporal, down to the working man of the parish union. One of the most indispensable qualifications for a man in...« less