The Weekly Times, 18th June 1876.

The residents in the Strand, especially those near the Savoy, are very jealous for the Embankment; nor can we blame them for their desire to keep as much of it unbuilt upon as is requisite for ornamental or sanitary purposes. But as there is a limit to all things, it is very possible to push this desire to unreasonable extremes. Last week they held a local meeting to consider the proposal to construct two museums—one for India, and the other for the colonies; and those present came to the almost unanimous conclusion that such museums on the Embankment would be not only a nuisance and an eyesore, but an infringement on the property of the ratepayers. As to the last, if the land was sold at the market value there would be no infringement. As regards the eyesore, the backs and ends of houses, now visible to all who walk along the Embankment, are anything but ornamental. Provided the approaches were not blocked up, a large handsome building would be an improvement, though it might shut out the view from the windows of some of these over-nice remonstrants. As a matter of fact, the alarm was a false one, the projected museums being intended for the western end of the Embankment, at the embouchure of the Northumberland Avenue, nearly on the site of Fife House.

Doubtless there are objections to building a mint or the law courts which do not apply to museums. The former may be set down anywhere, and law courts may also be erected near any great thoroughfare; but museums require to be built where they can be easily approached by land or by water, by folks who walk as well as by those who ride. Now the Embankment is a very accessible site in those respects—to north and south, to east and west. Fortunately there is a plot of land about half a mile distant from the Savoy, that affords equal facility of communication; but if the people of Whitehall were to act on the principles of the Savoyards, the museums would never be built at the end of Northumberland Avenue, and would, perhaps, have to seek a home at South Kensington, which Lord Sandon and a good many big and idle folks regard as the centre of the metropolis. Now we say that anything is preferable to the concentration of all the national collections to the dominion of King Cole. That insatiable devourer of museums has had his way too long. His influence still remains supreme, though he is no longer head of the science and art departments. He has succeeded in removing the natural history portion of the British Museum to the Brompton Road. He has made—for in a year or two the new building will be completed—the stuffed birds and beasts as inaccessible to hardworking London as if he had taken them to the moon. The children of the north, the east, and the south will soon be robbed of their holiday treat, to say nothing of the lessons in natural history they so unconsciously used to learn. The antiquities that few care to see, and which require a life's training to be made intelligible, are left to the working man, to whom hieroglyphics and Babylonian bricks speak a language he does not understand. The library is left because Bloomsbury is central, and the readers at the British Museum are too strong a body to be page 21 meddled with. The zoological collections are taken to South Kensington because it is not central, and children and working men have no influence. If those who oppose at all cost the erection of all public buildings on the Embankment succeed, their success will be a loss. South Kensington will welcome with open arms the addition of the Indian and Colonial Museums to its other attractions. The only wise course is to discountenance all such centralization, or excentralization, and insist upon local museums being dotted over London like the one at Bethnal Green. It is a mere job, as well as a very poor joke, to build museums in places where the classes who most need them cannot get at them. We do not despise the pretty bazaar at South Kensington. It is a capital lounge for Belgravian nursery maids and their young charges; but that is no reason why the hard-working men and women of London—we do not speak of mechanics only—should have to go so far for their lectures and relaxation. If Lord Granville refused some time ago to preside at a distribution of prizes at South Kensington, because it was so far off, it must be quite as inconvenient to others who do not possess a carriage, and cannot always find the time, or the money, to go to the outskirts of London in search of knowledge. The fact is that the South Kensington Museum is used to bolster up a huge job in which bigger folks than Cole, C.B., are concerned. Let us be wise in time, and utilize the Embankment.