The Daily Review, 10th June 1876.

There are in London two great museums, representing the whole British empire in a sense which cannot be asserted of the pretty and useful collections at South Kensington. Each of the two is a museum in the higher and more accurate meaning of the term, for each has a great library as part of it The British Museum is the special protege of Parliament. Every premier of taste like Mr. Gladstone or literary experience like Mr. Disraeli is liberal to it, and even Mr. Lowe was known to be lavish for once when he did such excellent service as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The India Museum asks nothing from the public of this country, but freely to display its stores, and to be allowed to spend on itself alone the money of the people of India which belongs to it. Yet the management of the former has of late been a cause of depreciatory criticism and irritation to the literary class who make the best use of it; while the latter is ever asking, and asking in vain, for fair play, that it may utilize all its resources for the good of British commerce and manufactures, scholarship and art.

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The last British Museum blue book, laid on the table of the House of Commons and signed by "J. Winter Jones, Principal Librarian," is as meagre and unsatisfactory as its recent predecessors. It seems to be drawn up so much on the principle of revealing as little as possible, that some of our more literary or radical members of Parliament should move for the production of the full departmental reports, if not for a commission of inquiry into the whole organization and administration of the vast institution. Defeated in our attempts to decide on the justice of the bitter complaints periodically made regarding the management of the British Museum, we turn to such few facts of interest as we are here allowed to glean. In 1875 the number of visitors to the collection and reading-room had arisen to 663,898, from 601,843 the year before, and 543, 791 in 1870. Of the number in 1875, so many as 105,310 persons took advantage of the reading-room—the finest in Europe for study or research. On the 292 days when the room was open to the public there was a daily average of 360 readers, each of whom consulted 13 volumes a day. This will give a slight idea of the vast importance to the country, all questions of expense apart, of as perfect an organization of catalogues, apparatus, and means of collecting as skill and conscientiousness can devise. It is impossible to discover in what position the preparation of the catalogue is in spite of the enormous sums expended upon it. Without it the library is a city of the dead, only partially laid bare to the public inspection. We are told that 82,458 "articles," that is books, sets of newspapers and music, playbills, songs, and Parliamentary papers, were added to the printed books department last year. The acquisitions of greatest interest seem to have been six copies of Indulgences printed on vellum, and of very great rarity.

The first of these is that issued by Pope Nicholas V. to persons furnishing aid to the King of Cyprus against the Turks, and is one of the earliest specimens of printing, being dated 1455. The sixth is very important, being a copy of the indulgence granted by Pope Leo X., through Albert Archbishop of Mentz and Magdeburgh, in return for contributions towards the building of St. Peter's at Rome. This it was that Tetzel sold and Luther used as the thin edge of the wedge of the Reformation. The museum has purchased some 2,000 of the unique collection of Reformation volumes made by Mr. Schneider, of Berlin during the last 40 years, thus acquiring many works new to it even under the names of Luther, Calvin, and Melanchthon; whilst in the case of Bucer, Bullinger, Carolostadt, Osiander, Bugenhagen, and others less known, the additions are very considerable. The collection is particularly rich in materials for the history of the Anabaptists. Those who are interested in the Sieben Taeger, or Seventh Day Baptists, who established a monastery and a printing press, and struck out a peculiar style of sacred music founded on the tones of the Æolian harp, may now consult the rare and curious book the "Paradisisches Wunder-Spiel" of the sect. And by contrast there is now in the library the only complete file in existence of Henri Rochefort's "Marseillaise" newspaper. We shall not recount the new treasures added to the other collections. The complaint is not that the public money should be generally spent in purchases for the British Museum, but that the treasures when acquired should, by imperfect management, be buried or rendered difficult of access. It should never be forgotten that the library of the British Museum is the greatest literary workshop, not only in the country, but in the world.

Very differen is the attitudes of the India Museum and Library to the literary and commercial public. Created by the generous directors page 25 of the old company in Leadenhall Street, the collections were finally moved to the splendid pile in which the India and the Foreign Offices are now accommodated. But both books and collections were banished to the attics—or rather such small portions of them as were not buried in the cellars. The money of the people of India had been spent in purchasing the site of that pile of offices, and also a vacant space in Charles Street, on which the Duke of Argyll and Mr. Grant Duff were long eager to build a structure fit for the display of the whole of the articles and volumes, as well. as for the accommodation of the Royal Asiatic Society. A somewhat over scrupulous regard for the state of the finances restrained them when the Liberals were in office, although millions were squandered in India on expensive and badly constructed public works. This museum has at its head men so capable as Dr. Forbes Watson and Dr. George Birdwood, both of our Scotch Universities.

The library has long been presided over by Dr. Rost, an accomplished philologist. Denied even its own site, the India Museum has of late wandered to the deserted galleries of the International Exhibition in South Kensington. The whole affair is such a scandal that the Associated Chambers of Commerce, and the Chambers of Glasgow, Manchester, and Belfast, have memorialized Mr. Disraeli on the subject, but as yet in vain. Dr. Forbes Watson has never slept, for the use of the museum is of vital importance to all engaged in trade with or manufacture for the east. Defeated on every side he has just proposed a new plan, which is so feasible and so desirable that success should be certain. Allying the great colonial interests with the Indian, he advocates the erection, side by side, on the Old Fife House site on the Thames Embankment, of two independent museums—one for India, and the other for the colonies. The Colonial Museum would consist of sections representing separately the principal colonies, provision being made at the same time for the India Library, and for the establishment of a special Colonial Library and Reading-room; and buildings likewise to contain the rooms of the Royal Asiatic Society, and of the Royal Colonial Institute. He also proposes to concentrate the business of the colonies in the same building by placing it in the offices of the Crown agents and of the agents-general for the colonies. Mr. Disraeli's Government having taken the Charles Street site, which his predecessors had destined for the India Museum, as part of the great scheme for the new public offices, is bound to give his consent to the use of the old Fife House site of nearly 2½ acres, which belongs to the Crown. The whole trade of the country is interested in the establishment of such a Colonial and India Museum and Library in the very heart of political and literary London. We would urge the various Chambers of Commerce to renew their memorials to Mr. Disraeli in favour of Dr. Forbes Watson's proposals.