In the upper galleries there is a collection of
paintings and engravings. Here and there are suspended tablets which
are inscribed with bits of information, chiefly statistical. On my
last visit to the place I could not observe that anyone was studying
these tablets. This is, roughly speaking, all that the Bethnal Green
Museum contains. The directors of this institution, opened with so
much promise, which was going to educate the people and endow them
with a sense of Art and a love of beauty, think they have done all
they promised when they show a collection of cabinets and vases, a few
bottles containing rice and wheat, a few turnips in wax, a few cases
with pretty fabrics, and collection of pictures. There is no music;
there is no sculpture; none of the small arts are represented at all;
there is not the slightest attempt made to educate anybody. If you
want any other information or help besides that given by the tablets
you will not get it, because there is nobody to give it. A policeman
mounts guard over the cases, a woman sells the publications of the
South Kensington Department, and you can rend on a board the number of
visitors for every day in the year. But there is no one to go round
with you and talk about the things on exhibition.
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