The Express.
London, England, 1866-03-15 00:00:00

THE

~,.v, o,

mews which were erected for the Exhibition
tare galleries, or the " boilers*" which. first
South Kensington art famous In the. world.
this modification another hundred thousand is put
down to the credit of Kensington. Against it,
however, there is to be set the cost of a duplicate
library of reference, and the cost of new cases and
fittings. On the whole, it is certainly a liberal
allowance in favour of Kensington, if we say that
it offers us an economy on the first construction of
260,0001. But the building on either site is esti-
mated to cost above 600,0001. And the annual
service of the museum costs close upon 100,000/.
at present. So the question comes to be whether,
when we must spend such sums, the advantages
of a saving of 250,0001. once for all are sufficient
to outweigh the disadvantages which we should per-
manently experience from dividing the collections,
and goading the scientific portion toa suburb ; for no
other advantage save the momentary economy that
may be alleged in favour of such a amuse. The ecien-
tific collections are not suffering from either smoke
o; gas, as pictures are sometimes said to do. Nobody
has ever alleged that they will be either better
seen or more conveniently reached at South Ken-
sington than at Bloomsbury. It is solely a pecu-
niary inducement that is held out for the bait.
But ere we accept a proposal of economy, it is
nsosesary to consider efficiency. Theme national
collestions are kept up at great expense to be
seen and to be useful. It is admitted they will,
not be better seen, nor prove more useful at Ken-
sington than in the heart of London, but will they
be as well f Will it be as easy for the nation
which pays for them be examine them four miles
sway from their present locality f To say ao is to
say that the nation is better represented by Ken-
sington than by London, that its heart beets at
Kensington rather than in London, that the centre
to which all its functions converge is at Ken-
sington rather than in the midst of its
metropolis. It is of course impossible
that the collections shall be in every
point of the metropolis, and those who do not live
at the precise point where they are situated must
womanly spend some time, more or less, in
reaching them. Bat it is at least safe to assert
that a larger population is grouped round Blooms-
bury than round Kensington, and that with all
our facilities for locomotion there is, on the ave-
rage of London, a saving of an hour and a half in
going to and coming from the present instead of
the intended mite. Even when all our projected
railways are finished, there will still, with waiting
and stoppages, be a difference of half an hour
each way, or of an hour oo the whole. But an
hour a day is, in innumerable oases, the limit of
time available to scientific pureuit. Men who
devote themselves solely to study may live where
they can study most conveniently. But the men
who desire to study are an infinite majority over
those who have unlimited time for study, and to
those whose life is spent in other avocations the
loss of an hour a day is the loss of a
day. Yet no class is more deserving of our con-
sideration end help, for it is such a clams that
forms the real diffusers and utilizers of knowledge ;
and, indeed, it is almost wholly out of such a class
that the ranks of science are recruited. It is for
their sake, for the sake of the real students, with
scanty time, and often no affluent means, whose
business or poverty compels them to live in every
different quarter of London, but in far greater
numbers in the busy centre and east than in the
leisured west, that we ask the retention of the means
of study in a central situation. For the sake of
such as these we do not think the Hones of Com-
mons or the nation should grudge the extra
250,0001. in a single vote which forma the sole
obstacle to the maintenance of the whole collec-
tions in the place we have been accustomed to see
them, and which is admitted by all to be the place
where the convenience of the students of books
demands that the library shall be kept. We can-
not trace the subtle distinction necessary to prove
, that what is best for the habits of the bookworm
' is not beet for the purposes of the students in other
[apartments of knowledge.