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

This land was actually bought by the nation in
1863. We all remember under what Government,
yet with a positive pledge that the purpose to which
it should hereafter be devoted should be open to
future consideration. Doubtless, if not used it can
be sold again, and the price will go so far to the
purchase of • land elsewhere. So, practically, the
question is now as it was before, between land at
Kensington and land in Bloomsbury. The latter
costs £50,000 per acre, and as five acres are re-
quired, there would be a charge of £250,000, or a
difference of £200,000 in favour of Kensington.
The friends of Kensington further allege that a
building there need not be of costly Greek archi-
tecture, but of cheap Brompton style—resembling,
we presume, those commodious brick mews which
were erected for the Exhibition picture galleries,
or the " boilers," which first made South Kensing-
ton art famous in the world. By this modifica-
tion 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
£250,000. But the building on either side is esti-
mated to cost above £600,000. And the annual
service of the museum costs close upon £lOO,OOO
at present. So the question comes to be whether,
when we must spend such sums, the advantage
of a saving of £250,000 once for all are sufficient
to outweigh the disadvantages which we should per-
manently experience from dividing the collections,
and sending the scientific portion to a suburb ; for
no other advantage save the monetary economy that
may be alleged in favour of such a course. The
scientific collections are not suffering from either
smoke- or 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
Kensington than at Bloomsbury. It is solely a
pecuniary inducement that is held out for the bait.
But ere we accept a proposal of economy, it is ne-
cessary to consider efficiency. These national col-
lections 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 Kensington than in
the heart of London, but will they be as well ?
Will it be as easy for the nation which pays for
them to examine them four miles away from their
present locality ? To say so is to say that the na-
tion is better represented by Kensington than by
London, that its heart beats at Kensington rather
than in London, that the centre to which all its
functions converge is at Kensington rather than in
the midst of its metropolis. It is of course impos-
sible 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
necessarily spend some time, more or less; in
reaching them. But 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 site. Even when all our pro-
jected railways are finished, there will still, with
waiting and stoppages, be a difference of half an
hour each way, or of an hour on the whole. But
an hour a day is, in innumerable cases, the limit of
time available to scientific pursuit. Men who de-
vote 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 a
day. Yet no class is more deserving of our consi-
deration and help, for it is such a class that forms
the real diffusers and utilisers 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 House of Commons or the
nation should grudge the extra £250,000 in a single
vote which forms the sole obstacle to the mainte-
nance of the whole collections 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 cannot trace the subtle distinction neces-
sary to prove that what is best for the habits of the
bookworm is not best for the purposes of the
students in other departments of knowledge.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

HULL.-T UESDA_Y.

Since our last the corn-market has been quiet both for
English and foreign, and prices have undergone but little
alteration. At our market to-day there was a fair show of
English wheat, which met with a slow sale, at a reduction
of about is per qr.
English old white wheat, 48s to Ms; old red, 42s to 475.
Barley, English, 37s to 425. Oats, Russian, 24s to 255.
Beans, new English, 43s to 445. Peas, English blue, 403
to 41s Od ; grinding, 40s to 41s Od per 36 stone.