Museums, their History and their Use; with a Bibliography and List of Museums in the United Kingdom

Abstract

WE have read the text of the first volume of this work (the second and third are devoted to bibliography, &c.) from title-page to index with the greatest pleasure and satisfaction, and can therefore recommend it to the best attention of those interested in the history and progress of museums. The book itself offers an illustration of an evolution somewhat similar to that of many of those institutions, for it is based on an address delivered by the author, in his capacity as president, to the Glasgow Archæological Society so long ago as the winter of 1897, and from this slender foundation it has gradually grown to its present dimensions. Much of the original address appears to remain in the final chapter of the text, where we find the author comparing the state of museums in 1897 to what it was half a century earlier, and what he presumes it will be in the future.

Museums, their History and their Use; with a Bibliography and List of Museums in the United Kingdom.

By D. Murray. 3 Vols. Vol. i., pp. xv + 339; vol. ii., pp. xiii + 339; vol. iii., pp. 363. (Glasgow: MacLehose and Sons, 1904.) Price 32s. net.