Abstract
ON Wednesday next a special meeting of proprietors of the London Institution will be held to consider a scheme for its amalgamation with the Society of Arts. Founded in 1805 by merchants and bankers of the City of London, given a charter two years later, and housed in its present imposing, if rather sombre, premises in 1819, the London Institution has done good work in its day. The object of its founders was to maintain, in what was then a central position, an extensive general library of reference, comprising works of intrinsic value and utility in all languages; to provide reading rooms for periodical publications and interesting contemporaneous pamphlets; and to promote the diffusion of knowledge by lectures and conversazioni. But since the foundation of the institution circumstances have greatly changed, and not to the advantage of the institution. In 1817, and for many years afterwards, the City contained a large residential population, which for a long time past has been gradually disappearing, until now the number of proprietors who use the institution as a centre of intellectual culture is comparatively small, and is more likely to growr smaller than to increase. In these circumstances the board of management has recognised that if the institution is to live and thrive some scheme must be devised for increasing its usefulness, and the proposal to amalgamate with the Society of Arts is the outcome of prolonged consideration of a difficult problem.
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The Society of Arts and the London Institution . Nature 71, 539–540 (1905). https://doi.org/10.1038/071539a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/071539a0