ABSTRACT
That the opening of the new Museum building should take place in the centennial year, and that the public should be first admitted to it on the 4th of July of that year, seems to me ominous of success and singularly appropriate, for it is to some extent anational event. It may be called so, if considered in its possible influences for good upon people of all classes and professions, and especially may it be called so in this country, where we have as yet had but scant opportunity to feel the influences which radiate from fine collections of works of art. This Museum is a place dedicated to the enjoyment and profitable instruetion of all who enter it. Already it eontains much that is precious; much that is of high interest; and yet this building, with its contents, is but a sixth part of what it will be when the whole quadrangle is completed with its two great courts, capable of containing casts of colossal statues and architectural fragments; when its pieture-gallery is doubled in size; when its schools of art are established and in operation; when in short it has grown to be a riyal, as we hope it will, of the great industrial museums at Kensington and Vienna. If such are its probabilities, ladies and gentlemen, we may, without exaggeration, call the opening of our Museum a matter of national importance; for who ean tell how many from all parts of our great Republic may here be led by gentle influenees to aspire, and by contemplating the works of art here gathered together, may be taught upon them 'as stairs to climb' to higher and nobler results than they would otherwise have attained ...
