[National Sunday League], A Few Plain Reasons for the Sunday Opening of the National Museums, Libraries and Art Galleries (1890)

The National Museums of Science and Collections of Literature and Art are great educational and elevating Institutions. By visiting them people obtain knowledge, instruction, and enlightenment, most beneficial and advantageous. In 1885 a majority of the Trustees of the British Museum asked the Treasury to provide funds for opening the Natural History Museum upon Sundays, tentatively for one year. The Corporation of Wolverhampton opened their Art Gallery for four months, as an experiment, and upon the express condition that no official should work more than six days a week. The experiment proved so successful that the Corporation have agreed to continue Sunday opening. The Christian is free from the law of the Jewish Sabbath. It seems not unlikely that that advantage consists in the facilities which the Parisian workman enjoys of being able to study Art in the Museums and National Art Collections on Sundays.