Viewing page 17 of 47

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

7
a restrictive policy in the case of prints. A print collection is very far from being simply a means of ministering to aesthetic desires. It may be put to almost unlimited practical uses and is quite as much an educational apparatus as a collection of books. Indeed, it might be claimed that it is often a much more powerful educational instrument, since prints present to the eye what books endeavor merely to construct in the mind. A print collection, therefore, is not only strictly within the province of the Smithsonian Institution, it is, indeed, one of the means of instruction which it is in duty bound to provide as an institution for the dissemination of learning. This universal value of print collections, the aesthetic aspect of which is only a subordinate feature, has long been recognized in Europe, and it ^[[is]] about time that their importance should be realized also on this side of the water. It will, of course, be a long while before we can hope to equal such great national collections as that of the British Museum with its uncounted treasures, the French collection with its more than two millions of specimens, or the Print exhibit at Berlin, with over a million and a half,