As with other public buildings in Algeria, the usefulness of this museum is somewhat curtailed by the short time it is open,—only in the afternoon and not every day,—and, what is worse, by the absence of any notice of the hours during which it may be visited. In my ignorance I tried to enter on two or three occasions. Goaded to desperation one morning I rang the bell, and found the amiable custodian at leisure to admit me, but only by favour. Such a collection is worthy of a notice-board in French, Arabic, English, German, Spanish, and Italian, setting forth the hours it is open, and to a foreigner (I make the suggestion with diffidence) it appears that the morning hours should not be forgotten. This is too good a museum to be circumscribed by such antiquated and provincial arrangements as prevail at present. The object of a museum should be to get people to come in, not to keep them out. I was informed that it was closed on Monday afternoon because there were too many people about! The British workman’s Monday is evidently not the insular institution I had supposed. But a museum is not a fortress. We are wont to speak of “Arab Art,” but the term, if consecrated by usage, is incorrect and misleading. There is, in fact, no such thing. The Arab has never been an artist. The nomad had of necessity no architecture, and architecture is the mother of the arts. Artistic incapacity and an effort to break away from anthropomorphism in religion went hand in hand among the Semitic races;—“Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth.” And when Solomon builded his temple he turned for assistance to the King of Tyre; and one Hiram, a brassworker of Tyre, “wrought all his work.” To this day the Jews, who have excelled in finance and statecraft, in literature and in music, have made little mark in art.