‘What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our Libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his Library, you call him mad,—a Bibliomaniac. But you never call any one a Horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their losses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the bookshelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars.’— RUSKIN, _Sesame and Lilies_, pp. 75–77. _The various Projects and Plans proposed, at different times, for the Severance, the Partial Dispersion, and the Rearrangement, of the several integral Collections which at present form_ ‘The British Museum.’ [Sidenote: GROSLEY’S IDEA OF SEVERING THE MUSEUM COLLECTIONS, 1765.] The first reconstructor, in imagination, of the British Museum on the plan of severing the literature from the scientific collections, was a speculative and clever Frenchman, Peter John GROSLEY, who visited it within less than six years of its being first opened to public inspection. GROSLEY expressed great admiration for much that he saw, and he also criticised some of the arrangements that seemed to him defective, with freedom but with courtesy. Some of my readers will probably think that he hit a real blot, at that time, when he said: ‘The Printed Books are the weakest part of this immense collection. The building cannot contain such a Library as England can form and ought to form for the ornament of its capital. It has a building quite ready in the “Banquetting-House” [at Whitehall], and that building could be enlarged from time to time as occasion might require.’ Other writers, at various periods, have advocated the severance of collections which seemed to them too multifarious to admit of full, natural, and equable development, in common. There is perhaps no apparent reason, on the surface, why a great Nation should not be able to enlarge the most varied public collections as effectively, and as impartially, within one building, as within half a dozen buildings. Nor does there seem to be any necessary connection between the wise and liberal government of public collections, and their severance or division into many buildings, rather than their combination within a single structure. Nevertheless it is certain that many thinkers have, by some process or other, reached the conclusion that severance would favour improvement. [Sidenote: MR. WATTS’ PROPOSITION FOR THE SEVERANCE OF THE MUSEUM COLLECTIONS, 1837.]