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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
kind in existence, with the tendency to still further extend its power. There has been some talk lately in England of placing the British Museum under the same direction. This proposition is not very favorably received by the English people, who are not all satisfied as to the ability of the managers of South Kensington to get all the good from what they at present control.
At the Vienna Polytechnic Institute, there is a technological museum, the contents of which comprise more than 200,000 specimens of models, machines, etc., beautifully arranged. The whole Institute numbers about sixty professors, librarians and superintendents of the museum and astronomical observatory. It has an average attendance of five hundred pupils, distributed into four special schools or divisions, besides a mathematical course. These are : 1. Civil engineering. 2.
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Architecture and construction. 3. Machinery and manufactures. 4. Chemical technology, including students in the evening classes and preparatory division. The attendance exceeds two thousand every year.
It is difficult to draw a distinct line, and declare, Here Science ends and Art begins. This will be acknowledged by any one who visits the Polytechnic at Vienna, or any of its fellows.
Take the study of architecture as an example. It is certainly necessary that the architect should have exact mathematical knowledge, that he may calculate the power of tension, capacity of bearing weight, etc., of the different materials he uses ; but he must also be educated in art taste or his designs will be sorry, tame affairs. Indeed, there is no man in our midst who needs to be so thoroughly an artist as he who would aspire to be a real architect, and none who has more influence upon the life of the people whom he serves. A house, if it is ugly, still represents so much labor and capital, and cannot be pulled down simply on the score of its ugliness; but a beautiful building, harmonious in each part, represents more than its mere cost: it becomes a silent educator, and remains a charm to all who see it. It is, therefore, but right to look for Fine Art instruction in any institution that professes to teach architecture. This is found at Vienna, where the pupils are instructed, as were the Greeks of old, by draw-