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On the Use and Value of Historical Museums.


PROBABLY most of the readers of these lines who have been in the city of Montreal have visited and been charmed by the historical museum in the Chateau Ramezay. Certainly no person interested in the history of Canada should fail to take the first opportunity to see it. Here within the walls of a building, itself replete with historical associations, are gathered together many objects associated with the great persons and events of the country's past. Portraits of the founders and makers of Canada, and other historical pictures, documents, autographs, coats-of-arms, maps, Indian and other antiquities, medals, books, church and other relics, articles from famous historic sites, and many other things of like sort are carefully preserved in proper cases, explained by appropriate labels and a judiciously-arranged catalogue, and accessible every day without cost to all who choose to come. A well-informed and interested custodian is in charge, ready to explain these objects still farther to any earnest inquirer; while in the same building, and readily accessible, is a considerable historical library. Here the thoughtful visitor may feel to the full that charm in the contemplation of historical objects which Crawford so well expressed when he said: "We have an involuntary reverence for all witnesses of History, be they animate or inanimate, men, animals or stones." Wandering at will amid these reminders of his country's past, he finds summoned before him, with a vividness elsewhere impossible, a succession of pictures of the men and the events which have made Canada what she is, a glimpse of the stately procession of a people's march to greatness. It will be strange, indeed,

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