Museums We congratulate ourselves, the nation, and the British Museum
on the purchase of the " Bedford Hours," the famous illuminated manuscript made for John, first Duke of Bedford, at the beginning of the fifteenth century. No record of Plantagenet England and English art is quite comparable to it. How the balance of the cost was raised at the last moment is not quite clear. The Trustees of the Museum and the invaluable National Art-Collections Fund somehow produced it. We join with them in gratitude to Mr. Pierpont Morgan, who, in effect, advanced the money for a year. lie is a good friend to us in these ways, and at this moment adds considerably by loans from his collection to the glories of the Exhibition of English Mediaeval Art at. South Kensington. We wrote last week of Sir Frederic Kenyon's retirement; let us add our congratulations to him on his successes at the last ; the Gladstone Papers, the Luttrell Psalter, and the Bedford Book. Would it be more " sensible " to let them go to the United States in payment of War debts ? Perhaps so, but we thank Heaven that such sensible and businesslike materialism has not prevailed. Elsewhere to-day we write of the opportunities that provincial museums have of borrowing from the resources of the London museums and galleries. We hope that they arc going to make greater use of them wherever they can offer really safe custody. * * * *
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