The Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the
cost and administration of the South Kensington Museum and its branches has been issued, and were it not for the extravagance, nepotism, and incompetence which it reveals in an important Department, would be a most entertaining document. The catalogue of the Library and that of the "National Engraved Portraits "- the latter compiled by a relative of the Secretary at a cost of some 2700—abound in astonishing blunders. Thus "Deel," the Dutch for "volume," is given as an author in the former;. while in the latter, which has no index, one learns that " Pu gin cruised about the Channel, collecting archmological and natural curiosities;" and that Ballantyne became a friend of Sir Walter Scott in 1873, in which year Sir David Baird took the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch ! The advertisements of papers and journals taken in by the Library were bound up separately from the letterpress in half-morocco with gilt edges. The suggestions of nepotism are supported by the discovery that of seven hundred and seventy -four persons employed at South Kensington and Bethnal Green, one hundred and sixty are interrelated. The employment of a detachment of Sappers as firemen and artisans prompts the Committee to observe that they have "received no evidence showing cause for maintaining the military gar- rison at South Kensington Museum. The site has no strategic value, and the detachment, efficient though it may be, is not necessary for the art and science service of the country." The Committee, and not least among them Lord Balcarres, deserve the best thanks of the public for the fearless and thoroughgoing manner in which they have exposed a grave administrative scandal.
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