The Prince of Wales opened the Bethnal-Green Museum on Monday,—the
first occasion on which the Royal Family has ever visited this part of London in State. The Prince was exceedingly well received, the poor people doing their best with flags, carpets, and flowers to relieve the grey squalor of the quarter with a little colour ; but there was nothing in the ceremonial to justify the long and florid descriptions published in some of the papers, par- ticularly in the Times. The Museum is a branch of the South Kensington Museum, and for one entire year will contain the, magnificent collections of pictures and works of ornamental art made by the late Lord Hertford, and lent for exhibition by Sir Richard Wallace. Whether uneducated artisans can be much im- proved by pictures, particularly by such pictures as Greuze painted, may be questioned, but that Bethnal-Green will benefit by any- thing that attracts attention to its grimy poverty is beyond a doubt.
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