mention only those who have died since the inception of this undertaking in April, 1902, there stand on this list the names of Mommsen, the historian, Virchow, the naturalist, and Dümmler, the head of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. The collection was brought together for the first time as a contribution to our Germanic Museum; it is to-day on exhibition at Berlin. Such a gift from such men is peculiarly welcome to this society of scholars.
To mark his sense of the importance in academic history of the events that this day commemorates, a Harvard teacher of history who has already done much to promote the growth and usefulness of the University Library, has asked permission to give to that library ten thousand volumes on German history, and to make this gift, through its book-plates, a commemoration of the visit of Prince Henry of Prussia to this institution on the 6th of March, 1902. This generous act recalls to mind that the records of civilization through the long future, as in the past, are to be in part preserved in printed books, as well as in museums.
The Germanic Museum will doubtless prove to be the first of a group of museums, illustrating at this institution the progress of civilization among the leading races of mankind down to recent years. Year after year it will teach American students how the Germans developed artistic crafts and created beauty centuries before America was discovered. The members of Harvard University have occasion to know how the present generation of Germans practices the fine crafts and cultivates the fine arts. They owe to German hands their unique collection of glass models of flowers, a collection which is the very climax of artistic craftsmanship. It is brought home to them every year that the best musical and dramatic organizations in this country are in German hands; and they know that there are no loftier products of genius than noble music and drama, except the worthy approaches of the human spirit to Almighty God. The Germanic Museum will teach them how the German artistic sense and capacity have been developed and transmitted through long generations.
