Let me furthermore recall the two facts; first, that in every important exhibition which has been held in this country or abroad, no exhibits have been more instructive and more popular than have been (1) the picturesque reconstructions of ancient cities, and the presentment of their city life, and (2) the corresponding surveys of the present conditions of town life, and of the resources and means of bettering them.

Even as a show then, I venture to submit that such a “Towneries” might readily be arranged to excel in interest, and surpass in usefulness, the excellent “Fisheries,” “Healtheries”, and other successful exhibitions in the record and recent memory of London.  The advantages of such an exhibition are indeed too numerous for even an outline here; but they may be easily thought out more and more fully.  Indeed, I purposely abstain for the present from more concrete suggestion; for the discussion of its elements, methods, plans, and scale will be found to raise the whole range of civic questions, and to set these in freshening lights.

[Page:  111] At this time of social transition, when we all more or less feel the melting away of old divisions and parties, of old barriers of sects and schools, and the emergence of new possibilities, the continual appearance of new groupings of thought and action, such a Civic Exhibition would surely be specially valuable.  In the interest, then, of the incipient renascence of civic progress, I plead for a Civic Exhibition.[14]

[14] Since the preceding paper was read, it is encouraging to note the practical beginnings of a movement towards a civic exhibition, appropriately arising, like so many other valuable contributions to civic betterment, from Toynbee Hall.  The Cottages Exhibition initiated by Mr. St. Loe Strachey at Garden City, and of course also that admirable scheme itself, must also be mentioned as importance forces in the directions of progress and propaganda advocated above.

Of such an exhibition, the very catalogue would be in principle that Encyclopaedia Civica, into which, in the previous instalment of this paper (vol.  I, p. 118) I have sought to group the literature of civics.  We should thus pass before us, in artistic expression, and therefore in universal appeal, the historic drama of the great civic past, the mingled present, the phantasmagoria and the tragi comedy of both of these.  We should then know more of the ideals potential for the future, and, it may be, help onward some of the Eutopias which are already struggling towards birth.

DISCUSSION

The Chairman (THE RT.  HON.  CHARLES BOOTH) said: