Page:Library Construction, Architecture, Fittings, and Furniture.djvu/153

Rh acquire a repository already built? It is not likely that the scientific side of the question attracted much attention in those days. Little thought or care had been bestowed upon the construction of museums, by reason of the lamentable paucity of such institutions. It was enough for the most scientific if room could be had and something to spare, and the prodigious development of the establishment was utterly unforeseen. Instead, therefore, of erecting an edifice on a consistent plan, with provision for due enlargement, the Government bought a mansion which happened to be vacant, splendid indeed, and commodious for the purpose it had been intended to answer, but erected without the remotest idea that it could ever serve for a museum. It certainly does appear to have fulfilled this end longer and better than could have been anticipated. It was, in truth, a palace, and the work of no mean builder; for the plan was formed by Robert Hooke, the first natural philosopher of his age after Newton. Built in 1674, burned down in 1686, it was re-erected by a French architect, Pierre Puget. A French traveller who visited England in 1818, in a state of great soreness by reason of the battle of Waterloo, speaks with contempt of the Museum collections of that day, but tells us that he highly admired the edifice, and could not refrain from inquiring who had built it. On being informed that the architect was a Frenchman, "Thought so!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hands, and records the incident in blissful ignorance of the fact that Puget had built on Hooke's lines