Page:Library Construction, Architecture, Fittings, and Furniture.djvu/160

136 differ from libraries of the accepted type, of which they were favourable examples. One great defect —the absence of glazed cases for the preservation of valuable books—was subsequently supplied by Sir Anthony Panizzi. The rooms were ready for occupation in 1838, and the removal of the books from the old apartments of Montague House was carried out under Panizzi's directions, with a speed and smoothness which astonished every one. A minor but most valuable improvement was made in the alteration of the barbarous old press marks by affixing Arabic numbers to the new presses, as already done by his predecessor, Mr. Baber, in the King's Library. The labelling of the books followed, due to a suggestion from Mr. Winter Jones. While this removal was in progress another library was beginning to rise, which really did present novel features, and which, had it been possible to have made it four times as long, would have been the most imposing library in the Museum, except the great Reading-room. This is the exquisite and most practical arched room at the end of the North Library, one-third as lofty again as the other libraries en suite, where enormous space is gained by spanning it with a succession of arches, thus admitting a series of transverse galleries. The effect is not unlike that of one of the arcades of the Mosque of Cordova, and Moorish decoration is not unsuccessfully represented by the masses of coloured bindings, mostly in the morocco which Panizzi substituted for calf. It does not appear, however, that he was concerned in the design of