Page:Library Construction, Architecture, Fittings, and Furniture.djvu/161

Rh this library,credit for which should probably be given to Sir Robert Smirke and the Rev. Josiah Forshall, then secretary and ruling spirit of the administration. About the same time the design seems to have been adopted for the "long room" constructed on the eastern side of the King's Library, whose skylights came just underneath the windows of the great building. These galleries, devoid of architectural pretensions, and irreverently described by Monckton Milnes as sheds and warehouses, nevertheless well answered their immediate purpose of providing for the overflow of books, and at this day accommodate a considerable part of the Oriental collection.

The necessity for increased library accommodation, nevertheless, far outran the attempts to meet it, considerable as these were in comparison with anything effected in former years. Panizzi's great report on the deficiencies of the library in 1845, backed by his considerable social influence, caused the augmentation of the grant for purchases to £10,000 a year, and a few years of this activity swamped the available space. All this time the interior court remained unoccupied by buildings, though Thomas Watts had pointed out the waste of room as early as 1836 in an article in the Mechanics Magazine. Suggestions, for making it available were offered between 1840 and 1850 by Mr. Hawkins, Keeper of Antiquities, and by Mr. Fergusson and Mr. Hoskins, architects, but the only one of these which contemplated the erection of a reading-room was Mr. Fergusson's, and his scale was most