Page:Library Construction, Architecture, Fittings, and Furniture.djvu/162

138 inadequate. Panizzi came forward with his plans, subsequently modified, on April 18, 1852, and carried them, after a tough battle with Sir Charles Barry, who, apparently taking his cue from the Crystal Palace, proposed to cover the court with a skylight, and use it for the exhibition of sculpture. The idea of the circular reading-room, whose walls should be merely books, and all the still more remarkable arrangements of the iron library adjacent, belong solely to Panizzi. The dome which adds so much dignity to the structure does not appear in Panizzi's plan, and was probably the conception of the architect, Mr. Sydney Smirke. It is not improbable, however, that useful hints may have been derived from the remarkable plan for a circular library put forth in 1835 by M. Benjamin Delessert, when the question of rebuilding the French national library was under consideration. M. Delessert, however, proposing to begin entirely de novo, and erect his library in an empty space, was able to conceive of his entire library as a circular building. This was not practicable at the Museum, where a quadrangular space had to be filled. M. Delessert's reading-room was evidently adapted from the ancient amphitheatre, and his plan has of late, though probably unconsciously, been developed by Mr. E. Magnusson, of the Cambridge University Library, with the interesting suggestion that the circle should be a spiral coil, resembling the shell of an ammonite, thus providing indefinite space for extension. This ingenious idea should not be allowed to drop out of sight.