Page:Library Construction, Architecture, Fittings, and Furniture.djvu/205

Rh discussions are prohibited. How this arrangement will work remains to be seen. If the library work is to be successful, it should be continuously carried on, without liability to interruptions by the room being used for other purposes. The wishes of the donor would have been better met by the erection of a separate lecture-hall, and not by trying to make one room answer both purposes. The cost of the building was about £4000, and it was designed by Mr. John W. Dyson of Newcastle.

The Harris Free Library and Museum, Preston, is one of the most important buildings erected in England of late years. It is designed by the architect, Mr. James Hibbert, in the Greek Ionic style, and has cost, with its fittings, nearly £100,000. In choosing this style of architecture, Mr. Hibbert says, that as the Hellenic race reached the highest standard in plastic arts, literature, and geometrical science, the suitableness of the style for the purposes of a building which is to be a repository of knowledge, of examples of the arts, and of specimens illustrative of the sciences, will be admitted by all, and he has therefore sought to plan a building which shall be a work of permanent value, and an example of memorial art.

The building has four frontages; its principal elevation, which is 130 feet long, is on the west, looking over the market-place. The portico consists of six massive columns, with bold capitals, and is surmounted by an overhanging cornice, the tympanum being filled with a group of" sculptured figures, with a carved inscription underneath, "To