The shaded part of the building itself shows the portions allotted to the _Library_. The unshaded part is assigned, on the ground floor, to the Department of _Antiquities_, and (speaking generally) on the floor above—in common with the upper floors of the Library part—to the Departments of _Natural History_. The ‘_Print Room_’ is shown on the ground-plan between the Elgin Gallery and the north-western extremity of the Department of Printed Books. The next illustration shows, in detail, the ground-plan of the new Reading-Room and of the adjacent book-galleries:— [Illustration: II. GROUND-PLAN OF THE NEW OR ‘PANIZZI’ READING-ROOM, AND OF THE ADJACENT GALLERIES, 1857. ] The general appearance of the interior of the Reading-Room may be shown thus:— [Illustration: III. INTERIOR VIEW OF THE NEW READING-ROOM, 1857. ] Of course, the improvements thus effected did but solve a portion of the difficulty felt, long before 1857, in accommodating the National Collections upon any adequate scale, which should provide alike for present claims and for future extension. This more effectual provision became one of the most pressing questions with which both the Trustees and their officers had now to deal. During the whole term of Sir A. PANIZZI’S Principal-Librarianship this building question increased in gravity and urgency, from year to year. Both the Trustees and the Principal-Librarian were intent upon its solution. But the latter was enforced, by failing health, to quit office, leaving the matter still unsolved. [Sidenote: PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY INTO PROPOSED ENLARGEMENT OF BRITISH MUSEUM IN 1860.] Most of the little information on this part of the subject which, within my present limits, it will be practicable for me to offer to the reader, belongs, properly, to a subsequent chapter. But some brief notice must be given here of the important inquiries, ‘how far, and in what way, it may be desirable to find increased space for the extension and arrangement of the various Collections of the British Museum, and the best means of rendering them available for the promotion of Science and Art,’ which were made, between the months of May and August of 1860, by a Select Committee of the House of Commons. The first question to be answered by the Committee of 1860 was this: Is it expedient, or not, that the _Natural-History_ Collections should be removed from Bloomsbury, to make room for the inevitable growth of the Collections of _Antiquities_?