If the question of mere hints and analogies in construction were to be followed out to its issues, the result, I feel assured, would in no degree tend to strengthen the contention of Mr. Hosking’s pamphlet. Something like a first germ of the mere ground-plan of the new Reading-Room may, perhaps, be found in M. Benjamin Delessert’s _Projet d’une Bibliothèque circulaire_, printed, at Paris, as far back as the year 1835, when the question of reconstructing the then ‘Royal,’ now ‘Imperial Library,’ was under discussion in the French Chambers. ‘I propose,’ says Delessert, ‘to place the officers and the readers in the centre of a vast rotunda, whence branch off eight principal galleries, the walls of which form diverging radii ... and _have book-cases on both sides_,’ &c. His plan may be thus shown, in small. The differences, it will be seen, between this sketch and Mr. Panizzi’s sketch of 1854, are greater than are the resemblances. [Illustration] Footnote 34: Namely, two millions five hundred and twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixteen visits, which _included_ seventy-eight thousand two hundred and eleven visits to the Reading-Room for study. Footnote 35: In—unless a memory more than thirty years old deceive me—that noble masterpiece of English prose, the ‘_Citation of Shakespeare for Deer-stealing_’ (1835). Footnote 36: The Oriental Translation Fund. Footnote 37: Comp. ‘Asshur builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and _Calah_.’—_Gen._ x, 11. Mr. Layard quotes this passage, in _Nineveh and its Remains_ (vol. i, p. 4, edit. 1849), and seems to identify ‘Kalah Sherghat’ as retaining its ancient name. Footnote 38: Nor was there any petty or unworthy jealousy in the distinguished French explorer. ‘During the entire period of his excavations,’ writes Mr. Layard, ‘M. Botta regularly sent me, not only his [own] descriptions, but copies of the inscriptions, without exacting any promise as to the use I might make of them. That there are few who would have acted thus liberally, those who have been engaged in a search after Antiquities in the East will not be inclined to deny.’—_Nineveh and its Remains_, vol. i, p. 14. Footnote 39: