The private library of his Majesty is on the ground-floor of the palace. It was formed by Philip V. about 1714, and has since been increased by the acquisition of several notable collections, including those of the dean of Teruel, Counts Mansilla and Gondomar, and Judge Bruna of Seville. The manuscripts are for the most part from the extinct colleges. The king’s library, which occupies ten rooms and two passages, is composed of eighty thousand volumes in magnificent mahogany cases with beautiful glass from La Granja. Books issued prior to the sixteenth century, beautiful copies on vellum, very rare editions by Spanish printers, and rich bindings, make this library one of the most important in Europe. Among the illustrated missals is a prayer-book said to have belonged to Ferdinand and Isabella or their daughter, Juana la Loca, whose portrait it contains. The building is adorned with exquisite ornaments and the arms of Leon and Castile in enamel. The correspondence of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador in London during the reign of James I., is also to be seen here. The general Archive of the crown of Spain was created in virtue of a royal decree of Ferdinand VII., dated May 22, 1814. The organisation and classification of all the documents since the reign of Charles I. until that of Isabella II. were based on chronology; but Alfonso XII. thought the classification of subjects more scientific, and the Keeper of the Archives has, since 1876, had the whole of the documents divided into four large sections, namely, administrative, juridical, historical, and according to their sources. This Archive also has a reference library composed of seven hundred volumes. At present the Archive of the Crown consists of thirty rooms, containing nearly ten thousand bundles of papers and two thousand volumes. The administrative documents date from 1479; the juridical ones from 1598; the historical from 1558; there being also some property deeds dating from the eleventh century relating to the celebrated monastery of El Escorial, founded by Philip II., which from the paleographic point of view, and even from the historical, are of great interest. The Royal Pharmacy, situated in the part of the palace known as Los Arcos Nuevos (the New Arches), has an origin which is closely bound up with the history of national pharmacy. In the beginning of the pharmaceutical profession, when it became a faculty, the Royal Pharmacy was the centre of the profession in all its phases. It contains a rich collection of utensils of all periods, curious examples of pharmaceutical materials used in olden times, and a well-filled library, consisting of more than two thousand five hundred volumes.