To the objection that those who thus flatly condemn one form of architecture are bound to suggest another more suitable, a ready, and by no means embarrassing answer is forthcoming. The Pointed, the most beautiful and ductile of all styles, may be left out of consideration, as being hardly of sufficient congruity to the relics of art stored in the National collection. Moreover, to have attempted a Gothic structure at the time when the present Museum was built, might have afforded an instructive example of _corruptio optimi pessima_, but, in all probability, would have failed in point of utility, and would most certainly have been an outrage on good taste. It is hardly possible, however, to suppose that the illustrious architect of the British Museum was not as conversant with Roman as with Greek architecture, or that he was wholly unacquainted with the Romano-Italian works of Wren or Palladio. As the Roman, unlike the Grecian, and still more unlike the Pointed, does not mainly depend for its beauty on the lines of its construction, the facility for legitimately decorating a building of the shape of the British Museum would have been far greater in the first-named style. Who shall say that in a gallery of the Roman type the statues of Roman Emperors, or even the monuments of Assyrian Kings, are out of place? or that the _disjecta membra_ of a Greek frieze or pediment would be incongruous with an architecture so nearly akin to their own? At any rate, we should have been able to view them with comfort, which is scarcely the case at present; for the power of lighting would have been increased tenfold. Opportunities, too, of a more effective system of intramural ornamentation would have been offered, and many other minor advantages, conducive to beauty or convenience, secured. Happily, in the latest addition to the great building—an addition that owes alike its origin, position, and form of construction to the enterprise and genius of Panizzi—the ponderous and unsuccessful imitation of the Greek style has been laid aside, and a light and graceful form of the Italian order adopted. This little gem of architecture—this “MARGARITA”—is the “New Reading-Room.”