The following is an extract from a private letter, written a short time since, in which, although the writer confesses that his memory, at this distance of time, is not as fresh as it might be, a fair description is given of the second or intermediate Reading-Room, as it was in the year 1846:— “What I recollect about it is as follows. It was entered by a sort of lane going down from Montague-place into what must have been at one time a stable-yard. You then went up a staircase into a long, lofty room.... I think there were two great sort of chests of hot water pipes on each side of the entrance from the staircase. The entrance divided the room into two unequal parts, and I fancy that the smaller portion was reserved for readers of MSS. The catalogue was in a series of presses near the west wall, commencing about opposite the entrance, and extending north. The rest of the floor of the room was occupied by reading-tables. At the north end was a thing like a buttery hatch. From this you got your books, having previously given your docket describing them. The walls of the room, for eight or ten feet from the floor, were crowded with book-cases, except at the entrance and hatch, and all accessible to readers in the room. I think the room was lighted by windows above the book-cases, but, as far as I can recollect, on the east side only. I think the other walls above the book-cases resting on the floor of the reading room were also covered with book-cases, but these not accessible from the Reading-Room, but from galleries, &c., opening into the other parts of the building. I recollect nothing about the ventilation, but I know that after working some time, you found your head very hot and heavy, and your feet cold. These were the symptoms of the ‘Museum Megrims,’ about which there was, shortly after my experience of the place, a deal of chaff in the papers. I fully sympathized with it at the time.” The Library of the British Museum continued to increase in proportion to its rapid influx of readers; and in 1849, the collection, excluding the masses of MSS., pamphlets, and other unbound works, amounted to no less than 435,000 volumes.[Q] What a vast acquisition must this have been to the public, whether to the student, the critic, or the occasional lounger! ----- Footnote Q: In 1880, 1,300,000 volumes. ----- The power of exercising rights of ownership was, however, by no means commensurate with the legal title to the property: indeed, owing to lack of room and other conveniences, such rights, in the case of very many who would otherwise have taken advantage of them, scarcely extended to liberty of inspecting the outsides of the volumes; as to the insides, they were literally closed books.