Fronting upon Great Russell Street, to which various smaller streets
lead northward from Oxford Street, is that vast treasure-house of
knowledge whose renown is world-wide, the British Museum. The buildings
and their courtyards cover seven acres, and have cost nearly
$5,000,000 to construct. The front is three hundred and seventy feet
long, the entrance being under a grand portico supported by rows of
columns forty-five feet high. This vast museum originated from a
provision in the will of Sir Hans Sloane in the last century, who had
made a valuable collection and directed that it be sold to the
government for $100,000. Parliament, accepting the offer, in 1753
created the museum to take charge of this and some other collections.
The present site, then Montagu House, was selected for the museum, but
it was not until 1828 that the present buildings were begun, and they
have only recently been finished. The reading-room, the latest addition,
is the finest structure of its kind in the world, being a circular hall
one hundred and forty feet in diameter and covered with a dome one
hundred and six feet high. It cost $750,000, and its library is believed
to be the largest in the world, containing seven hundred thousand
volumes, and increasing at the rate of twenty thousand volumes annually.
Its collection of prints is also of rare value and vast extent, and by
far the finest in the world.