CHAPTER VI
THE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM LIBRARY
The history of all library architecture is pregnant with two especial morals—the need of building from the first upon some well-considered plan, so prepared as to admit of harmonious development in the future, and the necessity of making extremely generous estimates in respect of space. Unless in the case of libraries devoted to special classes of books, or of branch libraries controlled from the parent institution, or of libraries where books no longer in general demand are systematically sold off, space, unless the most effectual measures have been taken at the very outset, must eventually become the librarian's master. The architectural history of the British Museum is to a considerable extent a history of struggle against circumstances created by neglect of these elementary principles.
When the Museum was established in 1753 by the posthumous munificence of Sir Hans Sloane, the same question presented itself to the Government as that now agitated in connection with the still more munificent bequest of Lady Wallace, Was it better to build a new repository, or to
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