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Plate 17.—TEMPLE OF THE MUSES, FINSBURY-SQUARE.
This magnificent structure is situated at the S.W. corner of Finsbury-square, and was fitted up for the reception of books in the year 1794. The dimensions of its front are 140 feet in length, andd the depth 40 feet. The internal arrangement of the building is perfectly novel, containing on the base a ware-room, the capaciousness of which may be readily conceived from the circumstance of the Weymouth mail, with four horses, having actually been driven round it at the time of its first opening. This room, which is 15 feet in height, is supported by pillars of iron. On one side are distinct offices for counting-house business, wholesale country trade, and a department for binding, terminating with two spacious and cheerful apartments looking towards Finsbury-square, which are elegantly fitted up with glass cases, inclosing books in superb bindings, as well as others of ancient printing, but of great variety and value.—These lounging rooms, as they are termed, are intended merely for the accommodation of ladies and gentlemen, to whom the bustle of the ware-room may be an interruption. Solicitations have been strongly and frequently made to confine these rooms to the purposes of a subscription library, a plan which would no doubt be highly lucrative to the proprietors; but the disappointment it must necessarily occasion to a very large portion of the public, has determined them to continue the establishment precisely on that free plan on which it was at first formed. In the center of the ware-room is a dome terminating by a raised cupola, throwing light into the galleries beneath, four in number, which are filled with books both within and without, the books being classed according to their various subjects, and alphabetically arranged.
It is computed that not less than a million of volumes are displayed to view in this immense building, and when it is observed with what facility the demands of each enquirer are satisfied, it is matter of astonishment that so large a collection can be so simplified and regulated.—The bookselling business is here carried on in its most extended and varied branches, viz. the purchase and publication of manuscripts—the purchase of libraries—and the sale of all kinds of new and old books, both wholesale and retail—printing, bookbinding, &c.—The number of persons employed on this establishment as clerks, printers, and binders, always exceed an hundred; and in times of a free continental intercourse, has been nearly double, the stock having been formed on an extended scale, with a view to the supply of the American and other foreign markets.
The vast quantity of books circulated by means of this emporium, and the dissemination of literature promoted thereby, may be judged from the circumstance of no less a quantity than six thousand copies of the Spectator, and the like number of the works of Shakspear and of Sterne, forming in the whole 150,000 volumes, having been printed by this house in one uniform impression, and actually sold within the space of six years, at the ave-
