cient
for 100,000 volumes. This is reached by means of the main gallery, in
connection with which are four iron spiral stairways and an intervening
gallery, of a lighter and smaller description, connected by its eight
staircases with the main gallery. The whole are very ingeniously
arranged and appropriately ornamented, in a style corresponding with the
general architecture of the building. At an elevation of fifty-one feet
above the floor of the main hall, is the principal skylight, fifty-four
feet long and fourteen broad, formed of thick glass set in iron. Besides
this there are circular side skylights of much smaller dimensions. All
needful light is furnished, by these and by the windows in the front and
rear walls. Free ventilation is also secured by iron fretwork, in
suitable portions of the ceiling. In the extreme rear are the two rooms
for the librarian, to which access is had by means of the main
galleries.

The first floor contains lecture and reading-rooms, with accommodations
for five hundred persons. The latter are on each side of the building,
and separated from the library-hall stairway at the front entrance by
two corridors leading to the rear vestibule, and thence to the
lecture-room, still further in the rear. The basement contains the
keeper's rooms, cellars, coal-vaults, air-furnaces, &c. The floors are
of richly-wrought mosaic work, on iron beams. The building will not be
completed, probably, for nearly a year from this time, and the books
collected, about 27,000, are meanwhile accessible at 32 Bond-street.

Dr. Cogswell has had printed, in an octavo volume of 446 pages, an
alphabetical index to the books now collected, and of the proposed
accessions. This catalogue is not published, and there are but few
copies of it. The learned librarian, who sailed a few days ago on a new
mission for the library, to Europe, printed it at his own cost,
convinced that without some such manual it would be extremely difficult,
if not impossible, in making the necessary purchases, to avoid buying
duplicates, and equally difficult to select judiciously so many thousand
volumes as are required. He remarks that the Astor Library is in his
opinion the first of so considerable an extent that has ever been called
at once into existence. "That of Gottingen, the nearest parallel, was
founded more than a century ago, when the whole number of printed books
was less than half the present number. Should the Astor Library ever
b