deep
panels resting on and supported by the pilasters; the walls are
wainscoted in oak to the height of the niches. The picture-gallery is
forty by fifty-six, well lighted from above by three large skylights.
Iron book-cases, with a capacity for eighty thousand volumes, are
arranged in two tiers on the sides of the galleries. The whole structure
is as nearly fire-proof as it could possibly be made, and its massive
walls and stone towers make it one of the prominent architectural
features of the avenue. While the building was in progress, several
benefactions of interest had accrued to the library. Mr. Lenox had given
an additional one hundred thousand dollars, and in 1872 one hundred
thousand dollars more, and Mr. Felix Astoin had promised to bestow his
fine collection of some five thousand rare French works. On the 15th of
January, 1877, the first exhibition of paintings and sculptures was
opened to the public, and continued on two days of the week to the end
of the year, and on the 1st of the following December an apartment for
the exhibition of rare works and manuscripts was also opened to the
public. Fifteen thousand people visited the library during this first
year, thus indicating the popular appreciation of a collection of this
kind. In 1881 nineteen thousand eight hundred and thirty-three
admission-tickets were issued,--the largest number of visitors on any
one day being eleven hundred, on the anniversary of Washington's
birthday.

The scope and objects of this unique institution are so admirably set
forth by the trustees in their report to the legislature for 1881 that
we append an extract. "The library," they observe, "differs from most
public libraries. It is not a great general library intended in its
endowment and present equipment for the use of readers in all or most of
the departments of human knowledge.... Beyond its special collections it
should be regarded as supplementary to others more general and numerous
and directly adapted to popular use. It is not like the British Museum,
but rather like the Grenville collection in the British Museum, or
perhaps still more like the house and museum of Sir John Soane in
Lincoln's Inn's Fields, in London, both lasting monuments of the
learning and liberality of their honored founders. Thus, while the
library does not profess to be a general or universal collection of all
the knowledge stored up in the world of books, it is absolutely without
a peer or a rival h