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.

SOME LONDON SCENES.

[Illustration: WATERLOO BRIDGE.]

[Illustration: SCHOMBERG HOUSE.]

[Illustration: STATUE OF SIDNEY HERBERT.]

Let us now take a brief glance at some well-known London sights. The two
great heroes who are commemorated in modern London are Wellington and
Nelson. Trafalgar Square commemorates Nelson's death and greatest
victory, the Nelson Column standing in the centre, with Landseer's
colossal lions reposing at its base. Passing eastward along the Strand,
beyond Charing Cross and Somerset House, we come to Wellington Street,
which leads to Waterloo Bridge across the Thames. This admirable
structure, the masterpiece of John Rennie, cost $5,000,000, and was
opened on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo in 1817. It is of
granite, and with the approaches nearly a half mile long, crossing the
river upon nine arches, each of one hundred and twenty feet span.
Passing westward from Trafalgar Square, we enter Pall Mall, perhaps the
most striking of the London streets in point of architecture. Here are
club-houses and theatres, statues and columns, and the street swarms
with historical associations. On the south side are the Reform and
Carlton Clubs, the headquarters respectively of the Liberal and
Conservative parties, and a little beyond, on the same side, the row of
buildings of all sizes and shapes making up the War Office. Among them
is a quaint old Queen-Anne mansion of brick, with a curious pediment and
having many windows. This is Schomberg House, shorn of one wing, but
still retained among so much that i