14 



the narrow passage through which access is 

 given both to the Medal and Ornament Rooms ; 

 this must cause inconvenience to officers, visitors, 

 and scholars, who have occasion to attend those 

 rooms. And it is owing to want of space that 

 the public at large are debarred from gratifying 

 their laudable curiosity, and improving their his- 

 torical knowledge, as well as their taste for fine art, 

 by the inspection of medals and coins. As there 

 is no exhibition of such objects, or even of casts 

 or electrotypes of them, a medal or coin, which 

 finds its way into the British Museum, is actually 

 shut up from the public at large. 



The above observations, however, apply only 

 to the collections already displayed ; the want of 

 room for such additional Antiquities as have been 

 recently received, especially from Halicarnassus 

 and Carthage, has so lately been under the con- 

 sideration of the Trustees that no more is here 

 required than to mention what measures have been 

 taken, merely to stow away these objects for the 

 present. In the first place, the space hitherto oc- 

 cupied by the Newspapers, in the basement of 

 the north-side of the Museum,'' has been appro- 

 priated as a store-room, in which the boxes filled 

 with the smaller fragments of Antiquities from 

 Budrum have been deposited and the contents 

 of most of them taken out and placed on the 



^•Plan III., 5. 



b Plan I., 14. 



