SYNOPSIS 
OF THE 
CONTENTS OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. 
On entering the gate of the Museum,, a spacious quadrangle 
presents itself, with an Ionic colonnade on the south 
side, and the main building * on the north, the two wings 
being allotted for the dwellings of the officers. The ar¬ 
chitect, Peter Puget, a native of Marseilles, and an artist 
of the first eminence in his time, was sent over from Paris 
by Ralph, first Duke of Montagu, for the sole purpose of 
constructing this splendid mansion. It was the repetition 
of a building first designed in 1674 by Dr. Hooke, which 
was destroyed by fire in 1687* 
GROUND FLOOR. 
This floor, consisting of sixteen rooms, contains the Old 
Library of Printed Books. Strangers are not admitted 
into these apartments, as the mere sight of the outside of 
books cannot convey either instruction or amusement +. 
In the First Room, on the right hand of the entrance, 
upon the table, within a glazed frame, is one of the origi¬ 
nals of Magna Charta , belonging to the Cottonian Library ; 
at the side, there is an Engraving of it in fac-simile by 
Pine. 
* The building measures 216 feet in length, and 57 in height, to the 
top of the cornice. 
f An Alphabetical Catalogue of this Library was printed in the year 
1787, in two volumes folio; and another published, in seven volumes 
8vo, 1813—1819, containing, as far as possible, the accessions to 
the latter year. A Catalogue of the Royal Library, given to the Mu¬ 
seum in 1823, was printed in five volumes folio, and privately distributed, 
by order of his late Majesty King George the Fourth. 
