Prints and Drawings.
A convenient site for this department would, in the opinion of the Committee, be provided by the suggested acquisition of additional ground on the north side. A building might there be erected in continuation of the present east wing of the Museum, to contain, on its upper floor, the Mineralogical Collections, and on the lower the Prints and Drawings, with adequate space both for their preservation and exhibition.
Antiquities.
In determining the site most suitable for the large additional accommodation required for this department, the Committee thought it most prudent that the Trustees of the Museum should be guided, partly by the greater or less cost of purchasing the requisite amount of ground in different directions, but chiefly by the greater or less fitness of the different portions of ground for the best system of arrangement.
Internal economy:—Reorganization and subdivision of Departments. 1856–66.
In the same year in which Mr. Panizzi became Principal-Librarian (1856), one of the recommendations of Lord Ellesmere’s Commission-Report of 1850 was carried into effect by the creation of the new office of ‘Superintendent of the Natural-History Departments.’ And the former partial subdivision and reorganization of those departments was, in the following year, carried further by the formation of a separate Department of Mineralogy. In subsequent years, the old Department of Antiquities was, like the Natural History, divided into four departments, namely, (1) Greek and Roman Antiquities; (2) Oriental Antiquities; (3) British and Mediæval Antiquities and Ethnography; (4) Coins and Medals.
At present (1870), it may here be added, the entire Museum is divided into twelve departments, comprising three several groups of four sections to each. The Natural-History group being comprised of (1) Zoology; (2) Palæontology; (3) Botany; (4) Mineralogy. The Literary group comprising (1) Printed Books; (2) Manuscripts; (3) Prints and Drawings; (4) Maps, Charts, Plans, and Topographical Drawings. Experience has amply vindicated the wisdom of the principle of subdivision. But it is probable that the principle has now been carried as far as it can usefully work in practice.
Increased efficiency and rapidly growing collections brought with them enlarged grants from Parliament. In the first year of Sir A. Panizzi’s Principal-Librarianship, the estimate put before the House of Commons for the service of the year 1856–7 was sixty thousand pounds, as compared with a grant for the service of the year immediately preceding of fifty-six thousand one hundred and eighty pounds. In his last year of office, the estimate for the service of the year 1866–67 amounted to one hundred and two thousand seven hundred and forty-four pounds, against a grant in the year preceding of ninety-eight thousand one hundred and sixty-four pounds.
Statistics of Public Access.
There had also been, in that decade, a marked degree of increase—though one of much fluctuation—in the number of visits, both to the General Collections and, much more notably, to the Reading-Rooms and the Galleries for Study. In 1856, the number of general visitors was three hundred and sixty-one thousand seven hundred and fourteen; in 1866, it was four hundred and eight thousand two hundred and seventy-nine. But in the ‘Exhibition Year’ (1862), it had reached eight hundred and ninety-five thousand and seventy-seven, which was itself little more than one third of the exceptionally enormous number of visitors recorded[[34]] in the year of the first of the great Industrial Exhibitions (1851).