Timmins
for L100, making L25,700 in all. The two companies hardly waited for the
claim to be made, but met it in a most generous manner, paying over at
once L20,000, of which L10,528 has been devoted to the buildings and
fittings, nearly L500 paid for expenses and injury to statues, and the
remaining L9,000 put to the book purchase fund. In the Reference Library
there were quite 48,000 volumes, in addition to about 4,000 of patent
specifications. Every great department of human knowledge was
represented by the best known works. In history, biography, voyages, and
travels, natural history, fine arts, all the greatest works, not only in
English, but often in the principal European languages, had been
gathered. Volumes of maps and plans, engravings of all sorts of
antiquities, costumes, weapons, transactions of all the chief learned
societies, and especially bibliography, or "books about books" had been
collected with unceasing care, the shelves being loaded with costly and
valuable works rarely found out of the great libraries of London, or
Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, or Glasgow. Among the collections lost
were many volumes relating to the early history of railways in England,
originally collected by Mr.
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