w the original one, the room having been
to this extent spoiled because the former proportions were bad for
hearing.

[Illustration: _Plan of the Houses of Parliament, 1844_]

On the side nearest to Westminster are St. Stephen's Porch, St. Stephen's
Corridor, the Chancellor's Corridor, the Victoria Tower, the Royal
Staircase, and numerous courts and corridors. At the south end, nearest
Millbank, are the Guard Room, the Queen's Robing-Room, the Royal Gallery,
the Royal Court, and the Prince's Chamber. The river front is mostly
occupied by libraries and committee-rooms. The northern or Bridge Street
end displays the Clock Tower and the Speaker's Residence. In the interior
of the structure are vast numbers of lobbies, corridors, halls, and
courts. The Victoria Tower, at the southwest angle of the entire
structure, is a wonderfully fine and massive tower; it is 75 feet square
and 340 feet high. The clock tower, at the north end, is 40 feet square
and 320 feet high, profusely gilt near the top. After two attempts made
to supply this tower with a bell of fourteen tons weight, and after both
failed, one of the so-called "Big Bens," the weight of which is about
eight tons (the official name being "St. Stephen"), now tells the hour in
deep tones. There are, likewise, eight smaller bells to chime the
quarters. The clock is by far the largest and finest in England. There are
four dials on the four faces of the tower, each 22-1/2 feet in diameter;
the hour figures are 2 feet high and 6 feet apart; the minute marks are 14
inches apart; the hands weigh more than 2 cwt. the pair; the minute hand
is 16 feet long, and the hour hand 9 feet; the pendulum is 15 feet long
and weighs 680 lbs. The central tower rises to a height of 300 feet.

Its rooms and staircases are almost inconceivably numerous. The river
front is nine hundred feet in length, with an elaborately decorated facade
with carven statues and emblems. By 1860 the cost had exceeded by a
considerable sum L2,000,000.

The growth of the British Museum and its ever increasing store of
knowledge is treated elsewhere, but it is worth recording here, as one of
the significant events of contemporary times, the opening of the present
structure with its remarkable domed reading-room.

This great national establishment contains a vast and constantly
increasing collection of books, maps, drawings, prints, sculptures,
antiquities, and natural curiosities. It occupies a most extensiv