The record of the life of the late Sir Edward Augustus Bond is one of steady unbroken success, so quiet and uniform as almost to conceal the credit to which he is entitled as a man of original mind and a vigorous innovator and reformer. Born on December 31, 1815, the son of a clergyman and schoolmaster at Hanwell, he entered the Record Office at seventeen, and there, under the tuition of Sir Thomas Hardy and the Rev. Joseph Hunter, laid the foundation of his extensive palæographical acquirements. Having obtained a thorough acquaintance with mediæval hand-writings, so far as this is attainable from English and French records and charters, he passed in 1837 to the more varied and extensive field afforded by the British Museum, where continuous experience made him a master of palæography in every department. The sudden and much regretted death of Mr. John Holmes in 1854 made Bond Assistant-Keeper of Manuscripts sooner than could have been anticipated, and in 1867 he succeeded his chief, Sir Frederic Madden, as head of the department. During thirty years he had been known as an exemplary and diligent official, who enjoyed the confidence and esteem both of his immediate superior and of the head of the Museum, Sir A. Panizzi; yet few were prepared for the sweeping and vigorous measures by which, within a few years, he reorganised his department, reformed many defects which had been allowed to creep in, did away with the extraordinary mass of arrears which he found existing, and brought the work up to the high standard of regularity and efficiency which it has maintained ever since. Concurrently with these reforms, he executed the classified index of MSS. which has proved of such essential assistance to students, and performed a service, felt far beyond the precincts of the Museum, by the foundation of the Palæographical Society, whose selections of authentic facsimiles from MSS. of varied character in separate libraries may be said to have made palæography an exact science. Their value was evinced in the celebrated controversy respecting the date of the Utrecht Psalter, in which Bond took the leading part. This, however, was about the only occasion on which he came prominently before the public. His modesty and reserve kept him almost unknown beyond his own department; it was a genuine surprise to the world and to himself when, in 1878, he succeeded Mr. Winter Jones as Principal Librarian. The appointment had been looked upon as the appanage of Sir Charles Newton, at that time the most conspicuous officer of the Museum, and he might undoubtedly have filled it, if a brief experience as Mr. Jones's deputy of its arduous and engrossing nature had not made him decline it as incompatible with his cherished archæological pursuits.