On the other hand, persons really interested in these records take no heed of them. Messrs. Brown, Smith, and Tomkins buy and sell manors and advowsons, Waltons and Stokes, and Combes cum Tythings, without knowing or caring that there are records of the actual transfers of the same properties between the holders of them since the days of King John! There is no sympathy for these things, even with those who might fairly be presumed to have a direct interest in the preservation of them, or with the public at large. Out of many examples of this sort, we need only cite one from the “Westminster Review:”—The Duke of Bedford inherits the Abbey of Woburn, and its monastic rights, privileges, and hereditaments; and there are public records, detailing with the utmost minuteness the value of this and all the church property which “Old Harry” seized, and all the stages of its seizure; the preliminary surveys to learn its value; perhaps the very surrender of the monks of Woburn; the annual value and detail of the possessions of the monastery whilst the Crown held it; the very particulars of the grant on which the letters patent to Lord John Russell were founded; the inrolment of the letters patent themselves. But neither his Grace of Bedford, the duke and lay impropriator, nor his brother, the Prime Minister and the historian, have seemed to regard these important documents as worthy of safe keeping. On public grounds, nothing was for a long time done, although, as Bishop Nicholson said in 1714, “Our stores of Public Records are justly reckoned to excel in age, beauty, correctness, and authority, whatever the choicest archives abroad can boast of the like sort.” We are happy to perceive by the “Eleventh Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records” that the work of arranging, repairing, cleaning, cataloguing, and rendering accessible these documents, proceeds diligently. But we are more happy to discover that the disastrous adventures of our Public Records are nearly at an end. The Deputy Keeper acknowledges “with extreme satisfaction the receipt of communications made to Lord Langdale from the Lords Commissioners of Your Majesty’s Treasury, intimating that their Lordships propose to commence the building of the Repository so emphatically urged by his Lordship the Master of the Rolls, and so long desired; the site thereof to be the Rolls Estate, and the Building to be comprehended within the boundaries of such Estate, the said site being in all respects the best and most convenient which the metropolis affords.” A MIGHTIER HUNTER THAN NIMROD.