DA COSTA wrote a letter to the Trustees. The generous heart is facile in ascribing generosity. ‘A most stately monument’ said DA COSTA, ‘hath been lately erected and endowed, by the wisdom and munificence of the British Legislature,’ and he accompanied his eulogy with a prayer that the Almighty would ‘render unto them a recompense, according to the work of their hands.’ [Sidenote: Da Costa to the Trustees of the Brit. Museum, ‘5th of Sivan, 5519’ [1759]]. He brought his mite of contribution, he added, not only as proof of sympathy with the work in progress, ‘but as a thanksgiving offering, in part, for the generous protection and numberless blessings which I have enjoyed under the British Government.’ The gift embraced several Biblical Manuscripts of value, and a still choicer series of early printed books, one hundred and eighty in number. The giver has a merited place in the roll of our public benefactors; and his devout prayer for the new Museum, ‘May it increase and multiply ... to the benefit of the people of these nations and of the whole earth,’ has had a more conspicuous fulfilment than could, in 1759, have been imagined by the most sanguine of bystanders. [Sidenote: GIFT OF THE THOMASON COLLECTION OF ENGLISH BOOKS OF 1641–1662, BY GEORGE III.] Three years afterwards, and soon after his accession to the throne, King GEORGE THE THIRD gave to the Nation that most curious assemblage of nearly the whole English literature of two and twenty eventful years of Civil War,—open or furtive,—which is known to the Public as the ‘Thomason Collection,’ though its technical name within the Museum walls continues, as of old, to be ‘the King’s Tracts.’ That name is the less appropriate from its tendency to give an inaccurate idea of the contents of the King’s gift, as well as from its disregard of the origin of the Collection. The ‘tracts’ include the most ponderous theological quartos that ever came from an English press as well as the tiniest handbill, or the fugitive circular which called together a ‘Committee of Sequestrators’ at Wallingford House. [Sidenote: GEORGE THOMASON AND HIS LABOURS.]