To the comparatively small assemblage of antiquities which originally formed part of the Museum of COURTEN and of SLOANE, several additions had been made—besides the coins, medals, and bronzes of Sir Robert COTTON—prior to the opening of the British Museum to the Public in 1759. Some of those additions were the gift, severally, of three members of the LETHIEULLIER family. Others were the gift of Thomas HOLLIS, who became a constant benefactor to the Museum almost from the day of Sir Hans SLOANE’S death to that of his own. The LETHIEULLIER antiquities had been chiefly gathered in Egypt. [Sidenote: THE EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES OF THE LETHIEULLIERS.] The first gift was made by the Will of Colonel William LETHIEULLIER, dated 23rd July, 1755. [Sidenote: MS. ADDIT., 6179, f. 29.] And the first catalogue of any kind which was prepared for the British Museum, after its acquisition by Parliament, was a list of these antiquities drawn up by Dr. John WARD, one of the Trustees. And here it may deserve remark that for many years after the foundation not a few of the Trustees took a large share in the actual work of preparing the Museum for public use, as well as in the ordinary duties of control and administration. To the gift of Colonel William LETHIEULLIER, his cousin, Smart LETHIEULLIER, and his nephew, Pitt LETHIEULLIER, made several additions between the years 1756 and 1770. The last-named of these gentlemen, when receiving, as executor of his uncle, the personal thanks of a Committee of the Trustees (February, 1756), for the bequest so made, took the opportunity of augmenting it by the gift of some antiquities which he had himself collected during his residence at Grand Cairo. But the first large and comprehensive addition in the archæological department was that made in 1772 by the purchase, by means of a Parliamentary grant, of the Museum of Antiquities, which had been formed during seven years’ researches in Italy by Sir William HAMILTON, our Ambassador at Naples. [Sidenote: SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON AND HIS CAREER AT NAPLES.] Sir William HAMILTON was among the earliest of British diplomatists who, by a voluntary choice, turned to good account, in the interests of learning and of the public, the opportunities which diplomatic life so frequently offers for amassing treasures of literature and science, and (in many cases) for saving them from peril of destruction. In that path Frenchmen had showed the way many generations earlier.