Whilst the volumes were still incomplete, Mr. HAMILTON circulated proof plates of the work with great liberality. Some of these proofs were lent to our famous English potter, Josiah WEDGWOOD, and gave a strong impulse to his taste and artistic zeal. [Sidenote: Meteyard, _Life of Josiah Wedgwood_, vol. ii, p. 72.] But they excited an eager longing for access to the vases themselves, as the only satisfactory models. [Sidenote: Wedgwood to Bentley, 10 May, 1770.] When WEDGWOOD wrote to his friend and partner, BENTLEY;—‘Mr. HAMBLETON, you know, has flattered the old pot-painters very much,’ one feels that for the moment that excellent man’s prepossessions had been rubbed a little, against the grain. But he shows directly that there is no real intent to impeach the Editor’s honesty in the matter. ‘He has, no doubt,’ adds WEDGWOOD, ‘taken his designs from the very best vases extant,’ which was precisely what it was his duty to do, since selection was the task in hand, not the publication of seven hundred specimens. This Collection—far more remarkable than any, of its kind, which had yet come to England—was brought over in 1772, and offered to the Trustees of the British Museum. An appeal was made to Parliament, and the first grant of public money, worthy of mention, was now made in order to its acquisition. The sum given to Mr. HAMILTON was eight thousand four hundred pounds. How soon one of the incidental results of the acquisition returned to the Public much more than its cost—leaving out of account altogether the best returns which accrue from such Collections—is among the familiar annals of our commerce. Josiah WEDGWOOD told a Committee of the House of Commons that, within two years, he had himself brought into England, by his imitations of the Hamilton vases in his manufactory at Etruria, about three times the sum which the Collection had cost to the country. [Sidenote: THE EXPLORATIONS AT POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM.] At the beginning of the year 1772 Mr. HAMILTON was made a Knight of the Bath. He returned to Naples soon after the transfer of his antiquities to the Museum, and ere long he was busily engaged in new explorations at Pompeii and at Herculaneum. He sent to the Society of Antiquaries, in 1777, an interesting account of the discoveries at Pompeii, which is printed in the fourth volume of the _Archæologia_. At Herculaneum he employed, during many years, Father Antonio PIAGGI to superintend excavations and make drawings, and gave him an annual salary equal to a hundred pounds sterling, after vainly endeavouring—at that time—to urge on the Neapolitan Government its own duty to carry on the task in an adequate manner for the honour of the nation, and to publish the results of the explorations for the general benefit of learning.