When the treasures of Mr. Payne KNIGHT came to be added to the several Collections made, during the preceding fifty years, by HAMILTON, TOWNELEY, and ELGIN, as well as to those which the British army had won in Egypt, or which were due, in the main, to the research and energy of our travelling fellow-countrymen, the national storehouse may fairly be said to have passed from its nonage into maturity. The Elgin Collection had, of itself, sufficed to lift the British Museum into the first rank among its peers. But the antiquarian treasures of the Museum showed many gaps. Some important additions, indeed, had been made, from time to time, to the class of Egyptian antiquities. And a small foundation had been laid of what is now the superb Assyrian Gallery. Rich in certain classes of archæology, it remained, nevertheless, poor in certain others. In 1825, it came to the front in all. [Sidenote: THE LIFE, WRITINGS, AND COLLECTIONS, OF R. PAYNE KNIGHT.] Richard Payne KNIGHT is one of the many men who, in all probability, would have attained more eminent and enduring distinction had he been less impetuous and more concentrated in its pursuit. He went in for all the honours. He aimed to be conspicuous, at once, as archæologist and philosopher, critic and poet, politician and dictator-general in matters of art and of taste. He was ready to give judgment, at any moment, and without appeal, whether the question at issue concerned the decoration of a landscape, the summing-up of the achievement of a HOMER, or a PHIDIAS, or the system of the universe. Mr. KNIGHT was born in 1749, and was the son of a landed man, of good property, whose estates were chiefly in Wiltshire, and who possessed a borough ‘interest’ in Ludlow. His constitution was so weakly, and his chance of attaining manhood seemed so doubtful, that his father would not allow him to go to any school, or to be put to much study at home. It was only after his father’s death, and when he had entered his fourteenth year, that his education can be said to have begun. Within three years of his first appearance in any sort of school, he went into Italy; substituting for the university the grand tour. Only when he was approaching eighteen years of age did he fairly set to work to learn Greek. But he studied it with a will, and to good purpose.