For this purpose a Bill was introduced into Parliament by Lord COLCHESTER on the eighth of June. It received the royal assent on the seventeenth. The addition of Mr. KNIGHT’S Greek Coins made the British Museum superior, in that department, to the Royal Museum of Paris; the addition of his bronzes raised it above the famous Museum of Naples. By the most competent judges it has been estimated that, if the Collection had been sold by public auction, Mr. KNIGHT’S representatives would probably have obtained for it the sum of sixty thousand pounds. ----- Footnote 1: Sir Robert’s father was the fourth ‘Thomas Cotton of Conington,’ and fifth Lord of that manor of the Cotton family. The marriage of William Cotton with the eventual heiress of the Huntingdonshire Bruces was contracted about the year 1450. Footnote 2: ‘By this woman the Earldom of Huntingdon and the Lordship of Conington came to the Crown of Scotland.’-_MS. Note by Sir R. Cotton_, in ‘Harl. 807.’ Footnote 3: From the COTTON ROLL XIV, 6 [by SEGAR, CAMDEN, and ST. GEORGE]; compared with MS. Harl. 807, fol. 95, and with MS. LANSD., 863, containing the Heraldic Collections of R. ST. GEORGE, Norroy, Vol. III, fol. 82 verso. Footnote 4: Here, if we accepted Cotton’s authorship of the _Twenty-four Arguments, whether it be more expedient to suppress Popish Practices, &c._, published in the _Cottoni Posthuma_, by James Howell, we should have to add that ‘he travelled on the Continent and passed many months in Italy.’ But that tract is _not_ Cotton’s—though ascribed to him by so able and careful an historian as Mr. S. R. Gardiner (_Archæologia_, vol. xli. Comp. _Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, &c._, vol. i, p. 32). That its real author was in Italy is plain, from his own statement ‘I remember that in Italy it was often told me,’ &c.; and, again: ‘In Rome itself I have heard the English fugitive taxed,’ &c., _Posthuma_, pp. 126, seqq. Dr. Thomas Smith put a question as to this implied visit of Sir Robert to Italy to his grandson, Sir John Cotton, who assured him that no such visit was known to any of the family; by all of whom it was believed that their eminent antiquary never set foot out of Britain. Smith’s words are these:— ... ‘D. Joannes Cottonus hac de re a me literis consultus, se de isthoc avi sui itinere Italico ne verbum quidem a Patre suo edoctum fuisse respondit.... Cottonum usum et cognitionem linguæ Italicæ a Joanne Florio ... anno 1610 addidicisse ex ejusdem literis ad Cottonum scriptis, mihi certo constat.’ _Vita_, p. xvii. Footnote 5: