In the labours of this little house-committee my late friend took a very large share. To Mr. PANIZZI, and to him, all their colleagues in the task of 1839 will readily admit that the chief merit of what is good, and the smallest part of the demerit of what may have been injudicious, in the _Rules for the Compilation of the Catalogue of Printed Books_ (now before me) is incontestably due. My own experience in such matters, in the spring of 1839, was small indeed. That of my friend PARRY was even less. Mr. Winter JONES possessed, already, the advantage of a thorough familiarity with the Library about to be catalogued, and also an extensive and thorough general knowledge of books. Of Mr. PANIZZI’S qualifications and attainments, for such a labour, it would be supererogatory and idle to say a word more, except that he had already—and single-handed—made so good a Catalogue of the fine Library of the Royal Society that the meddling of half a dozen ‘revisers’ failed to spoil it. But there is no impropriety in saying of Mr. WATTS, that he so delighted in the labour in hand as to make it seem, to those who worked with him, that he looked upon it in the light of a pleasant recreation rather than in the light of a dry task. But whatever the ultimate differences of opinion, amongst those concerned in such a matter, about the merits of the Museum Catalogue, begun in 1839, there was no difference at all, either in the House or out of it, as to the conspicuous merits of his performance of every subsequent duty. His stores of knowledge were put, with the utmost readiness, at the service of all sorts of readers; and he was not less admirable in the discharge of his office of Superintendent of the Reading-Room than afterwards in the more prominent office of Keeper of Printed Books—which he held little more than three years. When Sir Henry ELLIS retired, in 1856, from the office of Principal-Librarian, the Collection of Printed Books—which he had found, on his accession to that office, extending to less than one hundred and fifty thousand volumes—exceeded five hundred and twenty thousand volumes. The annual number of Readers admitted had increased from about seven hundred and fifty to nearly four thousand. The one step which did more than aught else to promote this improvement was the systematic survey of the then existing condition of the Printed Library, in all the great departments of knowledge, which Mr. PANIZZI set on foot in 1843, and embodied in a Memoir addressed to the Trustees, on the first of January, 1845. [Sidenote: MR. PANIZZI’S MEMOIR ON THE COLLECTION OF PRINTED BOOKS, 1845.]