had at length been followed by a school of explorers. Such men as CUMING live after their death, and hence the marvellous increase, within a very few years, in our knowledge of Nature, and of GOD’S bounty to the world he made. [Sidenote: J. R. CHORLEY AND HIS COLLECTION OF THE SPANISH POETS AND DRAMATISTS.] By a man who did but little in literature, although he possessed attainments which, in some respects, seem to have surpassed those of a good many men whose lucubrations have had much publicity and vogue, a valuable addition was made a few years ago, by bequest, to the Museum Library, both in the printed and manuscript departments. [Sidenote: _Will of Mr. Rutter Chorley_, 1866.] Mr. John Rutter CHORLEY had collected about two hundred volumes of the Spanish poetry and drama, and had enriched them with manuscript notes, bibliographical and critical. He had also prepared chronological tables of the dramatists—writing them in Spanish, of which he was a master—together with an account of their respective works. He had, I think, contemplated, at some future time, the preparation of some such book on the Spanish theatre as that published by Mr. TICKNOR, many years ago, on Spanish literature at large. Whether the appearance of TICKNOR’S valuable book deterred Mr. CHORLEY from prosecuting his purpose, I know not. Probably he was one of the many men the very extent of whose knowledge inspires a fastidiousness which prompts them to keep on increasing their private store, and to defer, almost until death overtakes them, the drawing from that store for the Public. If there may really, by some dim possibility, have been here and there an inglorious HAMPDEN, or a mute SHAKESPEARE, it is very certain that there have been, in literary history and in like departments of human study, many an unknown DISRAELI, many a Tom WARTON, brimful of knowledge about poets and poetry, who never could have lived long enough to put to public use the materials he had laboriously brought together. [Sidenote: GEORGE WITT AND HIS COLLECTIONS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY OF SUPERSTITIONS.] Of another Collector, whose pursuits lay at an opposite pole to those of Mr. CHORLEY, it would not be edifying to say very much in these pages. Some among the collections illustrative of the history of obscure superstitions (to quote the polite euphuism of one of the Museum _Returns_ to Parliament) partake, in a degree, of the peculiar associations which connect themselves with the bare name of a place at which some few of them were really found—that too famous retreat of the Emperor TIBERIUS. Others of them, however, possess a real archæological value from a different point of view. All, no doubt, are characteristically illustrative, more or less, of the doings ‘in the dark places of the earth,’ and may point a moral, howsoever little fitted to adorn a tale.