Of his second library, Mr. WATTS wrote thus:—‘The collection of Japanese books was one of two formed by Dr. VON SIEBOLD during his residence in, and visits to, Japan. The first of these collections, which is now at Leyden, and of which a catalogue was published in 1845, was long considered as beyond comparison the finest of its kind out of Japan and China; but the second, now in the Museum, is much superior. That at Leyden comprises five hundred and twenty-five works, that in London one thousand and eighty-eight works, in three thousand four hundred and forty-one volumes. It contains specimens of every class of literature: cyclopædias, histories, law-books, political pamphlets, novels, plays, poetry, works on science, on antiquities, on female costume, on cookery, on carpentry, and on dancing. It abounds in works illustrative of the topography of Japan, as, for instance, one, in twenty volumes, on the secular capital Yeddo, and two, in eleven volumes, on the religious capital Miaco; collections of views of Yeddo and of the volcano Fusiyama, &c. &c. There are also several dictionaries of European languages, testifying to the eagerness with which the Japanese now pursue that study. The Museum was already in possession of a second edition of an English dictionary published at Yeddo in 1866, in which the lexicographer, HORI TATSNOSKAY, observes in the preface, “As the study of the English language is now becoming general in our country, we have had for some time the desire to publish a pocket dictionary of the English and Japanese languages, as an assistance to our scholars,” and adds that the first edition is “entirely sold out.” These dictionaries may now assist Europeans to study the language of Japan, and it is believed that the Japanese Library now in the Museum will afford unequalled opportunities for the study of its literature.’ This was the last sentence in the last official report which Mr. WATTS lived to write, for the purpose of being laid before Parliament. He died on the ninth of September, 1869, at the age of fifty-nine. His post was not filled up until the end of December, when he was succeeded by Mr. William Brenchley RYE, who was then Senior Assistant-Keeper in the Department of Printed Books. Mr. RYE is well known in literature. He has edited, with great ability, several works of early travel for the useful ‘Hakluyt Society,’—an employment which he has often shared with his friends and Museum colleagues Messrs. Winter JONES and Richard Henry MAJOR, and with like honourable distinction in its performance. More recently, he has increased his reputation by a book which has been largely read, and which well deserves its popularity—_England as seen by Foreigners_. This work was published in 1865. CHAPTER VII. RECONSTRUCTORS AND PROJECTORS.