The peculiar importance of the Hargrave Collection consisted in its manuscripts and its annotated printed books. The former were about five hundred in number, and were works of great juridical weight and authority, not merely the curiosities of black-letter law. Their Collector was the most eminent parliamentary lawyer of his day, but his devotion to the science of law had, to some degree, impeded his enjoyment of its sweets. During some of the best years of his life he had been more intent on increasing his legal lore than on swelling his legal profits. And thus the same legislative act which enriched the Museum Library, in both of its departments, helped to smooth the declining years of a man who had won an uncommon distinction in his special pursuit. Francis HARGRAVE died on the sixteenth of August, 1821, at the age of eighty. [Sidenote: THE EGERTON BEQUEST.] Leaving now this not very long list of acquisitions made by the National Library, in the way of purchase, either at the public cost or from endowments, we have again to turn to a new and conspicuous instance of private liberality. Like CRACHERODE, and like BURNEY, Francis Henry EGERTON belonged to a profession which at nearly all periods of our history—though in a very different degree in different ages—has done eminent honour and rendered large services to the nation, and that in an unusual variety of paths. Each of these three clergymen is now chiefly remembered as a ‘Collector.’ Each of them would seem to have been placed quite out of his true element and sphere of labour, when assuming the responsibilities of a priest in the Church of England. CRACHERODE was scarcely more fitted for the work, at all events, of a preacher—save by the tacit lessons of a most meek and charitable life—than he was fitted to head a cavalry charge on the field of battle. BURNEY was manifestly cut out by nature for the work of a schoolmaster; although, as we have seen, he was able—late, comparatively, in life—so to discharge (for a very few years) the duties of a parish priest as to win the love of his flock. EGERTON was unsuited to clerical work of almost any and every kind. Yet he, too, with all his eccentricities and his indefensible absenteeism, became a public benefactor. The last act of his life was to make a provision which has been fruitful in good, having a bearing—very real though indirect—upon the special duties of the priestly function, for which he was himself so little adapted. The bequests of Francis EGERTON had, among their many useful results, the enabling of Thomas CHALMERS to add one more to his fruitful labours for the Christian Church and for the world.