To the Oriental Manuscripts of RICH, an important addition was made in the course of the same year by the bequest of [Sidenote: HULL’S ORIENTAL MSS.] Mr. John Fowler HULL—another distinguished Orientalist who passed from amongst us at an early age—who also bequeathed a Collection of Oriental and Chinese printed books. Mr. HULL’S legacy was the small beginning of that Chinese Library which has now become so large. [Sidenote: THE PERSEPOLITAN MARBLES.] It was also in the year 1825 that Sir Gore OUSELEY presented a Collection of Marbles obtained from Persepolis. These will be mentioned hereafter in connection with the antiquarian explorations of Claudius RICH and his successors. The donor of the Persepolitan Marbles died on the eighteenth of November, 1844. [Sidenote: HISTORY OF ‘THE PORTLAND VASE.’] In addition to these many liberal benefactions made during the earlier years of the present century, a smaller gift (virtually a gift, though in name a ‘deposit’) of the same period claims brief notice, on account both of its artistic value and of its curious history. I refer to that exquisite monument of ancient art known, for many years, as the ‘Barberini Vase,’ but now more commonly as the ‘Portland Vase,’ from the name of its last individual possessor. This vase is one of the innumerable acquisitions which the country owes to the intelligent research and cultivated taste of Sir William HAMILTON. It had been found more than a century before his time (probably in the year 1640), beneath the Monte del Grano, about three miles from Rome, on the road to Tusculum. The place of the discovery was a sepulchral chamber, within which was found a sarcophagus containing the vase, and bearing an inscription to the memory of the Emperor ALEXANDER SEVERUS (_A.D._ 222–235) and to his mother. About this sarcophagus and its inscription there have been dissertations and rejoinders, essays and commentaries, illustrative and obscurative, in sufficient number to immortalise half a dozen Jonathan OLDBUCKS and ‘Antigonus’ MAC-CRIBBS. And the controversy is still undetermined.