Joseph PLANTA had already made—immediately after his first appointment as Assistant-Librarian—his outset in authorship by the publication of his _Account of the Romansch Language_. [Sidenote: _Phil. Trans._, vol. lxvi, pp. 129–160.] It is a scholarly production, though (it need hardly be said) not what would be expected, on such a subject, after the immense stride made in linguistical studies during the ninety-five years which have elapsed since it was given to literature, in pages in which nowadays such a treatise would hardly be looked for. Its first appearance was in the _Philosophical Transactions_. In 1776 it was translated into German and printed at Chamouni. The subsequent years were devoted, almost exclusively, to the proper duties of his Museum office—on the days of service—and to those of the Paymastership of Exchequer Bills, a function to which Mr. PLANTA was appointed in 1788, and the duties of which he discharged, with efficiency and honour, for twenty-three years. Authorship had but little of his time until a much later period of life. A little before his appointment in the administrative service of the country, PLANTA had married Miss Elizabeth ATWOOD. For him, marriage did just the opposite of what it has, now and then, been said to do for some other men. It took off the edge of his liking for foreign travel. For it gave him a very happy home. Their union endured for twenty-four years. PLANTA was not a man of the gushing sort. [Sidenote: Falkenstein, _Zeitgenossen_, &c., Dritte Reihe, Bd. ii, pp. 3, seqq.] But, to intimates, he would say—in the lonely years; there were to be but few of them—‘She was an angel in spirit and in heart.’ Mrs. PLANTA died in 1821. On the death of Charles MORTON, Mr. PLANTA, as we have seen already, was made Principal-Librarian. He found the Museum still in its infancy, although no less than forty-six years had passed since the bequest of Sir Hans SLOANE was made to the British Public, and more than forty years since that Public had entered upon its inheritance. The collections had kept pace with the growth of science only in one or two departments. In others the arrear was enormous. The accessibility was hampered with restrictions. The building was in pressing need of enlargement, gradual as had been the growth of some sections, and glaring as was the deficiency of other sections.