PLANTA put his shoulders to the wheel, and met with support and encouragement from several of the Trustees. But the feeling still ran strongly against any approach to indiscriminate publicity in any department of the Museum. Men did not carry that restrictive view quite so far in 1800, as it had been expressed by Dr. John WARD—an able and good man—in 1760, and earlier; but they still looked with apprehension upon the combined ideas of a crowd of visitors, and irreplaceable treasures of learning and of art. A good many of the men of 1800 possessed, it must in candour be remembered, living recollections of the sights and the deeds of 1780. Residents in Bloomsbury were likely, on that score, to have particularly good memories. They had seen with their eyes precious manuscripts, which treasured up the life-long lore of a MANSFIELD, given by the populace to the flames. Under the influence of such memories as these, Mr. PLANTA had to propose abolition of restrictions, with a gentle and very gradual hand. He began by improving the practice, without at first greatly altering the rules. By and by he brought, from time to time, before the Trust, suggestions for relaxations in the rules themselves. [Sidenote: IMPROVEMENTS INTRODUCED, OR RECOMMENDED, BY JOSEPH PLANTA, IN THE INTERNAL ECONOMY OF THE MUSEUM.] From the outset he administered the Reading-Room itself with much liberality. When he became Principal-Librarian the yearly admissions were much under two hundred. In 1816, they had increased to two hundred and ninety-two. In 1820, to five hundred and fifteen. As respects the Department of Antiquities, the students admitted to draw were in 1809 less than twenty; in 1818 two hundred and twenty-three were admitted. In 1814 he recommended the Trustees to make provision for the exhibition every Thursday, ‘to persons applying to see them,’ the Engravings and Prints;—the persons admitted not exceeding six at any one time, and others being admitted in due succession. He also recommended a somewhat similar system of exhibition for adoption in the Department of Coins and Medals. And the Trustees gave effect to both recommendations. Eventually Mr. PLANTA proposed, for the _general_ show Collections of the Museum, a system of entirely free admission at the instant of application, abolishing all the hamper of preliminary forms. [Sidenote: HIS RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE ENLARGEMENT OF THE VARIOUS COLLECTIONS.]