Joseph PLANTA also took his share in the compilation of the Catalogues both of Printed Books and of Manuscripts. In this department, as in the archæological one, he extended the benefits of his zealous labour to the scholar abroad as well as to the scholar at home. What was carefully prepared was liberally _printed_ and liberally circulated. PLANTA wrote with his own hand part of the published _Catalogue of the Printed Books_, and much of the _Catalogue of the Cottonian Manuscripts_. To the latter he prefixed a brief life of the Founder, by which I have gladly and thankfully profited in my own more extended labour at the beginning of this volume. One incidental employment which Mr. PLANTA’S office entailed upon him—as Principal-Librarian—was of a less grateful kind. It merits notice on more than one account, very trivial as is the incident of Museum history that occasioned it, when looked at intrinsically. In 1821, the then Duke of BEDFORD (John, ninth Duke) filed in Chancery an injunction against the Trustees to restrain them from building on the garden-ground of the Museum. [Sidenote: THE GARDENS OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND THE DUKE OF BEDFORD.] To build was—at that time—an undoubted injury to the Bloomsburians, and, consequently, a not less undoubted depreciation of the Duke’s estate. It is hard, nowadays, to realise to one’s fancy what the former Museum gardens were in the olden time. They not only adorned every house that looked over them, but were—in practice, and by the indulgence of the Trustees and officers—a sort of small public park for the refreshment of the vicinity at large. Their neighbourhood made houses more valuable in the market.