_Internal Economy of the Museum at the time of the death of Joseph_ PLANTA.—_The Literary Life and Public Services of Sir Henry_ ELLIS.—_The Candidature of Henry_ FYNES CLINTON.—_Progress of Improvement in certain Departments.—Introduction of Sir Antonio_ PANIZZI _into the Service of the Trustees.—The House of Commons’ Committee of 1835–36._—PANIZZI _and Henry Francis_ CARY.—_Memoir of_ CARY.—PANIZZI’S _Report on the proper Character of a National Library for Britain, made in October, 1837.—His successful labours for Internal Reform.—And his Helpers in the work.—The Literary Life and Public Services of Thomas_ WATTS.—_Sir A._ PANIZZI’S _Special Report to the Trustees of 1845, and what grew thereout.—Progress, during Sir H._ ELLIS’S _term of office, of the several Departments of Natural History and of Antiquities_. [Sidenote: BOOK III, CHAP. II. HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM UNDER SIR H. ELLIS.] When Sir Henry ELLIS was appointed to be the successor of Mr. PLANTA (20th December, 1827), the British Museum was still composed of but four departments, in conformity with the organization of 1809. It was publicly open on three days in each week, but only during forty weeks of every year. This was a great improvement of the previous arrangements, as we have seen, under MATY and MORTON. [Sidenote: CONDITIONS OF MUSEUM ACCESSIBILITY AT COMMENCEMENT OF MR. ELLIS’S RULE.] But Mr. PLANTA’S most conspicuous improvements lay in the (admittedly more important) direction of access to the Medal, Print, and Reading-Rooms. To his administration, students in all these departments were much indebted. Sir Henry ELLIS was to witness and to carry out, very efficiently as Principal-Librarian, some more extensive modifications of the old system of things; but he, in his turn, was to be quite eclipsed (so to speak) in the character of Museum improver, by his successor in office. And it was, in fact, to the latter that such among the conspicuous improvements of the last twenty years of Sir Henry’s official administration as related to the Department of Printed Books—and in no department were the improvements more striking—were pre-eminently due. Sir Henry ELLIS (who has but so recently departed from amongst us) entered the service of the Trustees, as a temporary assistant in the Library, in the year 1800, having had already three years’ experience in Bodley’s Library at Oxford. When coming occasionally to London during his employment at Oxford he would see Dr. Charles MORTON, who had helped to organize the Museum almost fifty years before. The _public_ life of those two acquaintances spread, conjointly, over a period of a hundred and twenty years.[23]