Had it never fallen to the lot of Henry ELLIS to render to the Public any service at all, in the way of administering and improving the National Museum, he would still have earned an honourable niche in our literary history. His contributions to literature are, indeed, very unequal in their character. [Sidenote: THE LABOURS IN LITERATURE OF SIR H. ELLIS.] Some of them are fragmentary; some might be thought trivial. But very many of them have sterling value. And his archæological labours, in particular, were zealous and unremitting. He began them in 1798. He had not entirely ceased to add to them in 1868. In the closing year of the eighteenth century he was giving furtherance to the labours on British history of Richard GOUGH. In the sixty-eighth year of the nineteenth century he was still taking an intelligent and critical interest in the large undertakings of Lord ROMILLY and of Mr. DUFFUS HARDY, for affording to future historians the means of basing the reconstruction of our national history upon the one firm foundation of an exhaustive search of our national records. The fourth Principal-Librarian of the British Museum was born at Shoreditch, in London, on the 29th of November, 1777. He was of a Yorkshire family long settled (and still flourishing) at Dewsbury. Henry ELLIS was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School, and at St. John’s College, Oxford, where he graduated B.C.L. in 1802. His first book (but not, perhaps, his first publication) was the _History of the Parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch_, printed in 1798. He became F.S.A. in 1800; one of its Secretaries in 1813; and its Director in 1854. To the _Archæologia_ he was a contributor for more than fifty years. In 1800, he sent to the first Record Commission a Report on the Historical Manuscripts at St. John’s. For the same Commission he wrote, in the year 1813, and the three following years, an _Introduction to Domesday Book_. Of this he would speak very modestly in after-days, saying: ‘I have worked on _Domesday_ for years; but only in making an opening into the mine. Other men will have yet to bring out the metal.’ For the second Record Commission he re-edited his _Introduction_ and considerably improved it. This was done in 1832; and, to say the least, it brought some very good ore to the surface. When both these Commissions had given way to the better organization recently framed by Lord ROMILLY, he edited, for the series of _Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain_, the Latin Chronicle of John of Oxenedes, from a MS. belonging to Sir Robert COTTON’S Library. When _Oxenedes_ was published, just sixty years had passed from the publication of Sir Henry’s first Record labour, undertaken at the instance of Lord COLCHESTER.