The office of Senior Assistant-Librarian in that Department was then filled by another man of eminent literary distinction, the Reverend Henry Francis CARY, who, as one of the best among the many English translators of DANTE, is not likely to be soon forgotten amongst us. Not a few Englishmen of the generation that is now passing away learnt in his version to love DANTE, before they were able to read him in his proper garb, and learnt too to love Italy, as CARY loved it, for DANTE’S sake. Mr. CARY was the grandson of Mordecai CARY, Bishop of Killaloe, and the son of a Captain in the British Army, who at the time of Henry CARY’S birth was quartered at Gibraltar, where the boy was born on the sixth of December, 1772. [Sidenote: LIFE AND LITERARY LABOURS OF HENRY FRANCIS CARY.] He was educated at Birmingham and at Christ Church, Oxford. It was in his undergraduate days at Christ Church that he began to translate the _Inferno_, although he did not publish his first volume until he had entered his thirty-third year, and had established himself in ‘the great wen’ as Reader at Berkeley Chapel (1805). CARY’S ‘_Dante_’ soon won its way to fame. Among other blessings it brought about his life-long friendship with COLERIDGE and with the Coleridgian circle. He now became an extensive contributor to the literary periodicals. In 1816, he was made Preacher at the Savoy. In 1825, he offered himself to the Trustees of the British Museum as a candidate for the Keepership of the Department of Antiquities in succession to Taylor COMBE. That office was given, with great propriety, to Mr. Edward HAWKINS, who had assisted Mr. COMBE, and had, in fact, replaced him during his illness. But Mr. CARY had met with encouragement—especially from the Archbishop of CANTERBURY—and kept a bright look-out for new vacancies. In May or June, 1826, he wrote to his father that he had learnt that the office of Assistant-Librarian in the Department of Printed Books was vacant. It had been, he added, held by a most respectable old clergyman of the name of BEAN, and Mr. BEAN was just dead. Within a week or two, Mr. CARY was appointed to be his successor. By a large circle of friends the appointment was hailed as a fitting tribute to a most deserving man of letters.