When Thomas WATTS entered the Museum, the immediate task entrusted to him, onerous as it was, did not (for any long time) engross his attention. In common with Mr. PANIZZI, his desire to increase the Library, and to make London surpass Paris—‘_Paris must be surpassed_,’ are the words which close the best of those articles, printed in 1837, to which I have just now referred—amounted to a positive passion. He did not talk very much about it; but I fancy it occupied, not only his waking thoughts, but his very dreams. Mr. PANIZZI had not been at the head of his Department many weeks before he began a Special Report to the Trustees, recommending a systematic increase of the Collection of Printed Books. In the autumn of 1837 he could hardly foresee that one of the attacks to be made, in the after-years, upon those who had appointed him, or who had promoted his appointment, for the crime of preferring ‘a foreigner’ to a high post in our National Museum, would be based upon the foreigner’s neglect of English Literature. ‘An Italian Librarian,’ said those profound logicians, ‘must, naturally and necessarily, swamp the Library with Italian books. He can’t help doing it.’ But, strange as it may have seemed to objectors of that calibre, this particular Italian happened to be, not only a scholar—a ripe and good one—but a man of wide sympathies, and of catholic tastes in literature. He was able himself to enjoy SHAKESPEARE, not less thoroughly than he was able, by his critical acumen, to increase other men’s enjoyment of ARIOSTO and of DANTE. [Sidenote: SIR A. PANIZZI’S REPORT, IN OCTOBER, 1837, ON THE PROPER CHARACTERISTICS OF A NATIONAL LIBRARY FOR GREAT BRITAIN.]