There are two extensive and exceedingly rich collections of tracts, books, and manuscript documents of a most varied character well-preserved and easily accessible in London, which furnish well-nigh inexhaustible materials for the study of the Puritan, the Nonconformist, and the Separatist movements in all their phases. One of these is in the British Museum, the other in Dr. Williams’s Library. In the times with which we are now concerned, the motive, perhaps but vaguely comprehended by himself, which led George Thomason to gather his marvellous collection, now in the British Museum, would have been called a _providential_ prompting. He was a modest man in private life, and, so far as we know, took no part in public agitations. As a Royalist bookseller, at “The Rose and Crown, in St. Paul’s Churchyard,” he had opportunities favoring him in the scheme which he undertook. It was in 1641 that he began a laborious enterprise, and one not without very serious risks to himself, which he continued to pursue till just before his death in 1666. This was to gather up, preserve, and bind in volumes,—though without any system or order of arrangement except chronological,—a copy of each of the publications in tract, or pamphlet, or fly-leaf form which appeared from the press, licensed or surreptitiously printed, during a period teeming with the issue, like the dropping of forest leaves, of a most extraordinary series of ephemeral works, quickened with all the vitality of those times. Though he began his collection in 1641, he anticipated that date by gathering similar publications previous to it. He copied during Cromwell’s time nearly a hundred manuscripts, mainly “on the King’s side, which no man durst venture to publish here without the danger of his ruin.” He took pains to write upon most of the publications the date of its appearance, and when anonymous, the name of its author if he could ascertain it. Besides the risks of fire and the burden of such a mass of materials filling his house from cellar to garret, this zealous collector exposed himself to severe penalties from the authorities on either side of the great civil and religious conflict. He was compelled once at least to remove his collection to a safe hiding-place. It fills now 2,220 volumes, and counts to 34,000 separate publications, from folio downward. It is difficult to say what may not be found there, and nearly as difficult to find exactly what one wishes. After various exposures through which the collection passed safely, it now rests in the British Museum, under the general title of the “King’s Pamphlets,” having been purchased and presented by King George III. in 1762, at a cost of £300. A mine of most curious matter is there ready for search on every subject, serious or comic, sacred or secular, illustrative of high and low life during the period. Probably the two most zealous delvers in that mine for its best uses have been Professor Masson, for