Of still greater importance is the Michaelis collection. It consists of 4420 volumes, and was bought by the Trustees of the Museum in 1848. Other successive acquisitions, especially the purchase of a large number of printed books from the Almanzi collection, brought the Museum into possession of one of the most complete and one of the largest Hebrew libraries in the world. After the foregoing remarks on the quantity of this collection, I shall now attempt to give some idea of its quality. The following table, taken from the Preface of Zedner’s _Catalogue_, shows its manifold contents:— 1. Bibles, 1260 2. Commentaries on the Bible, 510 3. Talmud, 730 4. Commentaries on the Talmud, 700 5. Codes of Law, 1260 6. Decisions, 520 7. Midrash, 160 8. Cabbalah, 460 9. Sermons, 400 10. Liturgies, 1200 11. Divine Philosophy, 690 12. Scientific works, 180 13. Grammars, Dictionaries, 450 14. History, Geography, 320 15. Poetry, Criticism, 770 The reader can see that almost every branch of human thought, religious and secular, is amply represented in this collection. Looking at this table from a geographical point of view, we may perhaps classify the authors in the following way:—France and Germany in the Middle Ages, Poland and the East in modern times, are represented by the fourth, fifth, and sixth classes. The Rabbis of Spain and Italy would probably excel in the last five classes. In the productions of classes eight and nine all the before‐mentioned countries would have an equal share. English Judaism, by reason of its large number of occasional prayers and wedding hymns (Zedner, pp. 472, 652), may perhaps be represented in the last class (criticism excluded). We in England are a pious, devotional people, and leave the thinking to others.