To make a classified catalogue of the books in the British Museum would be a gigantic task; but imagine what that task would be if all the title-pages and other external indications were destroyed! The first attempts would necessarily be of a rough approximative kind, merely endeavouring to make a sort of provisional order amid the chaos, after which succeeding labours might introduce better and better arrangements. The books might first be grouped according to size; but having got them together, it would soon be discovered that size was no indication of their contents: quarto poems and duodecimo histories, octavo grammars and folio dictionaries, would immediately give warning that some other arrangement was needed. Nor would it be better to separate the books according to the languages in which they were written. The presence or absence of “illustrations” would furnish no better guide; while the bindings would soon be found to follow no rule. Indeed, one by one all the external characters would prove unsatisfactory, and the labourers would finally have to decide upon some internal characters. Having read enough of each book to ascertain whether it was poetry or prose: and if poetry, whether dramatic, epic, lyric, or satiric; and if prose, whether history, philosophy, theology, philology, science, fiction, or essay: a rough classification could be made; but even then there would be many difficulties, such as where to place a work on the philosophy of history—or the history of science,—or theology under the guise of science—or essays on very different subjects; while some works would defy classification.