and at once to interest the visitor in them, by shortly explaining
their points of interest. The success which this endeavour met
elsewhere has encouraged us to perform the present task; and we hope
shortly to be at the elbow of visitors to other interesting buildings
and exhibitions.

The popularity of the British Museum may be shown by quoting the last
return of the number of visitors, &c., presented to the House of
Commons. This return proves that, while the public interest in the
collection is on the increase, that the guardians of the different
departments look out eagerly for new curiosities:--"The number of
readers--or rather of visits made by readers, in 1850, was
78,533:--or, an average of some 268 per diem:--the Reading Rooms
having been kept open 291 days. The number of books returned to the
shelves of the General Library from the Reading Rooms was 119,093; to
those of the Royal Library, 11,252; to those of the Grenville Library,
387: to the closets in which the books are kept from day to day for
the use of the readers, 110,950:--making a total of 241,682, or 830
per diem. The number of volumes added to the Library amounts to 16,208
(including music, maps, and newspapers); of which 837 were presented,
11,793 purchased, and 3575 received by copyright. The Keeper of the
MSS. has been busy cleaning, cataloguing, and stamping. Eleven of the
valuable Cottonian MSS. on vellum (including the Chronicle of Roger de
Wendover, supposed to have been utterly destroyed), and two Old Royal
as well as five Cottonian on paper, all injured in the fire of 1731,
have been carefully repaired, inlaid, and rebound. The purchases
include a Psalter of the tenth century, formerly belonging to the
monastery of Stavelot, in the diocese of Liége,--'a remarkably fine
Greek MS.' containing the works ascribed to Dionysius the
Areopagite,--and the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzum, 'with scholia