It is recorded in vol. li. of the same Diary (p. 187) that the old series of portraits which were painted on the wall of the Picture Gallery was renewed in November of this year. These portraits, amounting in number to about 222, ran round the gallery, immediately under the roof; many of them were fancy-heads of ancient philosophers and writers, but besides these there were some real portraits of English writers and divines, up to the time of James I. A list of the whole series, as well as of the oil paintings in the Gallery, was printed by Hearne together with his _Letter containing an Account of some Antiquities between Windsor and Oxford_. Of the renovation of the wall-paintings he thus speaks in his preface to _Rossi Historia Regum Angliæ_ (1716): 'Non possim quin bibliothecæ Bodleianæ Curatores laudem, qui pictori Academico [_i.e._ Wildgoose] in mandatis dederunt, ut veteres effigies renovet nitorique pristino restituat: quippe quas eo pluris æstimendas esse censeo, quod eas in galeria depingendas jusserit ipse Bodleius, Loci Genius.' When the Gallery was re-roofed in 1831, all these paintings were, however, removed [_see_ p. 15]. About the end of this year the Arundel Marbles, which, strange to say, had been exposed to the open air within the quadrangle of the Schools ever since they were given to the University, were removed into one of the rooms on the ground-floor, where they still remain. It was said that they had suffered more 'since they were exposed to our air, than they did in many hundred years before they came into it[185].' But the influence of the air was not all they had to contend against, for Hearne tells us that the defacing of the Marble Chronicle (of which there are portions that were read by Selden, which now can no longer be read at all) and some others, was owing not merely to exposure to the weather, but 'to the abuses of children who are continually playing in the area, and of other ignorant persons[186].' [185] _Letters by Eminent Persons_, 1813, vol. i. p. 297. [186] _Letters by Eminent Persons_, 1813, vol. i. p. 204. A.D. 1715.