In a collection numbering many hundreds of items, it is obviously impossible even to mention more than a very small proportion of the whole. We have spoken more particularly of such as have some personal or historical association connected with them; but on the score of antiquity alone, such a collection as this must be full of interest to thoughtful minds. Who can gaze upon these relics of the distant past without yearning to look back into the far-off times when all these things were new? What would we give to see, ‘in their habit as they lived,’ the men who fashioned these ancient timepieces, who drank from these crystal cups, and played tric-trac on these quaint backgammon boards? It needs but small imagination to call up Burns and his boon-companions carousing around the marble punch-bowl, with ‘just a wee drap in their e’e;’ but who shall name the knights who wore this iron gauntlet or that _repoussé_ breastplate? Their ‘bones are dust, their good swords rust,’ and yet here is part of their ancient panoply, well-nigh as perfect as when it left the armourer’s anvil four hundred years ago. Truly, they did good work, these mediæval artificers. The struggle for existence was not so intense; they did not hurry, as in these high-pressure days. Believing, with old George Herbert, that ‘we do it soon enough, if that we do be well,’ they wisely took their time, caring little to do quick work, so long as they did good work. And so their handiwork remains, _monumentum ære perennius_, a standing memorial of the good old time when ‘art was still religion,’ and labour was noble, because the craftsman put his heart into his work. ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY. _A NOVELETTE._ BY T. W. SPEIGHT. CHAPTER V. Five minutes later, Archie Ridsdale burst abruptly into the room. ‘Here’s a pretty go!’ he exclaimed. ‘Read this, please, dear Madame De Vigne,’ putting a telegram into her hand. Madame De Vigne took it and read: ‘“From Beck and Beck, Bedford Row, London.”’ ‘The guv’s lawyers,’ explained Archie. ‘“To Archibald Ridsdale, _Palatine Hotel_, Windermere.—We are instructed to request you to be at our office at ten A.M. to-morrow, to meet Sir William Ridsdale.”’ Mora looked at him as she gave him back the telegram. ‘The last train for town,’ said Archie, ‘leaves in twenty-five minutes. My man is cramming a few things into a bag, and I must start for the station at once.’ ‘Were you not aware that your father had arrived from the continent?’ ‘This is the first intimation I’ve had of it. You know how anxiously I’ve been expecting an answer to the second letter I wrote him nearly a month ago.’ ‘It would seem from the telegram that he prefers a personal interview.’ ‘I’m glad of it for some things. He has never refused me anything when I’ve had the chance of talking to him, and I don’t suppose he will refuse what I shall undoubtedly ask him to-morrow.’