Come! sober scholar, gay _flaneur_, or ignoramus (it is all the same), rest, and drink in the fascinations of these armies of priceless china, silver, glass, pictures, and furniture which shine, and glint, and sparkle, and peep, in tantalising invitation! Here are rare editions: historic relics: miniatures, lace, statuary--in short, a banquet to suit all tastes; and here, more particularly, in the least prominent position, is a unique collection of musical instruments, hiding their heads in remoteness. It is regrettable that many of these interesting relics of the past are placed in such dark corners that a good deal of nose-flattening and eye-straining is necessary to see them at all. Still, one is well rewarded for any slight personal inconvenience sustained in viewing them, for, apart from their special interest, do they not stand before us as the mute historians of the past? Look at this old virginal, encased in what was once rich red velvet, but now faded and worn with the touch of many a vanished hand! Behold those keys, brown with age! Yet these were once white and responsive to the taper fingers of that most consummate diplomatist, Queen Bess. Surely it was just here, on this side, that my Lord of Leicester stood bending his proud head to eagerly plead an answer to his oft-repeated suit! Or perhaps it was impulsive Essex plucked and twitched the thing, while he sued for the pardon of an elderly, capricious coquette! A little to the left of the historic virginal is the harp of the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, brave owner of that empty title, _Reine de France_. What has been the history of the graceful thing since that short space of calm when its tones resounded in the Queen’s _Salon_ at the Tuileries? Was it also dragged after the poor lady by a cruel infuriated mob, like the harp of her friend, Mademoiselle de Lamballe? Who knows! The tumbrels seem to rumble by us as we gaze, and the sickening refrain: “Madame Veto avait promis De faire égorger tout Paris; Mais son coup a manqué Grâce à nos canonniers. Dansans la Carmagnole Vive le son, Vive le son, Dansans la Carmagnole Vive le son du canon” rings in our ears. Close beside this melancholy relic is the cheering cast of Brian Borroimbe’s harp, which was played on by that versatile King of Ireland during the eleventh century. A little farther--in an obscure corner--is the fiddle said to have belonged to James I. of England, and almost beneath it is a cast of the beautifully carved violin which is generally supposed to have been given to the Earl of Leicester by Queen Elizabeth. Facing this is Handel’s harpsichord, a plain, workmanlike little instrument of neutral tint, and, and--can it be? or--is it only the shadow of that pillar there that deceives us into imagining that we see a misty outlined figure near the keyboard?