"Sir John gave £140 for these Hogarths," says the Chief Butler, indicating the well-known _Rake_ series, and speaking with a degree of intimacy of "Sir John" that positively startled me, till I remembered that the gentleman in question died some sixty years ago. "Oh, er, very Hogarthian!" I remark somewhat bashfully, for indeed the pictures are hardly all of them pleasing to the uninitiated. "I wonder that Sir John could like to live with them!" "Yes, indeed! some of them _are_ very gross," says the Mentor; and I almost wish that I had held my peace. The panels of the mysterious room that contains the Hogarths afford a wonderful example of how to hang many pictures in a limited space. They open at the touch of a spring, disclosing not only inner walls of pictures, but also their own inner sides similarly adorned. Through the walls thus magically opened a glimpse is obtained of a little basement room called "The Monk's Parloir," adorned with carving and statuary. Sir John Soane was, of course, the architect of the existing Bank of England, and interesting architectural drawings, beside innumerable imaginary palaces by him, abound in the museum. The chief treasure of the collection, the hieroglyphic-covered alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I., father of the great Rameses, lies in the basement; which is, indeed, entirely filled with works of "antiquity and virtue"; the "backs" and basements of three adjoining houses being utilised for the required space. To judge from the wide variety among the objects collected, Sir John Soane must have been a man of cosmopolitan tastes, and possessed of an interesting personality. Perhaps he found some comfort in art for the tragedies of his later life; for his two sons (whose quaint portraits, in youthful blue and silver, are to be seen in the museum) died in his lifetime. At any rate, that Sir John was a man of some humour seems to be sufficiently attested by the curious _post-mortem_ joke that he perpetrated on his trustees! For, when leaving his treasures to the nation, and specifying especially that the house was to be left precisely as he had lived in it, he appended to his will three codicils, directing that three mysterious sealed cupboards in his museum-house should not be opened till respectively thirty, fifty, and sixty years after his death! This was accordingly done, expectation rising higher in each decade; and lo! on each occasion nothing was found but a few worthless papers, relating either to antiquated accounts, or to still more antiquated family disagreements!