The Petitioners proceed to state that their most earnest wishes are accomplished by seeing a Library, famed throughout Europe, with the generous gifts of Major EDWARDS annexed thereto, placed out of all further dangers from neglect, and that they rejoice to perceive that the Museum of their own Founder is about to be enlarged by other rare and valuable collections. ‘We are,’ say they, ‘fully persuaded that an edifice raised upon such a stately plan will, by degrees, be stored with benefactions and become a common Cabinet for preserving with safety all curiosities and whatsoever is choice or excellent in its kind. Moreover, being a new institution for the service of the learned world it will be an honour to the Nation, an ornament long wanted in this great city, and a distinguished event in the history of our times.’ [Sidenote: Heretofore, p. 3.] Then follows the passage which I have prefixed, by way of motto, to this first division of the volume now in the reader’s hands. When these Petitioners went on to state to Parliament that ‘no expression of gratitude can be too great ... for doing honour to the memory of Sir Robert COTTON,’ their assertion gave rise to no utterance of hostile feeling. [Sidenote: RECENT CHARGES AGAINST THE CHARACTER AND FAME OF SIR R. COTTON.] They were not even charged with undue laudation of their ancestor. People who at that time troubled themselves to think of such matters at all, were agreed in regarding Sir Robert COTTON as unquestionably one of the worthies of England. Nowadays—as I have had occasion to show already—there are many gainsayers. A distinguished historian (Mr. GARDINER) asperses COTTON’S character both for statesmanship and for truthfulness; whilst a distinguished archæologist (Mr. BREWER) charges him with embezzling records. The first charge has been partly met, in these pages, by the simple apposition and collation of contemporary evidence. The reader has his choice between the cumulative testimony of several English peers and statesmen; and the unsupported testimony of one foreign diplomatist, who made it his boast to be the enemy of Englishmen, and whose hostility was graduated in tolerably exact accordance with the qualities and the deeds which have made England proud of them. The home witnesses gave their testimony whilst the events were still fresh in men’s minds. They gave it in broad daylight, and with open doors. The foreign witness put his evidence into a secret dispatch, to be seen by no human eye, out of the Spanish Cabinet, until our own historian disinterred it, at Simancas, two centuries and a half after date. Nor is this quite all.