As the Royal Library was, in a certain degree, a Public Collection before the foundation of the Museum, so also was the Arundelian Library of Manuscripts. It did not become part of the British Museum until nearly eighty years after the amalgamation of the Cottonian, Harleian, Sloanian, and Royal Collections into one integral body. But the munificent Earl who formed it had often made it public, for the use of scholars, in his own lifetime. One or two of his descendants allowed it to fall into neglect. Before it left old Arundel House, in the Strand, it was exposed, more than once, to loss by petty thefts. But when, by another descendant, the injury was repaired, and the still choice collection given—at the earnest entreaty of another of our English worthies, John EVELYN—to the Royal Society, the Arundelian MSS., like the Library at Saint James’ Palace, became (so far as a circle of literary men and of the cultivators of scientific inquiry were concerned) a public possession. Many of the Arundelian marbles had also become—by other acts of munificence worthy of the time-honoured name of HOWARD—to the Public at large, and without restriction, ‘things of beauty,’ and ‘joys for ever.’ Others of them, indeed, are—even in these days—shut up at Wilton with somewhat of a narrow jealousy of the undistinguished multitude. But, by the liberality of the Dukes of MARLBOROUGH, the choice gems gathered by the Earl of ARUNDEL during his long travels on the Continent, and his widespread researches throughout the world, have long been made available to public enjoyment, in more ways than one. The varied narrative of that famous Collector’s life may, perhaps, not unfitly be placed next after that of the best of the Stuart princes. ARUNDEL, like HENRY, was the friend of Sir Robert COTTON, and was proud of that distinction.