Lord ARUNDEL was not less ably served by the factors and representatives whom he employed in Italy, in Germany, and in the Netherlands. But the story is far too long to be told in detail. [Sidenote: MSS. at Norfolk House; printed, in Tierney’s _Arundel_, p. 489.] Their success in collecting choice pictures and other works of art was so conspicuous that when one of them had an interview with RUBENS at Antwerp, to give a commission from Lord ARUNDEL, the great painter—himself, it will be remembered, an eminent collector also—said to him: ‘I regard the Earl in the light of an evangelist to the world of art, and as the great supporter of our profession.’ In these artistic commissions and researches William TRUMBULL, Edward NORGATE, Sir John BOROUGH, and Sir Isaac WAKE, especially distinguished themselves. Their correspondence with Lord ARUNDEL is spread over a long series of years, and it abounds with curious illustrations of ‘the world of art,’ as it lived and moved in the earlier part of the seventeenth century. Among those entire collections which the Earl purchased in bulk, two are more particularly notable—the museum, namely, of Daniel NICE, and the library of the family of PIRCKHEIMER of Nuremberg. NICE’S Museum was especially rich in medals and gems. [Sidenote: Evelyn to Pepys; _Diary and Corresp._, vol. iii, p. 300.] If EVELYN’S information about the circumstances of that acquisition was accurate, it cost the Earl the sum—enormous, at that date—of ten thousand pounds. I cannot, however, but suspect that into that statement some error of figures has crept. The acquisition of the PIRCKHEIMER Library was made by the Earl himself, during his diplomatic mission into Germany on the affairs of the Palatinate. In this collection some of the choicest of the Arundelian MSS. which now enrich the British Museum were comprised. Its foundation had been laid more than a hundred and thirty years before the date of the Earl’s purchase. But part of the library of the first founder had passed into the possession of the City of Nuremberg. The collection which Lord ARUNDEL acquired was rich both in classical manuscripts and in the materials of mediæval history. The liberality with which these varied treasures, as they successively arrived in London, were made accessible to scholars was in harmony with the open-handedness by means of which they had been amassed. For a few years Arundel House was itself an anticipatory ‘British Museum.’ Then came the civil war. But the injury which the ARUNDEL collections sustained from the insecurity and commotions of a turbulent time is very insignificant, in comparison with that sustained, after the Restoration, through the ignorance and the indolence of an unworthy inheritor. [Sidenote: THE SUCCESSORS OF LORD ARUNDEL.]