COURTEN, however, was not seriously molested. He established himself in London as the occupant of a large suite of chambers in Essex Court, Middle Temple. Here his collections were conveniently arranged, and they had space to expand. [Sidenote: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COURTEN MUSEUM.] Ere long we find mention of his Museum as filling ten rooms. Of the cost at which it had been gathered, there are now no adequate and authenticated materials for forming an estimate. But in those days the man who himself travelled on such a quest had a vast advantage over the man—howsoever better provided with what in the sixteenth century was called purse-ability—who sent other men to travel in his stead. In COURTEN’S days no dealers explored the Continent as an ordinary incident of their calling. The wreck, too, of such a fortune as that of the COURTENS was not contemptible. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MS. Sloane, 3962; 303.] When living in France (1677–79) our collector appears to have had an income of about fifteen hundred pounds a year, accruing from money invested in mortgages and in annuities. Although his chief collections were of his own gathering, he had many helpers. Among them was the future inheritor of his Museum, Hans SLOANE. In the year 1687, when about to set out on his voyage to the West Indies, SLOANE wrote to him: ‘I design to send you what is curious from the several islands we land at,—which will be most of our plantations.’ [Sidenote: Sloane to ‘Charlton;’ _Ib._, 308.] The writer was then a young man. Probably his acquaintance with COURTEN was at that time of not greater standing than eight or nine years, but he writes of the obligations COURTEN had then already conferred upon him: ‘I am extremely obliged to you, beyond any in the world.’[Sidenote: _Ibid._] The use this Collector made of his treasures was as liberal as the zeal with which he had amassed them was indefatigable. The friend whose correspondence has just been quoted said, after COURTEN’S death, that he was wont to show his Museum very freely, and to make his stores contribute, in various ways, ‘to the advancement of the glory of God, the honour and renown of the country, and the no small promotion of knowledge and the useful arts.’ Many notices are extant—scattered here and there in the _Diaries_ and among the correspondence of the day—of visits made to COURTEN’S Museum by men who were able to judge of what they saw. Those notices confirm the general statement made by SLOANE, and show the comprehensiveness of the collector’s tastes as well as the geniality of his character. Two such notices have an especial interest, which is not lessened by the fact that both of them are to be found in diaries that are well known. They record the visits to Essex Court of John EVELYN, and of John THORESBY. [Sidenote: EVELYN’S VISIT TO COURTEN’S MUSEUM.]