Until the year 1741, a few months after his resignation of the chair of the Royal Society on the score of old age, Sir Hans SLOANE continued to live chiefly in London; though often removing, for part of the summer months, to his Manor House in the then charming suburb of Chelsea. He had purchased that valuable manor, from the family of Cheyne, in 1714. The fine old House abounded in historical recollections and amongst them, as most readers will remember, in associations connected with the memory of Sir Thomas MORE. It had the additional attraction of a large and beautiful garden, close to that other garden in which the now Lord of the Manor had pursued, with all the energies of youth, the study of botany. One of his earliest acts of lordship had been a graceful gift to the Company of Apothecaries, of the freehold in the land of which till then they had been tenants. In 1741 he transferred his Museum and Library from Bloomsbury to Chelsea. His former house—situated in Great Russell Street, near the corner of what is now Bloomsbury Square—had been capacious, but the new one admitted of a greatly improved arrangement and display of the collections. [Sidenote: A ROYAL VISIT TO THE SLOANE MUSEUM AT CHELSEA.] The state and character of the Sloane Museum, in the fullness to which the collector had brought it during these latest years of his life, can scarcely be exemplified better than in a contemporary account of a visit which was paid to the Manor House at Chelsea by the Prince and Princess of Wales, in the year 1748. I quote it, almost verbally, from the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of that year, but with some unimportant omissions. [Sidenote: G. M., vol. xviii, pp. 301, 302. (July, 1748.)] At that date, the Manor House formed a square of above a hundred feet on each side, enclosing a court. Three of the principal rooms were, on the occasion of this royal visit, filled successively—as the visitors passed from one room into another—with the finest portions of the collections in its most portable departments. The minerals were first shown. The tables were spread with drawers filled with all sorts of precious stones in their natural beds, as they are found in the earth, except the first table, which contained stones found in animals, such as pearls, bezoars, and the like. Emeralds, topazes, amethysts, sapphires, garnets, rubies, diamonds, ... with magnificent vessels of cornelian, onyx, sardonyx and jasper, delighted the eye, says the attendant describer, and raised the mind to praise the great Creator of all things.