The time which works of good-samaritanism such as these left unoccupied was given to a vast series—or rather to a succession of series—of explorations which have had already a noble result, and which will yield more and more fruit for many a year to come. The scene of them embraced Mexico, the United States, British America, Denmark, and several Departments of Southern and Western France. Their period reached from 1860—when he had just entered the fiftieth year of his age—almost to the day of his lamented and sudden death in the May of 1865. His able and beloved friend and fellow-worker LARTET was with him in the Allier, when the fatal illness struck him, at the age of fifty-four. It will be pardoned me, I trust, if in this connection I quote, once again, those thoughtful words, out of the private note-book of Lord BACON, which I applied in a former chapter to another and more recent public loss—‘Princes, ... when men deserve crowns for their performances, do not crown them below, where the deeds are performed, but call them up. So doth GOD, by death.’ [Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE CHRISTY MUSEUM.] The little that need here be added as to the nature and extent of Mr. CHRISTY’S gift to the Public, will be best said in the words of the present able Curator of the Collection, Mr. A. W. FRANKS. But it should be first premised that the posthumous gift was only the continuation of a long series of gifts, which embraced the Museums, not of England alone, but those of Northern and of Southern Europe, and (as I think) some of those of America:— [Sidenote: ANCIENT EUROPE AND PART OF NORTH AMERICA.]