A glance at a collection made by a musical amateur, during the seventeenth century, is sure to interest the musical antiquarian. The collector, Jean-Baptiste Dandeleu, a man of position and property in Brussels, died in the year 1667. Among his effects were the following instruments, the list of which is here literally transcribed as it was written at the time of his decease:--"Une orgue, que l'on dit avoir appertenu ‡ feu l'archiduq (de glorieuse mÈmoire), et couste trois milles florins.--Une espinette organisÈe.--Un coffre dans lequel y a neuf violes de gambes d'accord.--Encor une vieille viole de gambes.--Six corps de luths ou thiorbes dans des vieilles caisses.--Une mandore aussy dans sa caisse.--Une autre petit instrument en forme de poire avec le col rompu, ou decollÈ.--Une caisse doublÈe de baye rouge, dans la quelle y a six fluttes rares d'accord, qui sont de bouys, avec leurs escorces et noeuds.--Une cornette noire de musique.--Encore une fl˚te de bouys de la longueur d'environ un pied dans une caisse noire.--Trois caisses avec diverses fl˚tes de bouys grandes et petites d'accord, entre les quelles aucunes manquent.--Encor six fl˚tes semblables, que l'on croid estre celles qui manquent cy-dessus.--Encor une grande fl˚te, ou pippe noire.--Un violon dans sa caisse.--Un cistre aussy dans sa caisse.--Un instrument rare pour sa structure ‡ mËtre les livres des musiciens dessus pour un concert de musique.--Cincq petits lesseniers." Most of the instruments in this collection were undoubtedly manufactured about the period in which they are mentioned. However, as regards lutes and viols, preference was given already as early as the seventeenth century to old ones, if they were the work of good makers. Thus, the lutes of Laux Maler, dating from the beginning of the fifteenth century--"pittifull old, batter'd, crack'd things," as Thomas Mace calls them in his 'Musick's Monument,' London, 1676--fetched as much as a hundred pounds apiece. "I have often seen," Mace remarks, "lutes of three or four pounds price far more illustrious and taking to a common eye.... First know that an old lute is better than a new one." Thus also with viols: "We chiefly value old instruments before new; for by experience they are found to be far the best." The improvement by age he reasonably attributes to the circumstance that "the pores of the wood have a more and free liberty to move, stir, or secretly vibrate; by which means the air--which is the life of all things, both animate and inanimate--has a more free and easie recourse to pass and repass."