The celebrated Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, was son of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel--the faithful and constant, who being persecuted for his religion, was suffered by Queen Elizabeth to languish in the Tower, where he died in 1595--and great-grandson of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, the accomplished nobleman who was beheaded in 1547 by "the Nero of the Tudor race." Thomas Howard was restored, as your readers know, to the earldom of Arundel by James I., and in the reign of that king and of Charles I., who held him in veneration, received other honours and employments, but was yet more distinguished by his munificent patronage of the arts and of learning. He is called "the only great subject of the northern parts, who by his conversation and great collections set a value" upon transalpine lands; and he began about 1614 to decorate with the precious and costly works of art which he had collected in Greece and in his beloved Italy, the gardens and galleries of his quaint old palace in London, called Arundel House. This mansion, or rather collection of buildings, the site of which had been taken from the see of Bath in the time of "Protector" Somerset, appears from Hollar's _Views_ (as is stated by Mr. Cunningham in his admirable _Handbook of London Past and Present_) to have comprised a range of irregular buildings, principally of red brick, erected at various periods, and combined without much regard to elegance or uniformity; although I find the earl is said to have been the first person who introduced uniformity in building, and to have been made chief commissioner for promoting this object in London. This famous, and once hospitable, mansion, stood between the gardens of Essex House on the east, and of Somerset (then Denmark) House on the west, its pleasure grounds coming down to the river, and commanding a fine view of the city as far as London Bridge, and of Westminster, and westward to Nine Elms. It is mentioned by Mr. Cunningham, that in this house Hollar drew his well-known view of London, as seen from the roof. The earl, of whose taste and munificence the Arundelian collections formed a noble monument, departed this life at Padua, on the 4th of October (or, as another account[1] says, the 26th September), 1646, in the sixty-first year of his age, having been two years before created Earl of Norfolk, in consideration of his lineal descent from Thomas de Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, a younger son of King Edward I., and was interred at Arundel. His will, dated at Dover, 3rd September, 1640, was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, and is printed in the _Howard Anecdotes_. His marbles, medals, statues, books, and pictures (he is said to have possessed "a larger number of Hans Holbein's works than any other person, and to have been the first nobleman who set a value on them in our nation"), formed at that period, says Sir Charles Young[2], one of the finest and most splendid collections in England. Many of the