John Forster was the last of the cultured, refined school of literary men, well trained by a rigorous course in all the schools--journalism, politics, biography, theatrical and artistic criticism. No man had a nicer taste in all matters of art. His judgment of a player, a poem, a book, a picture, was ever excellent, fortified by judicious remark and reasons that were a ready instruction. Most of all, he was one of the heartiest appreciators of _humour_, and of a good thing. I shall not forget, as a choice entertainment, how he one night read aloud to a small circle, Ben Jonson’s _Every Man in his Humour_, with such fine elocution and excellent dramatic power, principally bringing out the Kitely passages, which he himself had performed on some famous occasions. It was simply masterly. This same spirit directed him in the qualification of his taste for pictures, rare MSS., bindings, books, sketches, and the like. [Illustration: SIR JOHN SOANE’S MUSEUM.] On the opposite side of the Fields is the strange Soane Collection, given to the public under eccentric conditions, which seem contrived to discourage all access. Capriciously selected days, during certain months of the year, as capriciously selected, ensure that no one, without inquiry or trouble, can ascertain the proper time for a visit. Not more than twenty persons are to be admitted at a time, and none at all on rainy days. Such are, or at least were, the testator’s rules. Through this museum and the strange crowded miscellany which is packed into it, one must always wander with mixed feelings of astonishment, puzzle, amusement, pity, bewilderment and admiration. At times we might be looking at the choicest cabinets of a dainty collection, so elegant and precious are the things collected; at another, at the heterogeneous gathering found in a marine dealer’s shop. This is the secret of the extraordinary feeling as we go from room to room. It is a museum in a private house. Every inch of space, every corner, every bit of wall is literally “stuck over” with scraps and odds and ends of sculpture and fragments. All seem to have been as fish to the owner’s net. Medals, coins, casts, drawings, engravings, models in cork and in wood, books, paintings, broken bits of sculpture, stained glass, sarcophagi, “cinerary urns,” bronzes, gems, Etruscan vases, MSS., busts, with a hundred oddities, are all gathered into the heterogeneous mass. This variety is what gives the collection its charm, everything is so conveniently placed under the eye: a contrast to the _ennui_ of wandering through vast halls, as we have to do in great public museums, where you _stare_ but do not look; while there is such an air of snugness, that the whole has a charm of its own, not to say fascination. You walk through a private house. Some of the pictures have the highest merit, such as Hogarth’s fine series of the “Election,” which are interesting as having been in the possession of Garrick, and purchased at Mrs.