copied, one of the finest examples of such repetition being the well-known work at Montagu House by Mrs. Ross, a portrait of the Duke of Monmouth, but there is no example known to us of an eighteenth-century painter copying the work of Cooper with the exception or this one, if Walpole's statement is correct. Another curious circumstance about the inscription is that Walpole has made an error in the name. It was not Charles but Thomas Lyttelton who married Christian Temple. She was the daughter of Sir Richard Temple of Stowe, and the heir of Viscount Cobham; thus it was through her that the Viscounty and Barony of Cobham came to the family. As we have already written very fully in another place, we are quite unable to accept the series of unfinished miniatures at the Victoria and Albert Museum as being the work of Cooper. There is no external evidence whatever in favour of the tradition. They are painted on a very smooth cardboard, quite a different material to that used by Cooper, and on the back of one of the portraits is an inscription in the same handwriting as is the one on the copy by Mrs. Ross at Montagu House, and apparently signed by the same person. It is quite possible that in the collection the portrait of Lord Brooke (which was not contained in the pocket-book when the original purchase was made) may be a genuine work by Cooper, very likely acquired by Mrs. Ross, as a guide for her own work, but all the other portraits are, we are convinced, the work of this clever copyist, and must not be attributed to the master himself. In the course of our investigations concerning a missing portrait by Cooper, representing the Countess of Exeter, we came upon two interesting letters in the Duke of Rutland's collection at Belvoir Castle, which proved that this portrait was never finished. On the 9th April, 1672, Mr. Charles Manners wrote to Lord Roos in the following terms:--"I haesten on Mr. Cooper all I can to the finishing of my Lady Exester's picture, and hee will surely doe it, God willing; but at the present the King and the Duke have put severall things into his hands which take him off from all else." Then again, on the 4th May, Mr. Manners wrote again to Lord Roos respecting the same portrait, and he then stated that although Mr. Cooper had promised "with all imaginable respect and kindeness to finish it out of hand, and actually begun it, he just then fell dangerously sicke, and confyned to his bed, and I very much feare hee cannot possibly outlive three days." As a matter of fact, Cooper did not live a day after this letter had been sent, for from Mary Beale's diary we have the information that he died on the 5th May, the diarist writing as follows:--"Sunday, May 5th, 1672, Mr. Samuel Cooper, the most famous limner of the world for a face, dyed." The two letters from which these quotations are taken are to be found in facsimile in the catalogue of Mr. Pierpont Morgan's collection of miniatures. Other odd facts