I next went to the Museum, which contains a very heterogeneous mixture of things. On the staircase as you enter is a picture of the battle of Pavia, in which the principal figures are portraits painted at the time, as is expressed on the canvass. It is precisely in the style of the old miniatures, and very interesting for the accuracy of the dresses and armour: under it is the inscription "Comen les gens de Lempereur deffirent les francoys en lan 1525." Portraits of Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Richelieu also adorn the staircase. Under them was that of Tradescant, a noted gardener of Charles the First, from which it was impossible to tear his colleague R---- away; he looked at the picture with a sort of protecting air, and was specially delighted with a garland of mulberries and cucumbers which picturesquely surrounded this father of gardeners. The most interesting thing in the picture, to me, was the portrait of a strange large bird; worthy of the Arabian Nights, called Dodo, which belonged to the gardener when alive, and whose like has never been seen in these parts since. As a proof that this is no fable, they showed us the genuine head and beak--wonderfully odd. In the collection of natural history were a great many rare parrots, and a curious bird with spikes on its wings, with which it spears fish as with a lance. The diminutive warrior, who is only six inches high, looks uncommonly fierce and bold; he is like a miniature crane, only much more cunning and pugnacious. Here is the duck-billed platypus, that strange animal from New Holland. The productions of that part of the globe are so unlike those of all the others, that they almost make one imagine it belongs to another era of creation, or that it dropped on our earth from some wandering star. The colours of a picture made of humming-bird's feathers seemed something unearthly. Equally curious was a bas-relief of a knight in splendid gold-green armour made of beetles' wings. Our modern knights might be very handsomely represented in steel-blue armour, made from the wings of the dung-beetle. I cannot attempt to give you an inventory of the cabinet of curiosities; I confined myself, as I always do, to what struck me, which was not always the most celebrated;--a jewelled glove of Henry the Eighth's;--an autograph letter of Queen Elizabeth's to Lord Burleigh, beautifully written;--a pretty riding-cloak and shoe of the Maiden Queen, which latter proves the extreme beauty of her foot; lastly, her watch, with a tasteful chain consisting of five medallions in a row, each containing hair of a different colour--probably of her chief favourites. Far more curious and sacred is a medallion with a portrait rudely executed in mosaic, and an inscription signifying that it belonged to the great Alfred. This precious relic was found ten years ago in ploughing a field in the island of Athelney, where Alfred lay hidden from the Danes.