The building where so many historical rarities are to be found was once the Chapel of the House of Converts (the converts being Christianised Jews), and later the Chapel of the Rolls. It is now desanctified, and you may keep on your hat, as those Jews would have done before the proselytiser got them; but certain signs of the old holiness remain, such as stained-glass windows and two or three very fine tombs. Chief of these tombs is that of Dr. John Young, Master of the Rolls early in the sixteenth century, whose monument was designed by the Florentine sculptor, Torrigiano.

The museum would be called historical first and foremost, but any one interested in calligraphy might be pardoned if he claimed that the collection of illustrious signatures to be seen there is its chief glory. These signatures naturally comprise a large number of the most famous English rulers and ministers, but other great names are found too, and not a few foreigners. The actual writing of William Shakespeare may be scrutinised. At least, according to the catalogue, the signature is that of the Bard; -but the stranger unprepared with information would have to be forgiven if he maintained that the name written is obviously "Willie Asquith." Again, Napoleon, one of whose documents is displayed in another part of the room, has clearly signed himself "Rosebery." Nelson's writing, both before he lost his right arm and afterwards, may be studied. In a letter (left-handed) to Lord Hobart, written on the Victory, at sea, January 4, 1804, "My heart," he says, "is warm, my head is firm, but my body is unequal to my wishes. I am visibly shook, but as long as I can hold out I shall never abandon my truly honourable post."

Neither good writing nor good spelling is prominent in this museum. Perhaps the worst spelling of all is that of Mary Queen of Scots, who ends an appeal to Cecil with these sentences: "I pray God to mouve the quin's hert to consider off me or wors com. I pray you let my harti commendations be ten in als good pert to your bedfalou, as I wische her wilingli to doe weil and be me frind." Chaucer, however, as usual, runs the Quin of Scots very close. Spelling remained lax for many years. Even John Milton, wishing to recommend Andrew Marvell to a post, could get no nearer his name than Mr. Marvile. The other Quin, Elizabeth, is well represented. We find the Sultan of Turkey, Amurath III, addressing her, as "refulgent with splendour and glory, most sapient princess of the magnanimous followers of Jesus, most serene controller of all the affairs and business of the people and family of the Nazarenes, most grateful rain-cloud, sweetest fount of splendour and honour." In 1577 she signs a warrant for the delivery to Frobisher of some prisoners "condemned or like to be condemned to death" to "make a viage by the seas for the discovery of new countryes." And then we find poor Leicester on his death-bed asking for a kind smile again : "being the chifest thing in this world I doe pray for, for hir to have good health and longe life. . . . I humbly kyss your foote." Essex, another favourite in disgrace, also has his appeal: "Hast, paper, to that happy presence whence only unhappy I am banished. Kiss thatt fayre correcting hand which layes new plasters to my lighter hurtes, butt to my greatest wooed applyeth nothing." But the most poignant letter of all is that scribbled by Sir Philip Sidney in hospital at Arnheim, where he died a few days later from a wound received in the battle of Zutphen.

THE MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH ST. JOHN AND ST. CATHERINE AFTER THE PICTURE BY TITIAN IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY

The note, in Latin, is to Jaen Wyer, and runs thus in English: "Come, my Weier, come. I am in danger of my life, and I want you here. Neither living nor dead shall I be ungrateful. I can write no more, but I earnestly pray you to make haste. Farewell. At Arnem. Yours, Ph. Sidney."

Other notable exhibits and it must be remembered that all these things are curiosities only in a secondary way, their presence in the Record Office being due to their legal or official character are the actual "Scrap of Paper" of which so much was heard early in the war; various Gunpowder Plot documents ; Defoe's Apology; the Warrant for Shakespeare and others to be King's Players ; a drawing illustrating the murder of Darnley ; a letter from Laud to Charles I with "You ar right" written by Charles in the margin; and a most pregnant document from the archives of the British Legation in Tuscany, dated March 24, 1822, in which three friends do their best to explain away a recent fracas in Pisa. Their names are Byron, Shelley and Trelawny.

There are also a number of very fine seals, particularly that of Francis the First of France, and a little gold Papal bulla. Among other items that testify to the catholicity of the collection is the census paper of Buckingham Palace when the people were numbered in 1851. In this her Majesty is described as "Wife," and the Prince Consort as "Head." American visitors should not miss a "mappe of a part of Hudson's or the North River and Rareton River, which have their outlett into the sea of Sandy Hoocke," 1700, which will show them what the city of New York looked like before it was the city v of anything. Where baseball is now played the sport, it seems, used to be shooting bears from behind with a bow and arrow. There is also a letter from George Washington, and a very good example of a Round Robin.

But perhaps the exhibit which will give most comfort of all is an assortment of Rolls. The visitor is thus enabled to realise, probably for the first time, what it is that the Master of the Rolls is master of.

To Lincoln's Inn Fields, which is now lawyers' offices and a public playing ground, but was once a Berkeley Square, we come by way of the Inn. On the north and south sides the rebuilders have already set their mark; but the west side, although the wave of reform that flung up Kingsway and Aldwych washes its very roots, is still standing, much as it was in the great days of the seventeenth century, except that what were then mansions of the great are now rookeries of the Law. No. 59 and 60, for example, with its two magnificent brick pillars, was built by Inigo Jones for the Earl of Lindsay. Inside are a few traces of its original splendours. The corner house, now No. 67, with the cloisters, was Newcastle House (previously Powis House), the residence of the great Duke of Newcastle. Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, where Pepys used to be so vastly amused (going there so often as to make Mrs. Pepys "as mad as the devil") was on a site now covered by the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, to which the curious are admitted by order. Not for me are physiological whims and treasures of anatomy preserved in spirits of wine; rather would I stay outside and reflect on the first night of Congreve's "Love for Love" on April 30, 1695, with Mrs. Brace-girdle as Angelica, or of the premiere of "The Beggar's Opera," thirty and more years later, with Lavinia Fenton so bewitching as Polly Peachum that she carried by storm the heart of the Duke of Bolton and became his Duchess. A little while ago I was reflecting that barbarism, although now, of course, extinct, is yet very recent ; but to dip however casually into the history of London is to be continually reminded that for the most part nothing changes. The papers are still rarely without news of the marriages of noblemen to actresses.

On the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields is the Soane Museum, a curious medley of odds and ends with a few priceless things among them and a very capricious system of throwing open its doors. One must, however, visit it, for otherwise one would never see Hogarth's delicately coloured election series or "The Rake's Progress" in the original, and since in two or three of the subsidiary figures of "The Humours of an Election Entertainment" he comes nearer Jan Steen than in any of his work this would be a pity ; and one would never see Canaletto's fine painting of the Grand Canal better than any of that master's work at the Wallace Collection, I think; nor Giulio Clovio's illuminations to St. Paul's Epistles ; nor a very interesting Watteau ; nor several quaint missals, among them one whence the Bastard of Bourbon got his religion; nor a MS. of Lamb's Margaret of Newcastle; nor the MS. of Tasso's "Gerusalemme Liberates"; nor two of Reynolds' sketch books ; nor many exquisite cameos and intaglios; nor two fine Turners; nor Christopher Wren's watch; nor the silver pistol which Peter the Great ravished from a Turkish Bey; nor paintings on silk by Labelle, little delicate trifles as pretty as Baxter prints ; nor enough broken pieces of statuary gargoyles, busts, capitals, and so forth to build a street of grottoes ; nor the famous alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I, King of Egypt about 1370 B.c.