From this manuscript catalogue[193] to give long extracts were useless; it has afforded, however, some remarkable observations.  Every article was appraised, nothing was sold under the affixed price, but a slight competition sometimes seems to have raised the sum; and when the Council of State could not get the sum appraised, the gold and silver were sent to the Mint; and assuredly many fine works of art were valued by the ounce.  The names of the purchasers appear; they are usually English, but probably many were the agents for foreign courts.  The coins or medals were thrown promiscuously into drawers; one drawer having twenty-four medals, was valued at L2 10_s_.; another of twenty, at L1; another of twenty-four, at L1; and one drawer, containing forty-six silver coins with the box, was sold for L5.  On the whole the medals seem not to have been valued at much more than a shilling a-piece.  The appraiser was certainly no antiquary.

The king’s curiosities in the Tower Jewel-house generally fetched above the price fixed; the toys of art could please the unlettered minds that had no conception of its works.

The Temple of Jerusalem, made of ebony and amber, fetched L25.

A fountain of silver, for perfumed waters, artificially made to play of itself, sold for L30.

A chess-board, said to be Queen Elizabeth’s, inlaid with gold, silver, and pearls, L23.

A conjuring drum from Lapland, with an almanac cut on a piece of wood.

Several sections in silver of a Turkish galley, a Venetian gondola, an Indian canoe, and a first-rate man-of-war.

A Saxon king’s mace used in war, with a ball full of spikes, and the handle covered with gold plates, and enamelled, sold for L37 8_s_.

A gorget of massy gold, chased with the manner of a battle, weighing thirty-one ounces, at L3 10_s_. per ounce, was sent to the Mint.

A Roman shield of buff leather, covered with a plate of gold, finely chased with a Gorgon’s head, set round the rim with rubies, emeralds, turquoise stones, in number 137, L132 12_s_.

The pictures, taken from Whitehall, Windsor, Wimbledon, Greenwich, Hampton-Court, &c., exhibit, in number, an unparalleled collection.  By what standard they were valued, it would perhaps be difficult to conjecture; from L50 to L100 seems to have been the limits of the appraiser’s taste and imagination.  Some whose price is whimsically low may have been thus rated from a political feeling respecting the portrait of the person; there are, however, in this singular appraised catalogue two pictures, which were rated at, and sold for, the remarkable sums of one and of two thousand pounds.  The one was a sleeping Venus by Correggio, and the other a Madonna by Raphael.  There was also a picture by Julio Romano, called “The great piece of the Nativity,” at L500.  “The little Madonna and Christ,” by Raphael, at L800.  “The great Venus and Parde,” by Titian, at L600.  These seem to have been the