Digitised Manuscripts and Books

Big hen, po articles he bought the history of Nis country, which be Loved and of his House of which he was justly proud. Though he we. J occasionally deviated into other lines , as when he bought a @O < ~ 99 M miniature picture by Raphael for the fabulous price of twenty is ) I p five thousand pounds from the Dudley collection , as a rule he stricted himself to works of French artists and works bearing on French subjects . No exception can be taken to the refinement of Lord Hertford's taste , but the Duc d'Aumales was a refined mind, and the mind of a scholar to boot. The only books that Lord Hertford bequeathed to Sir Richard Waliace were “of a style that shail be wmameless, and ne at once consigned them to oblivion ; the Duc d'Aumale founded a library than which there is no more complete, more inter- estin; or more valuable extant. At whatever epoch Lord Hertford might have lived he ¢ould mever have -been “other than .what he’ was .- an idle, profligate, spoilt child of fortune. Had the Duc d'Aumale been born in the halcyon days of France, he would not only have been a worthy heir of the Condés, but he x 7 at au annAan an hea 1931773 ~ that 4 ye yath on ne would have added to the laursis cna were gathered by the great Prince of that name . We must, however, read hustery as it “has been enacted, and - th nay deplore its strange and often unaccountable whims nd “Gdevetopments, We must: accent the facts .as they are The world has been all the poorer for the enforced inactivity of the Duc d'Aumale, but those who had the advantage of his acquaintance will always gratefully