art, ninety pounds; and a fine collection of Scots Ballads and
Broadsides, one hundred and thirty in number, issued between 1669 and
1730, many of great rarity, one hundred and thirty-three pounds. Laing
left a collection of drawings to the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting,
of which he had been elected Honorary Professor of Ancient History and
Antiquities in 1856. His prints were sold by Sotheby, Wilkinson and
Hodge on the 21st of February 1880, in two hundred and thirteen lots,
and realised two hundred and seventy pounds, thirteen shillings.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 98: _Dictionary of National Biography._]

BERTRAM, FOURTH EARL OF ASHBURNHAM, 1797-1878

Bertram, fourth Earl of Ashburnham, who was born on the 23rd of November
1797, and died on the 22nd of June 1878, was one of the greatest and
most ardent of English book-collectors. He developed a taste for
book-buying at a very early age. It is said that his first purchase was
made in 1814, when, a boy at Westminster School, he bought a copy of the
_Secretes_ of Albertus Magnus for eighteenpence at Ginger's well-known
shop in Great College Street, and at the time of his death he had
amassed a library which ranked among the first in the kingdom.
Magnificent as was his collection of printed books, the library was even
still more notable for the manuscripts it contained, which amounted to
nearly four thousand, and were remarkable for their value and
importance. In addition to those which he bought separately, Lord
Ashburnham acquired in 1847 the manuscripts of Count Guglielmo Libri for
eight thousand pounds, and in 1849 he purchased the Stowe manuscripts
for the same sum, and those of Jean Barrois for six thousand pounds.
Five years after the death of Lord Ashburnham, his successor, the
present Earl, offered the manuscripts, for one hundred and sixty
thousand pounds, to the Trustees of the British Museum, who were
anxious to purchase them for that sum. The Chancellor of the Exchequer,
however, declined to find the money for the entire collection, but the
Stowe manuscripts were acquired by the Government for forty-five
thousand pounds, and divided between the British Museum and the library
of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. To the latter institution were
given the Irish manuscripts and certain volumes specially relating to
Ireland. It had long been suspected that many of the manuscripts in the
Libri and Barrois collections had been abstracted from French and