THE VIRGIN OF THE SUN



INTRODUCTORY

There are some who find great interest, and even consolation, amid the
worries and anxieties of life in the collection of relics of the past,
drift or long-sunk treasures that the sea of time has washed up upon our
modern shore.

The great collectors are not of this class. Having large sums at their
disposal, these acquire any rarity that comes upon the market and add
it to their store which in due course, perhaps immediately upon their
deaths, also will be put upon the market and pass to the possession of
other connoisseurs. Nor are the dealers who buy to sell again and thus
grow wealthy. Nor are the agents of museums in many lands, who purchase
for the national benefit things that are gathered together in certain
great public buildings which perhaps, some day, though the thought
makes one shiver, will be looted or given to the flames by enemies or by
furious, thieving mobs.

Those that this Editor has in mind, from one of whom indeed he obtained
the history printed in these pages, belong to a quite different
category, men of small means often, who collect old things, for the most
part at out-of-the-way sales or privately, because they love them, and
sometimes sell them again because they must. Frequently these old things
appeal, not because of any intrinsic value that they may have, not