Fifteen or twenty years ago the Crown-room, as it is called, was opened by certain Commissioners, under authority of a sign-manual. They saw the fatal chest, strewed with the dust of an hundred years, about 6 inches thick; a coating of like thickness lay on the floor; and I have heard the late President Blair say that the uniform and level appearance of the dust warranted them to believe that the chest, if opened at all after 1707, must have been violated within a short time of that date, since, had it been opened at a later period, the dust accumulated on the lid, and displaced at opening it, must have been lying around the chest. But the Commissioners did not think that their warrant entitled them to force this chest, for which no keys could be found, especially as their warrant only entitled them to search for records - not for crowns and sceptres.' *

And again:

'The extreme solemnity of opening sealed doors of oak and iron, and finally breaking open a chest which had been shut since March 7, 1707, about a hundred and eleven years, gave a sort of interest to our researches which I can hardly express to you, and it would be very difficult to describe the intense eagerness with which we watched the rising of the lid of the chest, and the progress of the workmen in breaking it open, which was neither an easy nor a speedy task. It sounded very hollow when they worked on it with their tools, and I began to lean to your faction of the Little Faiths.' *

* Letter to J. B. S. Merritt, Esq., M.P., Rokeby. Edinburgh, January 14, 1818.

It turned out, however, that the Little Faiths were wrong. The completion of the workmen's task showed the regalia in its ancient resting-place - a cause of infinite satisfaction, if not actual inspiration, to the great novelist.

A friend of mine, while travelling in Suffolk, was taken by the vicar of a small parish into a cottage where stood an elaborately-carved sideboard, with its doors hinged on with leathern bands and straps of string. It was thickly covered with paint, but it had evidently at one time been a fine piece, and its decorative qualities induced my friend to purchase it. The acquisition of the cupboard was supplemented by the information that it came from 't'owd hall when squire was sold up in grandfather's time and was kep'in remembrance of squire.'It was not noticed at the time of purchase, but an after-examination discovered some oblong depressions in the plain surface of the wood suggestive of the disappearance of inlay. An expert restorer was set to work to 'pickle'the cupboard. The removal of the first coat of chocolate paint revealed a layer of blue, which in its turn gave place to white, and so on. In all six coats of paint of various hues were removed, with the result that a magnificently-carved and inlaid cupboard of true Elizabethan character was laid bare. I may add that this process of 'stripping,'as it is termed, cost the purchaser at least four times what he expended on the purchase of the article.

Very few, indeed, of the original pieces of inlay were missing.

* Letter to J. W. Croker, Esq., M.P., etc., Admiralty, London. Edinburgh, February 4, 1818.

Some fifteenth-century panels of Flamboyant design that I know of, and carved with the shields bearing the arms of France Modern and a collateral branch of the royal house, were discovered by an architect doing-duty as doors of a rabbit-hutch. These panels, two of which bear indications of supporting a lock, had evidently formed part of a chest of fifteenth-century work which had once been one of the finest of its kind in France. It would not be impossible to reconstruct the entire chest from these fragments by careful reference to the many similar and complete examples remaining in some of the French museums.

The degraded state to which fine specimens of antique furniture can descend may be instanced by reference to the magnificent, but deplorably ruinous, collection at Rye House. The old red-brick gatehouse of the mansion which formerly stood there is still in existence, and in it are gathered together a most wonderful collection of miscellaneous antiquities, tapestry, jack-boots, Elizabethan and Jacobean cabinets of rare form, in the last stage to which damp, dilapidation, worm and moth could possibly bring them short of utter ruin.

A perhaps unique relic of seventeenth-century domestic economy may be seen there in the shape of a large board painted with a very precise set of regulations respecting decorum and behaviour in the servants' hall. The whole collection exhibits a sad instance of the strange vicissitudes through which furniture which once did duty in the great halls of the country can pass.

In the summer of 1890 I was enjoying, with two friends, a short visit to one of the least-explored parts of Surrey, when, calling at a solitary wayside cottage in the hope of getting refreshment, I noticed through the half-open door a finely-designed Court cupboard of large dimensions. The cottage was verging on dilapidation, and the ceiling of the living-room had sagged so much that its cross-beam actually rested on the top of the cupboard, which was manifestly breaking down under the pressure. I attempted to open negotiations for the purchase of this ill-used relic, but without effect. The woman did not value it, but her reason for declining to part with the cupboard was that, 'if once removed, the house might fall down'

There is little doubt that the removal of furniture of this description to mean cottages for which it was never intended mainly occurred during the Georgian period. Mahogany and painted white wood furniture was then in vogue; indeed, to such a point did this change in taste advance that many of our most precious pieces of carved oak were carefully covered with successive coats of white or 'duck's-egg 'colour in order to follow the fashion. Those who could afford to have a complete outfit of the new style of furniture had it, dispersing their despised oak. Those, on the other hand, who could not supplied the need as best might be with the assistance of the paint-pot.

Somewhere in the fifties, a brother artist was visiting, with a party of friends, the village of Bracciano, near Rome. The ancient castle at this place, which at that time resembled in some ways the Tower of London, with six flanking towers, is celebrated as the place which Sir Walter Scott, when visiting the Eternal City, was especially desirous of seeing, as a romantic survival of medievalism thoroughly in accordance with his tastes.* Immediately preceding the arrival of my artist friend, who travelled the road some twenty years after Scott, a most dramatic discovery had been made, bringing to mind the well-known incident of the same nature which occurred at Minster Lovell, in Oxfordshire, early in the eighteenth century. The workmen who were employed in pulling down a portion of the castle of Bracciano came unawares upon a secret chamber in which was sitting the figure of a man clothed in an antique medieval costume with his head reclining upon an ancient worm-eaten table. The chamber had been completely walled up with the exception of a very small 'squint,'or narrow aperture, which, however, was filled with thick, coarse glass.

* 'He was struck with the sombre appearance of the Gothic towers, built with the black lava which had once formed the pavement of the Roman road, and which adds much to its frowning magnificence. In the interior he could not but be pleased with the grand suite of state apartments, all yet habitable, and even retaining in some rooms the old furniture and the rich silk hangings of the Orsini and Odescalchi.'- Lockhart's 'Life of Scott.'