and other property. In
the Public Record Office may be seen the old iron box in which the
Domesday Book was kept for many centuries. The old City Companies have
their treasure chests still; and boxes studded over with iron nails and
fitted with large hasps and locks are pointed out in many old houses as
passports to family standing.

The household curios which a collector seeks include objects of utility
and ornament. Many of them are associated with household work, and quite
a number of one-time kitchen and culinary utensils, as well as those
which were once cherished in the best parlour or withdrawing-room, are
found places among such curios. During the last few years domestic
architecture has passed through several stages of advancement. The stiff
and formal Georgian houses, the painful Victorian villas, and some of
the earlier attempts at architectural improvement have been swept away
to make room for modern replicas of still older styles which have been
revived or incorporated in the _nouvre_ art, which touches the home in
its architecture and internal decoration, as well as in its furnishings.
In modern dwellings the Elizabethan style has often been followed,
although modern conveniences have been incorporated. When furnishing
such houses with suitable replicas of the antique the householders of
the last quarter of a century have been unconsciously, perhaps,
fostering the love of household antiques and providing fitting homes for
their family curios.

The Day of the Curio Hunter.

This is admittedly the day of curio hunting, and those who specialize on
household curios have exceptional opportunities of displaying them to
better advantage than those who cared for such things in the past.
Perhaps it is because there were so few opportunities of arranging and
displaying household antiques during the last three-quarters of the
nineteenth century that many objects now treasured have been preserved
so fresh and kept in such excellent condition. The housewives of the
past generation were undoubtedly conservative in their retention of old
household goods, and it is to their careful preservation that so many
objects of interest, although perhaps fully a century old, come to the
collector in such perfect condition.

The patient labour expended by the amateur artist, the needleworker, and
the connoisseur of home art a generation or two ago has provided the
collector to-day with an exceptionally interesting class of cu