and other treasures. Wherever
there are old villages with manor houses and long occupied rich land,
wealth formerly accumulated and evidenced itself in well-designed and
well-made furniture, upon which time has had comparatively little
destructive effect. As old fashions were superseded, as oak gave way
to walnut, and walnut to Spanish mahogany, the out-of-date furniture
found its way to the smaller farm-houses and cottages, in which it
descended from generation to generation. Now that the cottages have
been ransacked by dealers and collectors, the treasures have not only
been absorbed by wealthy townspeople, but are finding their way with
those of impoverished landowners and occupiers to the millionaire
mansions on the other side of the Atlantic.

There is no limit to the temptation to collect when once the
fascination of such old things has made itself felt--furniture, china,
earthenware, glass, paintings, brass and pewter become an obsession.
If I had only filled my barns with Jacobean and Stuart oak and walnut,
William and Mary, and Queen Ann marquetry, and Chippendale, Sheraton
and Hepplewhite mahogany, instead of wheat for an unsympathetic
British public, and at the end of my time at Aldington offered a few
of the least interesting specimens for sale by auction, I might still
have carried away a houseful of treasures which would have cost me
less than nothing.

An old friend of mine, who had been collecting for many years, and in
comparison with whom I was a novice, though my enthusiasm long
preceded the fashion of the last twenty-five years, told me that he
once discovered a warehouse in a Cotswold village crammed with
Chippendale, and that the owner, having no sale for it, was glad to
exchange a waggon-load for the same quantity of hay and straw chaff.

Among the more interesting articles which my cycling excursions and
previous pilgrimages on foot produced, I have a charming blue and
white carnation pattern, Worcester china cider mug with the crescent
mark. These mugs are said to have been specially made for the
Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769 at Stratford-on-Avon when Garrick was
present. The date corresponds with the time when the mark was in use,
and establishes the age of the mug as 150 years. The china in my old
neighbourhood was naturally Worcester, Bristol and Salopian, of which
I have many specimens--of the Worcester more especially--ranging from
the earliest days of unmarked pieces through the Dr. Wall