must leave their old
resting-places and go out of the country, we should prefer them to go
to America than to any other land. Our American cousins are our
kindred; they know how to appreciate the treasures of the land that,
in spite of many changes, is to them their mother-country. No nation
in the world prizes a high lineage and a family tree more than the
Americans, and it is my privilege to receive many inquiries from
across the Atlantic for missing links in the family pedigree, and the
joy that a successful search yields compensates for all one's trouble.
So if our treasures must go we should rather send them to America than
to Germany. It is, however, distressing to see pictures taken from
the place where they have hung for centuries and sent to Christie's,
to see the dispersal of old libraries at Sotherby's, and the contents
of a house, amassed by generations of cultured and wealthy folk,
scattered to the four winds and bought up by the _nouveaux riches_.

[Illustration: Fixed Bench in the Hall, Crowhurst Place, Surrey]

There still remain in many old houses collections of armour that bears
the dints of many fights. Swords, helmets, shields, lances, and other
weapons of warfare often are seen hanging on the walls of an ancestral
hall. The buff coats of Cromwell's soldiers, tilting-helmets, guns and
pistols of many periods are all there, together with man-traps--the
cruel invention of a barbarous age.

[Illustration: Gothic Door-head, Goudhurst, Kent]

The historic hall of Littlecote bears on its walls many suits worn
during the Civil War by the Parliamentary troopers, and in countless
other halls you can see specimens of armour. In churches also much
armour has been stored. It was the custom to suspend over the tomb the
principal arms of the departed warrior, which had previously been
carried in the funeral procession. Shakespeare alludes to this custom
when, in _Hamlet_, he makes Laertes say:--

His means of death, his obscure burial--
No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones,
No noble rite, nor formal ostentation.

You can see the armour of the Black Prince over his tomb at
Canterbury, and at Westminster the shield of Henry V that probably did
its duty at Agincourt. Several of our churches still retain the arms
of the heroes who lie buried beneath them, but occasionally it is not
the actual armour but sham, counterfeit helmets and breastplates made
for the funeral procession