eapest wood that was suitable--at one time
potato-pulp was extensively used--to a frame of gold encased with
diamonds, a great variety of materials was employed. Tortoise-shell was
a favourite, and owing to its limpid lustre it was exceedingly
effective. Mother-of-pearl was also used, together with silver, in its
natural state or gilded. Costly gold boxes were often enriched with
enamels or set with diamonds or other precious stones, and sometimes the
lid was adorned with a portrait, a classical vignette, or a tiny
miniature, often some choice work by an old master. After snuff-taking
had ceased to be general it lingered for some time among diplomatists,
either because--as Talleyrand explained--they found a ceremonious pinch
to be a useful aid to reflection in a business interview, or because
monarchs retained the habit of bestowing snuff-boxes upon ambassadors
and other intermediaries, who could not well be honoured in any other
way. It is, indeed, to the cessation of the habit of snuff-taking that
we may trace much of modern lavishness in the distribution of
decorations. To be invited to take a pinch from a monarch's snuff-box
was a distinction almost equivalent to having one's ear pulled by
Napoleon. At the coronation of George IV. of England, Messrs Rundell &
Bridge, the court jewellers, were paid L8205 for snuff-boxes for foreign
ministers. Now that the snuff-box is no longer used it is collected by
wealthy amateurs or deposited in museums, and especially artistic
examples command large sums. George, duke of Cambridge (1819-1904),
possessed an important collection; a Louis XV. gold box was sold by
auction after his death for L2000.

A jewel-box is a receptacle for trinkets. It may take a very modest
form, covered in leather and lined with satin, or it may reach the
monumental proportions of the jewel cabinets which were made for Marie
Antoinette, one of which is at Windsor, and another at Versailles, the
work of Schwerdfeger as cabinet-maker, Degault as miniature-painter, and
Thomire as chaser.

A strong-box is a receptacle for money, deeds and securities. Its place
has been taken in modern life by the safe. Some of those which have
survived, such as that of Sir Thomas Bodley in the Bodleian library,
possess locks with an extremely elaborate mechanism contrived in the
under-side of the lid.

The knife-box is one of the most charming of the minor pieces of
furniture which we owe to the artistic taste and mechanic