began in 1851. I remember it so well because that was the year of
the Great Exhibition, and Sir John treated me to a visit there; and when
I'd been and was serving breakfast next morning, he asked me about it,
and laughed and asked me if I'd taken much notice of the goldsmiths'
work. I said I had, and that it was a great mistake to clean gold plate
with anything but rouge.

"Why?" he said.

Because, I told him, if any of the plate-powder happened to be left in
the cracks, if it was rouge it gave a good effect; but if it was a white
preparation, it looked dirty and bad.

"Then we'll have all the chests open to-morrow, James Burdon," he said;
"and you shall give the old gold plate a good clean up with rouge, and
I'll help you."

"You, Sir John?"

He nodded. And the very next day he sent all the other servants to the
Exhibition, came down to my pantry, opened the plate-room, and put on an
apron just like a servant would, and helped me to clean that gold plate.
He got tired by one o'clock, and sat down upon a chair and looked at it
all glistening as it was spread out on the dresser and shelves--some
bright with polishing, some dull and dead and ancient-looking. Cups and
bowls and salvers and round dishes covered with coats of arms; some
battered and bent, and some as perfect as on the day it left the
goldsmith's hands.

I'd worked hard--as hard as I could, for sneezing, for I was doing that
half the time, just as if I had a bad cold. For every cup or dish was
kept in a green baize bag that fitted in one of the old ironbound oak
chests, and these chests were lined with green baize. And all this
being exceedingly old, the moths had got in; and pounds and pounds of
pepper had been scattered about the baize, to keep them away.

"I'll have a glass of wine, Burdon," Sir John says at last; "and we'll
put it all away again. It's very beautiful. That's Cellini work--
real," he says, as he took up a great golden bowl, all hammered and
punched and engraved. "But the whole lot of it is an incubus, for I
can't use it, and I don't want to make a show."

"Take a glass yourself, my man," he said, as I got him the sherry--a
fresh bottle from the outer cellar. "Ha! at a moderate computation that
old gold plate is worth a hundred thousand pounds; and a hundred
thousand pounds at only three per cent in the funds, Burdon, would be
three thousand a year. So you see I lose that income by letting this
heap of old gold plate li