Transcriber’s Note:  Original “it”.

[Illustration:  Rural Tenements, Capel, Surrey]

Old houses of both peer and peasant and their contents are sooner or later doomed to destruction.  Historic mansions full of priceless treasures amassed by succeeding generations of old families fall a prey to relentless fire.  Old panelled rooms and the ancient floor-timbers understand not the latest experiments in electric lighting, and yield themselves to the flames with scarce a struggle.  Our forefathers were content with hangings to keep out the draughts and open fireplaces to keep them warm.  They were a hardy race, and feared not a touch or breath of cold.  Their degenerate sons must have an elaborate heating apparatus, which again distresses the old timbers of the house and fires their hearts of oak.  Our forefathers, indeed, left behind them a terrible legacy of danger—­that beam in the chimney, which has caused the destruction of many country houses.  Perhaps it was not so great a source of danger in the days of the old wood fires.  It is deadly enough when huge coal fires burn in the grates.  It is a dangerous, subtle thing.  For days, or even for a week or two, it will smoulder and smoulder; and then at last it will blaze up, and the old house with all its precious contents is wrecked.

The power of the purse of American millionaires also tends greatly to the vanishing of much that is English—­the treasures of English art, rare pictures and books, and even of houses.  Some nobleman or gentleman, through the extravagance of himself or his ancestors, or on account of the pressure of death duties, finds himself impoverished.  Some of our great art dealers hear of his unhappy state, and knowing that he has some fine paintings—­a Vandyke or a Romney—­offer him twenty-five or thirty thousand pounds for a work of art.  The temptation proves irresistible.  The picture is sold, and soon finds its way into the gallery of a rich American, no one in England having the power or the good taste to purchase it.  We spend our money in other ways.  The following conversation was overheard at Christie’s:  “Here is a beautiful thing; you should buy it,” said the speaker to a newly fledged baronet.  “I’m afraid I can’t afford it,” replied the baronet.  “Not afford it?” replied his companion.  “It will cost you infinitely less than a baronetcy and do you infinitely more credit.”  The new baronet seemed rather offended.  At the great art sales rare folios of Shakespeare, pictures, Sevres, miniatures from English houses are put up for auction, and of course find their way to America.  Sometimes our cousins from across the Atlantic fail to secure their treasures.  They have striven very eagerly to buy Milton’s cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, for transportation to America; but this effort has happily been successfully resisted.  The carved table in the cottage was much sought after, and was with difficulty retained against an offer of L150.  An old window of fifteenth-century