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 and hung over the monument.  Much of this armour has been removed from churches and stored in museums.  Norwich Museum has some good specimens, of which we give some illustrations.  There is a knight’s basinet which belongs to the time of Henry V (circa 1415).  We can compare this with the salads, which came into use shortly after this period, an example of which may be seen at the Porte d’Hal, Brussels.  We also show a thirteenth-century sword, which was