[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