It is certainly not easy for the twentieth-century housewife, who has at her command fire and burglar proof safes, steel and iron jewel caskets, wardrobes, linen presses, chests of drawers, roomy cupboards, box rooms, closets, cabinets, sideboards, and other similar receptacles, devised by modern ingenuity, to appreciate all the difficulties with which the lady of the seventeenth-century house had to contend, or to understand by what means she could possibly overcome them.

The question "where to put things" has ever constituted a problem most difficult to solve for those of our women folk who are endowed with a love of tidiness, and who would be so bold as to assert that there exists any woman who is not so endowed? So generally is this recognised, that, as time goes on, architects strive more and more earnestly to provide in their houses the greatest possible number of cupboards in the smallest possible space, while the designer of cabinet work racks his brains to satisfy his prospective lady clients in the provision of shelves, brackets, drawers, pigeon-holes, and every other description of hole, corner, and recess which it is possible to imagine and devise. Yet, with all the ingenuity that they can bring to bear upon the matter, the task of giving perfect satisfaction seems to be as far from actual accomplishment as ever.

To return to the "Good old Days." The necessity for conveniences and accommodation of the class I have indicated was by no means so great as it is now. Tastes were more simple and less exacting; it was far more easy, therefore, to satisfy them. The same difficulty, nevertheless, certainly did exist then, though in a lesser degree, and the manner in which it was overcome brings us back to the chest or coffer pure and simple. We shall presently mark the most characteristic forms which it took in its earlier stages, as well as make a point of noticing the manner in which it blossomed forth into something far more imposing than the unpretentious rectangular box which was the earliest ancestor of the whole tribe. For the moment we have come to the conclusion that this piece of furniture, in its various forms, was in great demand, and was, in consequence, extensively manufactured; it is not, therefore, surprising to find that examples of it rank among the most numerous of the relics now existing of the days to which they belonged.

Next in number and importance come seats and chairs, articles of a type more indispensable, of course, than the chests themselves, as it is obvious that we must sit or lie somewhere, whatever may become of our various and sundry impedimenta.

Continuing the list we have sturdy side-tables, developing later into "court" and "bread-and-cheese" cupboards, "bahuts," and "armoires" - ancestors to the sideboard of to-day, though so vastly different in form and character; smaller tables - rectangular, circular, hexagonal, and octagonal, and in some cases so contrived as to fold up; and last, but by no means least as far as general proportions are concerned, four-post bedsteads.

Other pieces not included in the foregoing list may be discovered occasionally here and there, but they are exceptions, and, as such, will not enter very largely into our calculations.

I have contended that the earnest and well-informed student of the furniture of days gone by cannot fail, if he pursue his studies in the proper vein, to find clearly expressed in the examples with which he has to deal more than a slight indication of the different spirits pervading the ages in which they were produced; and, indeed, it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise. This contention is, I am well aware, far from being a novel one, but the fact is not as generally appreciated as it should be, and I am perfectly confident that, were it more fully realised and strenuously insisted upon, many more people would be inclined to pay greater attention to a study the pursuit of which positively teems with interest and delight.

Owing to ignorance - not necessarily intentional ignorance - the subject is regarded at present by some as an unpleasant and incomprehensible "craze" for raking over and "rummaging" among objectionable, dusty, and worm-eaten stuff, which in their estimation should long ago have been relegated to the dustbin, or have been chopped up for firewood.

We are told that there are sermons in stones. If that be so, and unquestionably, if accepted in its proper sense, the statement cannot be refuted, surely there is many a story "writ large" in the household gods of our forefathers. Nay, their actual tastes and habits may be judged to a far greater extent from their furniture; for their places of abode - the eloquent stones of architecture - were, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, planned and built quite independently of any consideration of the individual preferences or requirements of their possible occupants. On the other hand, their internal environment, the furniture and woodwork with which they were to be surrounded, was of their own seeking and selection, and it is to be presumed that they made a point of acquiring that which appealed most strongly to their ideas regarding what should be, so far at least as the means at their command would permit. If this view of the matter be accepted as correct, it is not too much to claim that a people, or an age, may, to a very considerable degree, be judged by the furniture and woodwork appertaining to them.

Regarded in this light, the study of these old chests and tables, beds and chairs, is veritably fraught with romance. They become animated, and talk with us of times, manners, and customs long since gone by, and almost forgotten; and we see grouped around them the giant shadows of men and women who have made history, as well as those of the quiet family circle, drawn cosily round the homely ingle, whose deeds, it is true, have never been handed down to posterity, but who, nevertheless, played their part in the great game of life.