CHATS ON OLD SILVER.t .
Wm are glad to welcome another volume of an interesting series. In this book the technical learning of the writer is wrought up with so cunning a hand that the amateur may, with only .an agreeable amount of effort on his own part, acquire plenty of very useful knowledge on this fascinating
• Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War. By Frederick A, Talbot, London : William Heinemann. De. ed. not.]
t Chats on Old Silver. By Arthur Thiplen. With Frontispiece and DO Full. page Illustrations. London: 1'. Fisher Unwin. [be. not.] but intricate subject. Mr. Hayden's plan of linking a beautiful example of workmanship with its contemporary historical events is a good one, and will appeal to those of us whose memory for dates is "not as good as it used to he." For instance, when he is describing a Commonwealth porringer of the year 7653, he tells us that, though " it is futile to con- jecture with exactitude for what purpose this vessel was used, it belongs to the year when the Dutch were defeated off Portland in February, again off the North Foreland in June, and off Texel in July, when Van Tromp was killed. In the year of this porringer Oliver Cromwell forcibly dis- solved the Rump Parliament." He has also many interesting things to tell us about" The Marks Stamped on Silver." The British system of hall-marks, which was begun in the reign of Edward I., has a deservedly high reputation. "For six centuries the hall-mark of the Mistery of Goldsmiths' of the City of London has stood as a guarantee of value, and is intended to afford sufficient protection to the purchaser." The study of hall-marks is difficult and complicated. A few other towns exercise the right of assaying plate besides the City of London, so that the place as well as the date and the maker's mark must be taken into consideration in the task of identifi- cation. The old goldsmiths wore proud of the " mistery " of their craft—was it not very near to that of the alchemist P— and their marks are often purposely obscure. But with a guide like Mr. Hayden such difficulties ought only to add ardour to the student's work. He has something also to tell us about our coinage and the ravages made in it by clippers and false coiner-s. By the end of the seventeenth century this depreciation was crippling the trade of the country, but though clipping and coining were fiercely punished, the " industry " was so profitable that "things grew from bad to worse." The country then went through a dangerous crisis until a new coinage was issued and safeguarded by means of a higher standard of silver-plate, marked with a "figure of Britannia and the lion's head erased." This "Britannia standard," Mr. Hayden tells us, should be "to collectors some- thing more than rare. It should induce reflective thought as to the successive stages, the troublous disputations, the suggested remedies, and the awful punishments which came as a prelude to the establishment of this Higher Standard." After the chapter on marks, we have one on ecclesiastical plate, and then the subject is treated of under such headings as the mazer, the standing cup, the flagon, the salt-cellar, and so on. The author enlivens his subject by giving us some amusing glimpses of the manners of our ancestors. A Georgian cream-jug brings us naturally to "the eighteenth-century tea- table and its accessories," and we learn that "it was etiquette to place the spoon in the cup to show the hostess that no more tea was required. . . . The guests did not ask for a second cup until all the other guests had finished the first" (a rule which might well be acted upon sometimes to-day). The illustrations in this book are excellent. They are from photo- graphs by Mr. A. E. Smith, and have been reproduced in such a way as to give something of the different effects made by light striking on smooth curves or on elaborately worked surfaces. Mr. Hayden has taken great pains over the repro- auctions of the hall-marks, and the result is also very successf ul.
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