It is curious how collectors have come to love the candlestick, possibly it is because it represents something that vanished during the horrible era of the gas chandelier and the paraffin lamp, and has been resuscitated in later days in the form of an electric chandelier or in electric standards. Electricity has galvanized the old candlestick and the antique candelabrum into life. The Dutch hanging brass pendants are now one of the stock lines of the electric fitter who furnishes the villa in pseudo-Jacobean or pseudo-Georgian style. The shopwalker or his satellites will pronounce empirically upon styles with the surety of an encyclopædia. In consequence all electric lights are hall-marked with "periods": they are "Adams" (_sic_), or "Chippendale," or "Sheraton." Possibly collectors of another age may find shoddy written over a lengthy period of our modern fitments for illumination. =The Adam Style and its Promulgation.=--That Sheffield did great things in candlesticks is shown by a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum. One of the finest examples of the classic style with urn shaped nozzle with classic pilaster column, both urn and base decorated with festoons in classic style, of the period of 1782, is a Sheffield silver candlestick. Sheffield was undoubtedly making fine silver candlesticks and candelabra at this period, and this is not unimportant in regard to the consideration of what she did as an echo of such work. During the last twenty years of the eighteenth century her output was of the highest character. Since 1773, as we have shown, Sheffield had stood on her dignity as the proud possessor of an assay office with all the newly acquired rights of silversmiths jealous of infringements on so close a corporation. This had, without doubt, an enormous influence on the quality of the work perpetrated by the silver platers. Sheffield made a bid to become a silversmiths' centre and she has not lost her ancient ambitions to-day. In the illustration given (p. 65) of a candlestick from a copper-plate engraving of pure Adam style, in date about 1775, it is seen how far Sheffield had advanced to be able to send such pattern books with designs broadcast to buyers of her ware on the Continent of Europe. This and another illustration (p. 69) indicate the class of candlestick Sheffield was prepared to export. Sheffield had not snatched at renown, she had won it. A series of Design Books of the period, from which we reproduce illustrations, establish the fact that Sheffield plated wares were as acceptable on the Continent as being something especially English, as were the equally original products of Wedgwood in pottery, and at a later date the Ironstone Ware of Mason, where it is said that he inflicted more injury upon the French potters than did the English fleet under Nelson. [Illustration: OLD SHEFFIELD PLATED CANDELABRUM.