The ribbon festoon with knots suggests the Louis Quinze period. This indicates the departure from the stern classic types; and the nozzle is removable, a style which was then in common use. As a study, the candlestick exhibits infinite variety. The eighteenth century, from Queen Anne to the late George III period, offers many forms. The Stuart candlestick is on another plane, and appeals to the collector of rare examples. The candle is something dead and gone; it stands on the threshold of modernity like some dim ancestral ghost of former days. The electric bulb is triumphant, paraffin is plebeian, and gas stretches back a century when Westminster Bridge was first lit by gas in 1813. Nobody has apostrophized a gas bracket or a paraffin lamp. But the candle is both historic and poetical and the candlestick offers a pleasing field to the collector. [Illustration: EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CANDLESTICK. Classic style. Made at Sheffield. (_At Victoria and Albert Museum._)] SALE PRICES Prices vary to a considerable extent. As in the case of the salt cellars, sets bring higher prices than the single examples. The differences in prices are:-- EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Sets of four £80 to £100 Sets of two 40 to 70 LATE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Sets of four £20 to £40 Sets of two 7 to 20 Single specimens vary from £2 to £10, according to design. In buying candelabra at so much per ounce, beginners should carefully ascertain weight, as examples sold at 5s. per ounce have realized over £200 owing to their massiveness. VIII THE TEAPOT THE COFFEE-POT THE TEA-KETTLE THE TEA-CADDY CHAPTER VIII THE TEAPOT, THE COFFEE-POT, THE TEA-KETTLE, THE TEA-CADDY The teapot, its early form--The seventeenth century--The eighteenth-century coffee-pot--The tea-kettle and stand--Late Georgian teapots and coffee-pots--The tea-caddy and its varieties. The silver plate of a country undoubtedly reflects the manners and customs of its users. The growth of luxury undoubtedly has had its influence upon the manufacture of a great number of silver articles employed in everyday use. But although the field be larger, the class of articles, to say nothing of the average artistic quality, differs in the same measure as the habits of the users. The antiquary of the twenty-first century who turns to the late nineteenth century will find marmalade-pots and pickle-forks in lieu of posset-pots and punch-ladles. He will find that cheap chemists have disseminated hair-brushes and cheap scent-bottles of inferior glass with silver rims.