However, let us glance round this shop. The first impression is that some tidal wave of Time has swept into it all kinds of articles caught up in the ruin of the ancient world of Egypt, Greece, Rome--these three great early civilizations are the chief contributors, though, of course, Assyria and Babylon are represented too. Nearly everything you see has come from a tomb. There are hundreds of thousands of objects from the tombs of ancient Egypt. There is blue, green, and gold glass from tombs in Cyprus; there is amazing coloured glass blown by Phœnicians at the time of the Exodus, and--to come down to quite modern times--there are lamps which lit the ancient Romans to bed a thousand years ago, and Greek vases with shaggy, horned satyrs leaping round them after flying nymphs. There are bronzes green with age, bright gold which never loses its colour no matter how old it is, shining glazed pottery which looks as if it had come yesterday from Staffordshire, save for the fact that it is finer than modern pottery and contains a rough scratched cross and the words in Latin: "Caius, his plate." * * * What is the charm of it? What chains these men to the past, archæologist and collector? Most of them are poor, for there is no money in it, and most of them are intensely happy. Just see the way they finger a bronze that was cast when St. Paul was bearing the message of Christianity through the world. There is perhaps one part æstheticism in their love and one part association. For them an object is not only full of beauty but also full of magic; it is like a talisman that has the power to call up visions. I have no doubt that when these old men hold their treasures they can see the hosts of Pharaoh sweeping through Syria, the nodding of the plumes, the drive of arrows and all the confusion of an ancient war. They can recreate round a relic a dead empire. They feel that they possess something of the mighty personality of old times just as in millions of lives a treasured letter can call up "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still." In these old things the Past lives again; they release the perfume of old loves, the violence of old ambitions, the thunder of marching troops, and the sailing of galleys over a morning world. * * * So if you collide violently with an old man who is carefully holding a little paper parcel, do not blame him for not seeing you! You! Good Lord--you! My Lady's Dress Madame requires a gown. In a building high up above a celebrated street in the heart of London, M. Flair bows her to a gold couch on which are green velvet cushions.