omen's heads of
gilded wood with small gilded feet showing at base.

PLATE XXXI

An end of a room containing genuine Empire furniture, Empire
ornaments and a rare collection of Empire cups, which appear in a
_vitrine_ seen near the dull-blue brocade curtains drawn over
windows.

We would especially call attention to the mantelpiece, which was
originally the Empire frame of a mirror, and to a book shelf made
interesting by having the upper shelf supported by a charming
pair of antique bronze cupids.

This plate is reproduced to show as many Empire pieces as
possible; it is not an ideal example of arrangement, either as to
furniture in room or certain details. There is too much crowding.

[Illustration: _A Collection of Empire Furniture, Ornaments and
China_]

As the brother of the great Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte, king of Spain
and Rome, passed many years of his self-imposed exile in Bordentown,
in a house made beautiful with furnishings he brought from France, it
is possible this old mirror has an interesting story, if only it could
talk! Then, too, it was Bordentown that sheltered a Prince Murat, the
relative of Joseph Bonaparte. If it was he who conveyed our mirror to
these shores, a very different, but as highly romantic a tale might
unfold!

For fear the precious ancient glass should be broken or the frame
destroyed, we bribed a Pullman-car porter to let us bring its six by
four feet of antiquity with us, in the train!

When you see a find always take it with you, or the next man may, and
above all, always be on the lookout.

It was from a French novel by one of the living French writers that we
first got a clue to a certain obscure Etruscan museum, hidden away in
the Carrara Mountains, in Italy. That wonderful little museum and its
adjacent potteries, which cover the face of Italy like ant-hills, are
to-day contributors to innumerable beautiful interiors in every part
of America.

We recall a dining-room in Grosvenor Square, London, where a
world-renowned collection of "powder-blue" vases (the property of Mr.
J.B. Joel) is made to contribute to a decorative scheme by placing the
almost priceless vases of old Chinese blue and white porcelain, in
niches made for them, high up on the black oak panelling. There are no
pictures nor other decorations on the walls, hence each vase has the
distinction it deserves, placed as it were, in a shrine.

In