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chairs and other movables, were too absurd to enter their imaginations;and the obvious inconvenience of crockets and points at every angle, aswell as the risk of destruction to female habiliments, then costly andgorgeous,* would at once have struck these sagacious workmen.

The balance in point of number and commodiousness is certainly infavour of modern furniture; but the splendour of our beds, hangings,and plate, is much .inferior to that of earlier periods. Carved andinlaid bedsteads, with hangings of cloth of gold, paled with whitedamask and black velvet, and embroidered with heraldic badges; bluevelvet powdered with silver lions; black satin, with gold roses andescutcheons of arms; tapestry of cloths of gold and silver for hangingon the walls; gold plate enamelled with precious stones; and cloths ofgold for covering tables, — must have exceeded in magnificence any ideawe can form of their effect: yet such was the furniture of the nobilityand others of those times.

On the other hand, the comfort of a carpet under the feet wasseldom felt, and the luxury of a fork wholly unknown, in Elizabeth’sreign : rushes commonly supplied the place of the former, and the fingerswere the invariable substitutes for the latter.

The circumstances under which furniture, plate, utensils, jewels, andapparel, devolved upon generation after generation, is in some degreeproof of such articles being confined to persons of the higher ranks;and that, even among those, they were not numerous. But there wasanother and more powerful reason for the disposal of “ movables ” bybequest. “ The influence of the clergy in point of property was pro-digious. When their own interest or the superstition of mankind failedof producing this effect,” (says the historian, treating of their various

See Illustrations, Section VI.