THE NEW-YORK EXHIBITION ILLUSTRATED.

enjoyed; for Solomon tells us that “ the sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whetherhe eat little or much.” They had centre-tables in Thebes; and the form there-of was like unto those marble receptacles of costly rubbish which cumbered thedrawing rooms and ‘ best parlors’ of England and America fifteen years ago.

In every point, except richness of material and fine workmanship, we of thepresent day, as well as the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans, have improved uponthe ornamental furniture of the Egyptians. Their forms, from their generallyheavy and rectilinear character, were not suggestive of ease, or even comfort; andwhat they did not promise to the eye they did not give to the body. The Theban hadno middle choice between sitting bolt upright, with legs and back perpendicular,thighs at right angles, and hands upon his knees, like a little Memnon, and reclin-ing at full length on the back of some beast of prey. The social intercourse indi-cated by the Egyptian furniture is one of a magnificent formality, which, judgedby modern notions, must have vibrated continually between the solemn and thegrotesque.

The remains of Etruscan art prove that the same exquisite perception of beautyof form, which is seen in their vases and paintings, directed the manufacture of allarticles for their household use. The chair commonly used in Etruria more thantwo thousand years ago, is the most convenient and graceful which has been in-vented. Except the plane of the seat, it was composed entirely of curved lines.The legs curved gently from each other, tapering gradually to the lower extremity:the back had two curves, one slightly from the perpendicular and backwards, theother quite marked in the support for the back of the sitter, which in fact was asegment of a cylinder about four feet in diameter and nine inches high. There isno carving or adventitious ornament at all upon any representation of these chairswhich we have seen. Chairs, very like those of the Etruscans, were in fashionabout twenty or twenty-five years ago, and may be still seen in the houses of someof those who have the taste, the love of home associations, and the courage not todiscard old household friends at the capricious behest of fashion.

The Etruscan bedsteads were shaped like our old-fashioned straight-backedand sided sofas. The dinner bed was like a low table, supported by six feet, pyra-midal in form, and standing on a truncated apex, which itself rests upon a plinth.The wood-work exhibits no ornament, except a projecting cornice. Couches werein form very like those used at the present day; low, without back, head or foot-board, and rising at the head in a gentle, sweeping curve. All these were luxu-riously cushioned and provided with large pillows covered with rich stuff. Thepillows seem to have been always doubled for use.

The Greek furniture was almost identical in form with that of the Etruscans;and the Romans followed the Greeks in this respect, as in almost all others of asimilar nature. The beds used both in Greece and Rome were shaped either likethe square sofa, or the couch without back or sides of modern days. They weremade of ebony, citron-wood, ivory, and even silver, ornamented with inlaid work,and lassi relied ; and those in silver had onyx feet. Chairs of the Etruscan form,and also of the Egyptian pattern slightly modified, were used by them; but it isworthy of notice, that when the legs of chair or couch were modelled after thoseof beasts, the feet were turned from each other; the grotesque, ambulatory effectproduced by the natural arrangement being thus avoided. The buffets and cup-boards used by the Greeks and Romans were of the simplest possible design, andcan scarcely be considered under the head of ornamental furniture, as they werelittle more than plain shelved boxes or stands for the display or preservation ofsilver. Their tables appear to have been used only for the purpose of eating.They were of all forms; square, oblong, circular, oval, and triangular. The orna-ment upon them consisted only of a graceful and finely carved cornice, and legssometimes straight and fluted, sometimes curved and smooth, but almost inva-riably terminating with the foot of a beast. Frequently the leg after curvinggently in from the claw or foot, curved out again; and from the swell rose thebust of a sphynx or a harpy, upon the head of which the slab rested. The tablewas sometimes made entirely of marble, ivory, or silver, inlaid with plates ofgold. The cornice appears to have been the only carved ornament, except thatupon the legs; which in tables, chairs, beds and couches, were with rare excep-tions modelled, somewhat at least, upon the forms of those of beasts.

The introduction of that architecture which we call Gothic, effected an entirechange in the forms of all articles of household use. What was inside of the houseconformed to that which was outside of it. Lightness and grace of design gaveplace to ponderous angularity; and the imagination of the decorative artistwas directed to ornament, which displayed the fruits of an exuberant fancy, ratherthan to outline; for in that he servilely copied the designs of the architect, orrepeated them with various combinations. To trace the changes in the fashion offurniture from the dark ages to the time of Louis XIV., would be merely to followa repetition in wood of the variations in the style of working in stone. Even thiswould be interesting to the student who has made this department of art hisspeciality; but we shall not be tempted into such detail.

Until the eleventh century, the furniture of the nations who had replaced theRomans, the Gauls and the Britons, was of the rudest and simplest description, asfar as comfort and beauty were concerned. The only difference which there couldhave been between the household furniture of a king and a peasant, was a differ-

ence either in essential material, or that produced by the addition of preciousmetals and stones for mere ornament; for when a king’s bed was but a clumsyshelf in a clumsy box, and his chair of like construction, the serf, if he had eitherbed or chair, could not have had them of ruder form. The truth is, however, thatthe serf did not have them; and that until the eleventh century, the chairsof noblemen were but square settles, made easy by cushions and robes, theirtables but boards laid on tressles, and their beds but square boxes on legs, havingfrequently a canopy over head and sometimes hangings, the richness of whichwas in strange contrast to the coarseness of the article which they overshadowed.Nevertheless, the furniture of public places, massive and rude though it was,displayed some attempt at ornament, which generally took the form of the headsand feet of birds and beasts grotesquely distorted. Some of the articles weremade valuable, though not beautiful, by the addition of gold, silver, and preciousstones.

The Anglo-Saxons occasionally used round tables which were supported onthree curved legs, somewhat in the form of an S, though much less bent, the footbeing that of some bea^jt, and the slab of the table resting upon a grim andrudely carved head. These tables are quite like those used by the Romans,which we have already referred to, the double carved legs of which terminated abovein the bust of a sphinx or harpy. It is not improbable that the form may havebeen adopted by the Anglo-Saxons from relics of the furniture of the previousconquerors of Britain. The cupboards and buffets of this time were too rude topresent the slightest claim to a place among ornamental furniture.

In the tenth century the massive, rectangular furniture began to be ornamentedwith panel work, and the chairs to be lightened by the introduction of balustradesinto the back and arms;—a fashion which still obtains; but although carving inarchitectural forms was now rapidly introduced, there was no change for thebetter in design or comfort. Not only are the specimens of furniture which havecome down to us from the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, and which are,naturally, those preserved in public places,'—not only are these ponderous and un-inviting, as might be expected, but the articles represented in the domestic scenesof the illuminated manuscripts of the period, seem contrived with malice prepenseto ensure the greatest possible amount of inconvenience and discomfort to theirpossessors and occupants. Bods, couches and chairs, when stripped of the ex-traneous ornamental carving, are but heavy, clumsy, oaken boards, put togetherat right angles. It is so painful to see old saints sitting, and sick saints recliningupon these instruments of torture, that, as we look, we wonder that a belief inpurgatory could have obtained general credence at a time in which even those wholived and died in the odor of sanctity were obliged to undergo such daily suffering.

But as refinement advanced, articles of household convenience were multi-plied for all classes; and although the forms continued to be forbidding, owing tothe inexorable perpendicularity of the genius of Gothic architecture, which, as wehave said, entirely controlled the designs for furniture in the middle ages, still,much was done by adventitious means to make sitting and reclining less exquisitein their torture.

A new sentiment began to manifest itself in the furniture of this peri-od—that of domesticity. The furniture of the Egyptians, Etruscans, Greeks, andRomans is evidently not that of a people who found their greatest happiness insocial enjoyment, not to say, in the intercourse of home. Their beds, chairs,couches, and tables were barely sufficient for the actual and inevitable demandsof nature; and, though elegant in form, they do not seem the better fitted to addto the simple enjoyments which form the staple of domestic happiness in everyrank of life. The Theban, the Athenian, and the Roman sought pleasure inpublic, and generally in the open air. We have yet to see among those elegantapartments represented upon the monuments of classic antiquity, a single onowhich has what we call a habitable look. The contrary is the case with the viewsof interior life afforded by the emblazoned pages of Christian antiquity, where,especially in such as are of English origin, we see that the rooms and the furni-ture are those of a people to whom domestic life had an importance and affordeda pleasure unknown to the citizens of Greece and Rome.

The bed now became an article of the first household consequence. The bed-stead and the couch were no longer convertible terms or things. The latter, stand-ing in the more public part of the house, was open to the use of any one at any time,but the former was removed into the most private apartments, and was used onlyfor the habitual repose of the members of the family. Bed linen came into vogue,and the bedstead, as it was to be stationary, conformed completely to the ponderoustaste of the times, and assumed such vast proportions, and such solidity of structure,that only the force of some huge engine, the rude hand of war, or a convul-sion of nature could remove it. The curtains, which seem to be of Anglo-Saxonorigin, demanded support; and they had it in the shape of four huge, elaboratelycarved wooden pillars, which sustained a stupendous framework called a tester,bearing about such resemblance to the modern article of that name as Falstaffdid to the mannikin page given him by Prince Hal. These testers had carvedroofs ; and the headboards of the bed, shaped like a Gothic arch, were marvels ofintricate carved work, the centre of which was frequently the armorial bearingsof the person at whose cost the structure was elevated. Shakespeare makes Sir