THE INDUSTRY OF ALL NATIONS.

Toby Belch allude to one of those formidable sleeping machines. He says to SirAndrew AguecheeTc , when urging that valiant gentleman to challenge Viola, “ andas many lies as will lie in thy sheet of paper, although the sheet were big enoughfor the bed of Ware in England, set ’em down.” We obtain a definite idea of thedegree of freedom in giving the lie which Sir Toby recommends to his pupil,when we learn that this bed was ten feet nine inches long, by ten feet nine inchesbroad; and the question naturally arises whether Shakespeare did not allude to itmore than once, and whether, as it stood, we believe, in an inn, some of its remoteand unexplored recesses did not contain “ the undiscovered country from whosebourne no traveller returns.” Indeed it would be a tempting of fate to commit oneselfrashly in the night to such a wide waste, without some kind Ariadne to furnish a clueby which to find the way out again in the morning. This famous bed may beregarded as the ideal English four-poster. It was ceiled with heavy panelling,and its ponderous and elaborately carved cornice was supported at the foot byposts, into the composition of which, pedestals, pillars, and arches entered in thelower half, while the solid upper part was decorated by carved leaves and ara-besques of enormous size. The head-board, which reached and supported thocornice, was worthy to be the altar-screen of a cathedral. Among the carvingswhich adorned it, were three human figures half the size of life, and two elabo-rate arched panels. This bedstead was planned and constructed in the reign ofQueen Elizabeth: the architect’s name has not survived.

The buffet, as it exists in our thoughts, had its origin in the middle ages ; forthe little recesses in the wall, which the Greeks and Romans used for the purposeof keeping gold and silver vessels, cannot be considered even as the germ of thoseponderous carved scaffoldings—those cupboards “ of five stages height, triangled”—those things “made like stayres to set plate on,” upon which our ancestorsused to display the family silver. These, at first small, rude, and unornamented,gradually increased in size and richness until they, with their furniture, becamethe most imposing article in the great hall of castle and manor-house. Theywere covered with grotesque carving of the most intricate and elaborate kind,and were expected to display “ a covered cup of gold, six great standing pots ofsilver, twenty-four silver bowls with covers, a bason, ewer, and chasoir of silver,”in addition to such other vessels of metal and glass as the pomp of a great houserequired on state occasions. They were the results of a hospitality which wasboth open and ostentatious, and of a social system in which a few great pro-prietors delighted to display their wealth to their friends and dependents, whothemselves took pleasure and pride in the magnificence of him who was their allyor their lord.

Book-cases are of yet more modern origin. When books were multiplied onlywith the pen, and were rolled upon cylinders, book-cases, in the modern sense ofthe term, were not needed, and in fact could not be used. The change from theroll to the quadrilateral form first required the use of shelves for the reception ofvolumes; but even long after this period, books were kept in chests or laid up inracks. Book-cases, as an article of household furniture, did not exist even inmodern times, until half a century after the invention of printing; that is, aboutthe beginning of the sixteenth century. When nobles and gentlemen couldhardly read or write their names, and in fact thought study quite unsoldierlikeand somewhat unmanly, libraries and book-cases formed, of course, no part oftheir household wealth. When they did come into use, they were constructedupon the Gothic architectural model, which, indeed, in its predominance of per-pendicular lines, its tendencies to arched panelling, and its union of a generalsobriety of effect with the most fanciful richness of detail, is peculiarly suited torooms devoted to literature, and quite consistent with the safe and convenientarrangement of books in numbers either great or small. When books were col-lectively few and individually large, a comparatively small receptacle would holdall which would supply the wants or be within the means of gentlemen of ordi-nary wealth and devotion to literature. The earlier book-cases were very beau-tiful pieces of furniture; not too large for a modern parlor, richly carved, havingfew shelves, and those wide apart for the admission of goodly folios, and usuallymade with a recess in the middle for the admission of a reading desk, which wassometimes a part of the book-case and sometimes movable. Those who haveread the 1 light literature ’ of the early part of the sixteenth century will easilyunderstand why it was desirable that there should be a resting place for thevolume very near the shelf from which it was taken. It is quite needless to givea more particular description of these book-cases, which increased in size as eachgeneration added to the collection made by its predecessors. They were, exter-nally, little wooden cathedrals; and a look at a print of the West front of Salisbury,York, Peterborough or Westminster Cathedral, will afford a very just idea oftheir appearance; if, indeed, any of our readers should not have seen one or moreof the innumerable imitations of them, in which modern fashion commands that acertain quantity of gilded morocco must solemnly repose.

It was not until the reign of Louis XIV., that a style of decoration peculiar tofurniture came into vogue. With the stately splendor of the court life of Paris atthat time, there arose a demand for a corresponding and sympathetic splendor inthe surroundings of those who then lived in ‘ society,’—a something which, as dis-tinct from either domestic life, social enjoyment, or state ceremonial, then first

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came into existence. Man’s mental resources are always equal to his demandsupon them: invention can never be exhausted ; and in this case an entirely newstyle was created to supply the need for it. It was not a modification of anyprevious style, or formed by a combination of the characteristics of any others.

It did not put books into cathedrals, or make men sit upon sphinxes or lie uponthe backs of ferocious quadrupeds. It had no more affinity with the simpleelegance of the Greek or Etruscan style, which was suited to apartments and to astate of sooiety which needed but a little furniture, than it had with the ponderousand fanciful richness of the Gothic, which was made for a people who literallyinhabited their rooms, and easily acquired a love for the mere insensible objectswith which they associated the idea of home. The Roman, in his bare, un-furnished house, must needs have his Lares; but the household gods of the Norman,the Teuton, the Scandinavian, and the Anglo-Saxon, were the table around whichhis kindred sat, the cradle over which his mother bent, the bed on which hisfather died.

The world, in its new phase, worshipped neither sort of home divinity. Ithad but one God—Louis, but one religion—fashion, but one ceremonial—society.

The change in furniture which it called into existence extended to every articleof daily use; it penetrated the inmost recesses of the house; in fact, it supposedno privacy, and had no need to do so; for then, even the morning toilet, as w,ellof ladies as of gentlemen, was, from its very commencement, a ‘ reception.’

The characteristics of the new style were studied grace, exquisite finish ofdetail, and the greatest possible display of richness of material. The forms wereentirely new, and were produced by ever varying combinations of curved lines,which conformed to no type in nature, but, on the contrary, expressed artifi-ciality and courted admiration in every bend. To mere curved lines producingcircles, ovals, ellipses, and nameless figures resulting frorii the capricious inter-ference of these with each other, were added scrolls, shells, masks, and garlands,which were placed without the least reference to the natural fitness of the objectfor its position ; the idea suggested by the combination being solely that of orna-ment for the sake of ornament. The materials used were the rarest wood, andeven ivory ; and these were inlaid and gilded into the utmost extreme of gorgeous-ness. The aim of the designer appeared to be to attain at once the richest andmost fanciful combination of color, outline, and varied surface, and the moststriking contrasts of material. At this time Buhl, the King’s cabinet-maker,invented the well-known incrusted metal-work which bears his name, and whichis made at this day, with little variation from his style and as little improvementupon his manufacture.

As we have before remarked, this was the first purely decorative style in thohistory of furniture. If imitation be the essential motive of all Fine Art, muchof the Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman furniture might properly claima place in Sculpture; and the same definition would entirely exclude the newstyle from all consideration due to it on the score of Art, for it suggested noidea but that of furniture and decoration,—-and decoration for decoration’s sake.

But the inventors of the novel ornamental forms given to all furniture at thistime, although entirely free from the restraints of imitative Art, and at liberty toadapt their designs strictly to the uses to which the articles embodying them wereto be put, obtained complete success only in one direction; but it must, in strictjustice, be added, that that direction was the one to which alone their effortstended. They obtained an original, rich, peculiar, and highly ornamental style;one suited to the social splendor of the day; and this was a perfect and a greatsuccess. But although they made some improvement upon the perpendicular,rectangular forms of immediately preceding ages, they made only a partial ad-vance in comfort, or the appearance of it, and frequently reached some of theirmost fanciful and splendid effects at the expense of radical faults of construction ;—that is, the forms which they chose were not adapted to the purpose for which thoarticle was intended, or to the material from which it was made. For instance, itwas not uncommon for them to make an arm-chair in which it would be impossi-ble to recline with ease, and the wood work of which was carved with suchdisregard of the course of the fibre, that had any body reclined in it, back, arms,and legs must have inevitably snapped like pipe-stems. The cabinet-makersof that day needed a course of study upon Mechanics and the Strength of Ma-terials.

But this, too, was thoroughly in keeping with the spirit of the time. Peopledid not live for home comfort then: they lived for ‘ society,’ and society was acontinual drawing-room. Ease then was either a comparative or a conventionalterm, and meant, to seem as much at ease as possible under adverse circumstances.Buhl, when he made an arm-chair for a Marquis, knew that the rich back wouldnever be touched, that the beautiful arms w'ould be used only to hold up anddisplay yet more beautiful arms of another kind, and that the dainty formalitywith which the sky-blue satin breeches of some courtier might be deposited uponthe extreme front of its seat would not test the capacity of its curiously formedlegs to sustain a weight. Therefore the furniture of this age is expressive not ofcomfort or luxurious ease, but of disciplined constraint and luxurious ceremony,not of ostentatious hospitality, but of empty ostentation. But in the creation ofa purely decorative style, it made a great stride in advance, and commenced in