ABSTRACT
A vast fund of useful information – technical and historic – would be made available if only each of our readers were, in the words of a famous French essayist, “to write what he knows, and as much as he knows.” Unhappily, however, either from false modesty, general indifference, or some other motive, the modern tendency is in the opposite direction. A general improvement in house furnishing, from the application of these principles, is necessarily associated with the careful study of the masterpieces of past generations as types to be followed, and of the writings of men whose lives have been successfully devoted to artistic pursuits. The French furniture, glittering with decoration in gold, marble, and textiles, evinced on the whole an undoubted superiority. At Paris, in 1854, but more notably at the Exhibition in London in 1862, the rapid strides which household furnishing had made in this country were markedly observable.
