ose named will be found sound in construction, and free from the faults
which accompany the cheap and showy reproductions of more pretentious
styles which mark so much of the furniture of the present day. With regard
to this, more will be said in the next chapter.

There was then a very limited market for any but the most commonplace
furniture. Our wealthy people bought the productions of French cabinet
makers, either made in Paris or by Frenchmen who came over to England, and
the middle classes were content with the most ordinary and useful
articles. If they had possessed the means they certainly had neither the
taste nor the education to furnish more ambitiously. The great extent of
suburbs which now surround the Metropolis, and which include such numbers
of expensive and extravagantly-fitted residences of merchants and
tradesmen, did not then exist. The latter lived over their shops or
warehouses, and the former only aspired to a dull house in Bloomsbury, or,
like David Copperfield's father-in-law, Mr. Spenlow, a villa at Norwood,
or perhaps a country residence at Hampstead or Highgate.

In 1808 a designer and maker of furniture, George Smith by name, who held
the appointment of "Upholder extraordinary to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales,"
and carried on business at "Princess" Street, Cavendish Square, produced a
book of designs, 158 in number, published by "Wm. Taylor," of Holborn.
These include cornices, window drapery, bedsteads, tables, chairs,
bookcases, commodes, and other furniture, the titles of some of which
occur for about the first time in our vocabularies, having been adapted
from the French. "Escritore, jardiniere, dejune tables, chiffoniers" (the
spelling copied from Smith's book), all bear the impress of the
pseudo-classic taste; and his designs, some of which are reproduced, shew
the fashion of our so-called artistic furniture in England at the time of
the Regency. Mr. Smith, in the "Preliminary Remarks" prefacing the
illustrations, gives us an idea of the prevailing taste, which it is
instructive to peruse, looking back now some three-quarters of a
century:--

[Illustration: "Library Fauteuil." Reproduced from Smith's Book of
Designs, published in 1804]

"The following practical observations on the various woods employed in
cabinet work may be useful. Mahogany, when used in houses of consequence,
should be confined to the parlour and the bedchamber floors. In furniture
for these apartments the less inla