ons of luxury and civilisation. Paul Lacroix, in "Manners,
Customs, and Dress of the Middle Ages," tells us that the trichorium or
dining room was generally the largest hall in the palace: two rows of
columns divided it into three parts: one for the royal family, one for the
officers of the household, and the third for the guests, who were always
very numerous. No person of rank who visited the King could leave without
sitting at his table or at least draining a cup to his health. The King's
hospitality was magnificent, especially on great religious festivals, such
as Christmas and Easter.

In other portions of this work of reference we read of "boxes" to hold
articles of value, and of rich hangings, but beyond such allusions little
can be gleaned of any furniture besides. The celebrated chair of Dagobert
(illustrated on p. 21), now in the Louvre, and of which there is a cast in
the South Kensington Museum, dates from some 150 years before Charlemagne,
and is probably the only specimen of furniture belonging to this period
which has been handed down to us. It is made of gilt bronze, and is said
to be the work of a monk.

For the designs of furniture of the tenth to the fourteenth centuries we
are in a great measure dependent upon old illuminations and missals of
these remote times. They represent chiefly the seats of state used by
sovereigns on the occasions of grand banquets, or of some ecclesiastical
function, and from the valuable collections of these documents in the
National Libraries of Paris and Brussels, some illustrations are
reproduced, and it is evident from such authorities that the designs of
State furniture in France and other countries dominated by the
Carlovingian monarchs were of Byzantine character, that pseudo-classic
style which was the prototype of furniture of about a thousand years
later, when the Caesarism of Napoleon I., during the early years of the
nineteenth century, produced so many designs which we now recognise as
"Empire."

No history of mediaeval woodwork would be complete without noticing the
Scandinavian furniture and ornamental wood carving of the tenth to the
fifteenth centuries. There are in the South Kensington Museum, plaster
casts of some three or four carved doorways of Norwegian workmanship, of
the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, in which scrolls are entwined
with contorted monsters, or, to quote Mr. Lovett's description, "dragons
of hideous aspect and serpents of mor