become primary necessaries in the appointment of a well-furnished house.
Here, indeed, is a revolution; a revolution more formidable than the
French and the American emancipation put together. We all remember the
time when one tea-table, two or three card-tables, a pier glass, a small
detachment of chairs, with two armed corporals to command them, on
either side the fire-place, with a square piece of carpet in the centre
of the floor, made a very decent display in the drawing, or (as it was
then preposterously called) the dining-room. As yet, rugs for the hearth
were not; and twice a day did Betty go upon her knees to scour the
marble and uncovered slab. In the bedrooms of those days, a narrow slip
of carpet round the bed was the maximum of woollen integument allowed
for protecting the feet of the midnight wanderer from his couch; and, in
the staircases of the fairest mansions, a like slip meandered down the
centre of the flight of steps. At that time, curtains rose and fell in a
line parallel to the horizon, after the simple plan of the green
siparium of our theatres; and, being strictly confined to the windows,
they never dreamed of displaying themselves in front of a door. No
golden serpents then twisted their voluminous folds across the entire
breadth of the room; nor did richly-carved cods' heads and shoulders,
under the denomination of dolphins, or glittering spread eagles, with a
brass ring in their mouths, support fenestral draperies, which rival the
display of a Waterloo-house calico-vender. Thus far, I admit, the change
is an improvement. Nay, I could away with ladders to go to bed withal,
though many a time and oft they have broken my shins. I would not either
object to sofas and ottomans, in any reasonable proportion; but protest
I must, and in the strongest terms too, against such a multiplication
and variety of easy chairs, as effectually exclude the possibility of
easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables,
that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a
sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the