BY furniture, or rather movables - for anything that clothes the room in any way is its furniture - we generally understand chairs, sofas, and tables; and a few words must be separately given to these necessaries, for whatever else we add, these we cannot do without.

The construction of these mechanical aids ought to be as logical as that of a great cathedral. Dress itself should be logical. The requirements of a chair must be considered, and they are: (1) to support a heavy body, (2) to be shifted with facility, (3) to be ornaments of a minor kind in themselves, (4) to afford a pleasant and 'becoming' background to the human beings likely to come in contact with them.

Nothing is more easy to say; nothing is less easy to find. The forms of chairs constantly deny the object for which they were intended; there are, however, some which are logically well-designed and only spoilt by extraneous ornament, therefore I need not do more than draw my reader's attention to the fact that without being an architectural parody, like much French seventeenth-century furniture, chairs, sofas, and tables ought to be architecturally planned, and every thoughtful architect knows that beauty springs from utility, not empty sentiment.