I cannot close my survey of this luxurious period without a few words on the marqueterie which was brought to such perfection after Louis Quatorze, and which is now so often the favourite pursuit of collectors. This kind of furniture is obstinately called 'Queen Anne,' like most other things nowadays; and people are mostly surprised when told that their very elegant drawing- and bed-rooms are 'Louis Seize.'

Strong as is my preference for Gothic, or very early Renascence furniture and decoration, because of its robuster excellence, I must own that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries furniture reached its acme; never before were rich fancy, unsurpassed skill of hand, and knowledge of effect pressed so lavishly into the service of beds, cabinets and wall-coverings, as I showed in 'a Louis Quatorze Room.' Furniture cannot go farther than certain exquisite ebony constructions in the Cluny Museum at Paris, carved from one end to the other, mounted in silver, set with precious stones, and tiny bas-reliefs still more precious. Nay, furniture ought not to go so far, since such ornamentation unfits it for its purpose, and makes it like a genre picture, merely a toy, not meant to be handled.

Nos. 601, 603, 5941 and 592 in the above museum are examples of what cabinets can be, and should not be. They are the very hetcercz of furniture. The detail is exquisite, the ensemble seen from afar disappointing, from the darkness of the wood; as for their utility, it must always have been nil, like that of the 'white elephants' of old.

1 Ebony cabinet (seventeenth century), No. 594, Cluny Museum; about 5 1/2 feet high, projecting from the wall about 2 feet. Designs such as Benvenuto Cellini's fill the tiny panels on the face, all in low relief; the frieze however is adorned with ebony figures, completely raised from the ground, like dolls fastened to it. Architectural ornaments occur at the sides of the cabinet, such as Corinthian columns with gilt capitals. Ivory reliefs are inserted in places; and in the loiver part Limoges enamel pictures are set at each end, suggesting the query, must not this cabinet have been mounted on a pedestal, to bring these delicate enamels level with the eye? It has been impaired by the additions made to it by Faivret, to which noted ebeniste Lord Nelson sent it from Spain to be put in order.

But good marqueterie has a reasonable, smooth surface; and supplies a proper decorative background, like tapestry, Spanish leather, carved oak (not blackened), or any other material which has the self-tint mottled or variegated by one means or another, and thus offers a considerable space of soft, quiet 'broken colour' when viewed from a distance; not a plain single tint. It is this shrewd mingling of many colours into a soft bloomy whole, which renders fine Oriental decorative work at once so interesting and so 'becoming' to whatever is brought near it. All true decorators have felt this. Boule felt it, and hence devised the ingenious combination of tortoiseshell and other substances which we all know as common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The designers of the fine Spanish leather and the best kind of tapestry felt it; whilst those who made such wall-coverings so brilliant as to aim at deception, at a later time, missed the secret of good decorative work. Morris felt it when he designed his well-known pomegranate paper.

Marqueterie such as the old piece spoken of at page 41 is admirable; and eighteenth century marqueterie is often very good now, because its once brilliant hues have faded, so as to represent nearly the real unstained woods which at first were used before taste had become vitiated. It presents a broad surface of broken brownish colour, which is a capital background when not injured by extravagance of form.

The fortunate possessors of Louis Quatorze marqueterie, or pieces by Riesener, David Roentgen, and other well-known makers French and German, have it in their power to arrange very beautiful rooms, whether planned after the dainty elegance of the Louis Seize time, or after the somewhat broader and richer manner of an earlier date, provided these good people do not destroy the soft chequered colour of the furniture by pallid walls which they fondly call 'Queen Anne,' or contradict the voluptuous curves inseparable from the fashions of the three Louis's, by the strict angles of 'Empire' objects, which, however neatly fluted, polished or inlaid, have a character pronounced enough to be quite out of harmony with works of any other period.