Among the humbler gentry who could not afford the rich carvings and French marqueteric, the wainscoted rooms, whether whitewashed or no, were Jacobean in their furniture: but papers of a thin poor kind, intended, as I have said, to imitate the punched leather and stamped velvet in their spotty, rather patchy patterns, covered the walls of the less carefully built apartments. Flock paper was supposed to represent velvet rather successfully. The woodwork, when carving like Gibbons' was not accessible, was sliced at the edges into slight arches and angles, sometimes pretty in form, but hardly pretending to art in their rude simplicity of design and execution, save in the moderation of the curve, and the graining began to creep into every available place with its base and facile tricks - even real oak was smothered under its more fashionable semblance, as false flowers later were thought more stately than real ones. Stucco began to simulate wood reliefs wherever it was possible. It had been largely used for ceilings, and for ornamenting caskets, etc, all through the Reformation times; now it covered pilasters, door-panels, mantel-shelves, etc, still retaining the beautiful designs derived from classic art and modified by sixteenth century genius; but no doubt losing spirit and grace.

The windows were still often latticed, and the walls remained thick enough to form deep window-seats and doorways; but the newer furniture was far smaller and weaker than what was made in the previous century, and inlaid pieces, mounted in brass, began to be sought as the new French fashion. Their mechanical excellence covered a multitude of sins.

Not that the application of brass and ormolu to furniture, nor inlaying with coloured woods, was peculiar to Queen Anne's time, nor even indicative of it, for nothing was peculiar to it but the grained paint. In the fifteenth century the Italian 'intarsiatori' caught from ancient stone mosaics the idea of mosaic in woods. Inlaying was not rare in the sixteenth century, and in the curious Spanish piece combining organ and cabinet which stands in the South Kensington Museum among the old musical instruments, we may judge how perfect the manufacture had become as early as 1560. There we see marqueterie so skilful that it does not try (nor even attract) the eye at a few paces' distance. Curious markings of the natural wood seem to break up the plain surface, and these streaks and spots fall into designs of ruined temples, scrolls, and birds with surprising effect only when you are quite close to them. But all through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wood inlayings,with more and more vulgar and attractive patterns, were common in France, and in the later eighteenth century began to creep across the Channel into the houses of the English middle classes, only because the condition of the classes improved, and a larger number of people were able to buy tables and cabinets.

The finest marqueterie collected by Annamaniacs belongs to the Louis Seize period, and is signed with foreign names. Chippendale copied it.

Brass and ormolu scroll-edges attached to all parts of furniture, came into vogue in France and Italy about temp. Louis XIV. The designs lasted into Anne's reign as they have lasted into Victoria's. But this kind of elaborate furniture was too costly to become common for a long time, about the middle of the eighteenth century, when the designs were already deteriorating, and they can never properly be said to belong to English as much as to French art. I shall show later how the excessively ornate style grew out of the homelier by the natural process of increasing luxury and skill, and what the decadence under the ' Grand Monarque' became through gradual vitiation of the eye.

What people now call 'Queen Anne' fashions with a charming indifference to the trammels of dates, are the fashions of the three Georges, Marie Antoinette (under that queen French furniture and decoration whilst still sumptuous became refined and moderate), and especially everything which came in during the Empire (Napoleon I.). Now as Anne died in 1714 and Napoleon resigned his crown in 1815, there are just 100 years of perhaps the most remarkable changes and developments in domestic sentiments, and hence art, which ever occurred in a century, all named after Anne, whose tastes, strictly speaking, belonged to her father's generation. If people would but let poor Anne rest in her grave! The confusion her ghost has created is ludicrous. Only the other day I was shown a French mirror (Louis XIV.) by some really cultivated folks as 'Queen Anne - "Empire," you know - genuine Chippendale!'