The names of these men, Manwaring and Ince and Mayhew, have survived largely because they wrote books; but there were others equally prosperous in their day whose merits, though in their own estimation very likely as great, have been obscured. J. T. Smith in Nollekens and his Times, vol. ii. p. 243, second edition 1829, mentions No. 72 Long-acre as having formed 'a small part of the extensive premises formerly occupied by that singularly haughty character Cobb, the Upholsterer.' Cobb 'was perhaps one of the proudest men in England, and always appeared in full dress of the most superb and costly kind, in which state he would strut through his workshop, giving orders to his men. He was the person who brought that very convenient table into fashion that draws out in front, with upper and inward rising desks, so healthy for those who stand to write, read, or draw. The late king frequently employed him, and often smiled at his pomposity.' Perhaps Cobb's demeanour was in part put on by policy. The cult of the minor arts was scarcely recognised in those days when Miss Laetitia Hawkins, in her reminiscences of Steevens, the Shakespeare commentator, cast the reproach at him, that 'with the most manly sense of the sublime and beautiful, he could yet panegyrise the delicacy of furniture!'

It is impossible to find quite the same personal interest in the designs of the Adam brothers as we do in those of Chippendale or even of the much-abused Manwaring. In the first place, they were not one man, but a firm of brothers helped by numerous clever draughtsmen and painters, such as Pergolesi, Zucchi, A.R.A., and Angelica Kauffmann, R.A., his wife. Secondly, the style they adopted was a classical one, ringing perpetual changes upon a few motives, and though full of elegance and lightness, was un-English and lacking in familiar charm. Thirdly, they did not make the furniture which they designed. Yet their influence upon the cabinetmakers must have been great, and the moving spirit, Robert Adam, was a man whose name counts for much in the history of English furniture. We shall find presently that he made himself responsible for things great and little. He would design a nobleman's house, with its interior decorations, its carpets, its beds and cabinets, down to sauce-boats and counterpanes and work-bags; and upon all these various things he laid the impress of an all-pervading classical style.

Robert Adam was the second of four brothers, John, Robert, James, and William, whose relationship is commemorated in the name of the Adelphi, which they built upon the banks of the Thames. Their father was a well known Edinburgh architect. Robert Adam was born in 1728. In 1754 he visited Italy in company with Clerisseau, the French architect, whose clever drawings of classical ruins in 'gouache' are well known to connoisseurs. Adam made a special study of the palace of Diocletian at Spalato, in Dalmatia. His journal was printed in the Library of Fine Arts. In 1764 Adam published a folio volume with engravings by Bartolozzi of his Dalmatian drawings. His object in selecting this ruin was to introduce a classical building of a residential kind to the English public, whose knowledge of classical architecture, so far as it went, was derived exclusively from the remains of public buildings. In 1762 Adam was made architect to the King and Queen, and in 1768 he became Member of Parliament for Kinross-shire. The Adelphi was built in 1769. The remaining chief architectural works of Robert and James Adam (the other two, of whom William died in 1748, were not distinguished) are Caenwood, near Hampstead; Osterley, near Brentford; Shelburne, now Lansdowne House, in Berkeley Square; Luton House, Bedfordshire. In Portland Place, Stratford Place, Hamilton Place, and the south and east sides of Fitzroy Square their hand is very much in evidence.

No. 25 Portland Place was built and fitted for Robert Adam's private use. They are responsible for the introduction of stucco to cover brick houses, but they at least deserve the credit for having made an artistic employment of it, very dissimilar to its effect in the South Kensington era of thirty or forty years ago. Fergusson ranks their classical knowledge below that of Sir W. Chambers, but if it was shallower it was more graceful. In 1773 Robert and James began to publish their Works in Architecture in folio parts at intervals till 1783. In 1822 the work was completed by a posthumous volume. A considerable number of furniture designs was included. Robert must have been a capable artist, as he obtained some reputation as a landscape painter. He died in 1792, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. James, whose work is not to be differentiated from that of his brother, but who is credited with the design of Portland Place, died in 1794, having succeeded his brother as King's architect. For some of these particulars I am indebted to the Dictionary of National Biography.