The Duke of Buckingham's glass factory, established in 1673 at Lambeth, must have led to a great demand for mirror glass, which had not before been made in England. In an inventory of Corfe Castle taken in .1660 there is not a mirror mentioned. After 1673 they were frequent, and bordered sometimes with blue glass, and sometimes painted with flowers, etc., in the Venetian manner, which was introduced by the Venetian workmen who made the glass. Mr. J. H. Pollen in Ancient and Modern Furniture and Woodwork in the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), introduction, p. 138, mentions that Sir Samuel Morland built a fine room at Vauxhall in 1667, the inside all of looking-glass; whilst the house of Nell Gwynne in Pall Mall had the back room on the ground floor entirely lined with looking-glass, as was said to have been the ceiling also.1 Such rooms as these were, however, but instances of exceptional luxury. For the country gentleman who witnessed the Revolution, as described by Macaulay, they did not exist. 'He troubled himself little about decorating his abode, and if he attempted decoration, seldom produced anything but deformity.' This may be set down as a somewhat sweeping statement, not at any rate true for us who, fifty years and more after Macaulay wrote, have learned to appreciate the quiet artistic merits of even the most provincial chairs and tables.

Considering that in Charles II.'s reign there was not a town besides London of thirty thousand people, and only four of ten thousand, no great magnificence was to be expected. In 1654 Bath is described by Evelyn as, though built of stone, a town of ' streetes narrow, uneven, and unpleasant,' and Macaulay quotes a writer who says of it, sixty years after the Revolution, that in his younger days visitors slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupied by his footmen. The floors of the rooms were uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer in order to hide the dirt. That no wainscots were painted, and no chimneypieces were of marble, is merely a proof that in fashions the city was behind London, not that there might not have been artistic woodwork. But the writer adds that the best apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were furnished with rush-bottomed chairs. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find a considerable plainness in the ordinary furniture and decoration of the Restoration and some time after, unless when we are considering London, the great country houses, or the rooms of Charles II.'s mistresses.

1 See Appendix, Note v.

Plate XCVI. I - One Of A Pair Of Chairs, Mahogany, Chippendale

XCVI. (1) Chairs, one of a pair of, mahogany. Chippendale. Seat embroidered in silks and wools. Lieutenant-Colonel G. B. C. Lyons.

(2) Armchair, mahogany. Chippendale. Messrs. Barker and Co.