'The drawing-room,' Sheraton ordains, 'is to concentrate the elegance of the whole house, and is the highest display of richness of furniture. It being appropriated to the formal visits of the highest in rank, (and) nothing of a scientific nature should be introduced to take up the attention of any individual from the general conversation that takes place on such occasions. Hence, the walls should be free of pictures, the tables not lined with books, nor the angles of the room filled with globes; as the design of such meetings are not that each visitant should turn to his favourite study, but to contribute his part towards the amusement of the whole company. The grandeur then introduced into the drawing-room is not to be considered as the ostentatious parade of its proprietor, but the respect he pays to the rank of his visitant.' All this comes under the heading 'Furnish.' Under 'Drawing-Room' we are told that 'the furniture used in a drawing-room are sofas, chairs to match, a commode, pier-tables, elegant fire-screens, large glasses, figures with lights in their hands, and bronzes with lights on the cap of the chimneypiece, or on the pier-tables and commodes, and sometimes mirrors with lights fixed at the end of the room, or the side, as may best suit for the reflection or perspective representation of the room on the surface of the mirror.' It may be objected that this is excessively conventional, but we have to remember that Sheraton is writing expressly for the upholsterer, giving him a set of general rules based upon practice.

It would have been very unsafe to leave the purveyor of furniture to his own original devices, and very unsatisfactory to the vast majority of his perfectly conventional patrons.

At least one hundred pages of this work are devoted to perspective and painting, of which Sheraton makes as great a parade as his predecessors did with the 'Five Orders,' with more excuse in a Cabinet Dictionary than Chippendale in his book of designs.

The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-Book, to the third edition (1802) of which I refer, has a frontispiece which requires a whole paragraph of explanation. Geometry stands on a rock conversing with Perspective. On the left, seated near the window, is an artist busy in designing. The back figure is Architecture measuring the shaft of a Tuscan column, and in the background is the Temple of Fame to which a knowledge of these arts directly leads. Sheraton addresses his preface 'To Cabinet-Makers and Upholsterers in general.' He quarrels with Chippendale for leaving out in his last edition the plates of the two chairs, dressing-table, and bookcase, set out in perspective, which appear in the first edition, but he quotes Chippendale upon the importance of perspective. Ince and Mayhew's, he says, is 'a book of merit in its day.' Writing in 1793, he affirms that Heppelwhite's book (1788) has 'already caught the decline, if we compare some of the designs, particularly the chairs, with the newest taste.' This is one of the rather unhandsome statements concerning Heppelwhite of which Sheraton is guilty. Some of his chairs (cf. Plate CXXXVIX.2) are so remarkably akin to those of Heppelwhite that the opinion he expresses is either uncalled for or reflects upon his own work.

Plate 44 in the Drawing-Book, a. design for a writing-table, may be compared with that by Heppelwhite in the Book of Prices. It has not the pretty leg stretchers of Heppelwhite's design, but is otherwise very similar. As to the Book of Prices, he remarks that it 'lays claim to merit and does honour to the publishers.' It is curious that he does not seem to have noticed that Heppelwhite had to do with it, for he says, 'it may be observed with justice that these designs are more fashionable and useful than his (in Heppelwhite's book) in proportion to their numbers.' He seems to have entertained a little touch of unchristian jealousy towards Heppelwhite. In a footnote to his query whether the authors of the Prices 'had the advantage of seeing Heppelwhite's book before theirs was published,' he says: 'This is not meant to insinuate any disrespectful ideas of the abilities of those who drew the designs in the Cabinet-Maker'5 Book of Prices. I doubt not but they were capable of doing more than Heppelwhite has done, without the advantage of seeing his book; and it may be, for anything I know, that the advantage was given on their side.' As we know, Heppelwhite and Shearer collaborated in the Book of Prices, and there is not much doubt that Heppelwhite was the more versatile of the two.