The table on the same plate is inlaid and has a border of inlaid brass and wood around the top. The two drawers under the top have borders of brass and are decorated with brass lions. In the centre of each cross-piece there is a decoration of leaves surrounding a rosette. The legs are gilded at intervals, and are ornamented with gilt lion's heads and end in claw feet. This dates from about 1780.

The screen on the same plate is supported on a stand of wood fluted and gilded, out of which rises a brass rod. The oval frame encloses a piece of silk embroidery said to have been made by Queen Caroline. The little picture in the centre is painted. No. 1 is a curtain cornice, of which Adam says: "These curtains were intended as an attempt to banish absurd French compositions." No. 2 is a ewer, that also appears in the Adam book. Plate XLIX. is a library after the Adam style. The full drawing on Plate LII. is a commode from the Countess of Derby's dressing-room; it is richly decorated. No. 2 is a detail. No. 3 on the same plate from it is a girandole, made for a niche in the Earl of Derby's Etruscan Room. The full drawing is "a design of a vase for candles to be fixed to the wainscoting of a room"; the central vase is a perfume-burner. No. 1 is a tripod of gilded wood, intended to support a base with candles.

Among the ornaments used by the Adam brothers were mythological subjects, lozenge-shaped panels, octagons, ovals, hexagons, circles, wreaths, fans, husks, medallions, draped medallions, medallions with figures, the sphinx, the faun, goats, drapery, ribbons, eagle-headed grotesques, griffins, sea-horses, the ram's head, the patera, the rosette, caryatides and other Classic motives.

The ornaments of the ceilings and walls were stucco picked out with different tints, frequently pink and green. In handsome rooms, the chimney-piece was of statuary marble, the overmantel carved in wood and gilt, or painted. The drawing-room ceiling was coved and the compartments painted. Pilasters were often used to divide the rooms and the ornaments of these, like the arches and panels of the doors, were painted. The frieze was stucco. Ornaments in the niches were frequently gilt, as well as the girandoles and stucco ornaments of the ceilings. The Adams also recommended ornaments printed on papier mache and "so highly japanned as to appear like glass." Damask and tapestry were used for hanging the drawing-room, but not the dining-room. They assert that within the past few years there has been "a remarkable improvement in the form, convenience, arrangement and relief of apartments; a greater movement and variety, in the outside composition and in the decoration of the inside, an almost total change.

The massive entablature, the ponderous compartment ceiling, the tabernacle frame almost the only species of ornament, formerly known in this country, are now universally exploded, and in their place we have adopted a beautiful variety of light mouldings, gracefully formed, delicately enriched and arranged with propriety and skill. We have introduced a great diversity of ceilings, frieze and decorated pilasters, and have added grace and beauty to the whole, by a mixture of grotesque* stucco and painted ornaments, together with the flowing rain-ceau* with its fanciful figures and winding foliage.

* "By grotesque is meant that beautiful light stile of ornament used by the ancient Romans in the decoration of the palaces, baths and villas. It is also to be seen in some of their amphitheatres, temples and tombs; the greatest part of which being vaulted and covered with ruins, have been dug up and cleared by the modern Italians, who, for these reasons, give them the name of grette, which is perhaps a corruption of the Latin Crista, a word borrowed from the Greeks, as the Romans did most of their terms, in architecture; and hence the word grotesque, and the English word signifying a cave.

"In the times of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Julio Romano, Polidoro, Giov. d'Udine, Vasari, Zuchero and Algardi, there is no doubt but there was much greater remains of the grotte, than what are now to be seen, and in imitation of them were decorated the loggias of the Vatican, the villas Madama, Pamnli, Caprarola, the old palace at Florence; and indeed whatever else is elegant and admirable in the finishings of modem Italy. The French, who till of late never adopted the ornaments of the ancients, and jealous as all mankind are of the reputation of their national taste, have branded those ornaments with the vague and fantastical appelation of arabesque, a stile which, though entirely distinct from the grotesque, has, notwithstanding, been most absurdly and universally confounded with it by the ignorant.

" This classical stile of ornament, by far the most perfect that has ever appeared for inside decorations, and which has stood the test of many ages, like other works of genius, requires not only fancy and imagination in the composition, but taste and judgment in the application; and when these are happily combined, this gay and elegant mode is capable of inimitable beauties.

"A proper arrangement and relief of apartments are branches of architecture in which the French have excelled all other nations; these have united magnificence with utility in the hotels of their nobility, and have rendered them objects of universal imitation.

"To understand thoroughly the art of living, it is necessary, perhaps, to have passed some time among the French, and to have studied the customs of that social and conversible people. In one particular, however, our manners prevent us from imitating them. Their eating-rooms seldom or never constitute a piece in their great apartments, but lie out of the suite, and in fitting them up, little attention is paid to beauty or decoration. The reason of this is obvious; the French meet there only at meals, when they trust to the display of the table for show and magnificence, not to the decoration of the apartment; and as soon as the entertainment is over, they immediately retire to the rooms of company. Not so with us. Accustomed by habit, or induced by the nature of our climate, we indulge more largely in the enjoyment of the bottle. Every person of rank here is either a member of the legislature, or entitled by his condition to take part in the political arrangements of his country, and to enter with ardour into those discussions to which they give rise; these circumstances lead men to live more with one another, and more detached from the society of the ladies. The eating-rooms are considered as the apartments of conversation, in which we are to pass a great part of our time.