THE gloom and solemnity of the last years of Louis XIV., ruled by a morose monarch and his bigoted, unacknowledged wife, gave place to the license of the Regency, and the exuberant vitality of a young king, the influence of which is fully reflected in decorative art. The Regency saw a short period of inflated wealth such as had never been dreamed of by any living man. Law's Mississippi Bubble, before it was pricked, enabled men to get rich in a day, and some of the upstarts paid fabulous sums for the best work that artists of all kinds could produce. Architecture had to give up parade and magnificence, and cater to comfort and convenience. Paris saw mansions and pretty little houses rise by the hundred. Their furniture and decoration bore the stamp of gaiety and caprice. There was open rebellion against the rigid rule of the last reign.

Le Brun's divinities become gay and frisky and laugh at you. Fauns get very hairy about the snout, plants climb and frolic along the limbs of the goddesses. Olympus becomes human; partitions are built to break up the too cold and imposing grand galleries and transform them into cabinets particuliers. The pier invades the walls, the chimney-piece assumes shell forms. In fact, as the subtle "Advice to lovers of design," which heads Oppenord's collection of engravings says, these works are composed in a "taste after the antique, - but richer." Then, we are led on to the charming follies of Meissonier, whom later we shall see go even further, growing ever and ever more" rich," but still thoroughly under the illusory conviction that his style is "antique."

Now we have arrived at what is perhaps the most exquisite and perfect period of the history of furniture in France. The workers of the Regency and of the reign of Louis XV. united with an incomparable manual dexterity a grace, fancy and caprice that is found nowhere else except perhaps in the best art of Japan.

Perhaps the greatest furniture-maker of this time was Charles Cressent (b. 1685). For the perfection of his workmanship, he ranks as high as Andre Charles Boulle, and perhaps surpasses the latter in the qualities of seductiveness and elegance. He was an engraver as well as a carver. Copper played a great part in the ornamentation of his coloured marquetry works, and he was able to set his own mark of taste and finesse directly upon his productions.

The Orient was exercising a powerful influence on French as on Dutch and English taste. We have seen that a liking for the contrast of richly coloured exotic woods was noticeable toward the end of the reign of Louis XIV. The Siamese embassy with its rich offerings of porcelain and lacquer had concentrated the eyes of the Court for a moment on the art of the East. French artists catered to the novelty, and from then till the middle of the Eighteenth Century the lacquers of China and Japan were actively though freely imitated.

First, the monkey was all the rage as a decorative motive. Monkeys climb up piers, swing on garlands in panels, and not only play their usual malicious tricks, but musical instruments also. They appear in all attitudes and combinations. Watteau, Huet, Gillot and even Chardin, the realist, bowed to the demand for Singerie. A good example of the use made of the monkey in furniture decoration is the beautiful Regency screen on Plate XXX., in which the characteristic scroll and shell also appear.

The monkey, however, was not the sole motive of decoration. Chinese and Japanese screens, jars and fans soon asserted their rights; and "chinoiserie" was in full swing. The walls and furniture for a time, as in England, show strong evidence of the "Chinese" taste. In France, however, it is followed at a greater distance from the original, and artistically modified and developed. The "chinoiserie" of Watteau and Gillot has only a faint though delicate flavour of the real Far East. This "chinoiserie" had some effect on furniture in certain ornamental details, and Cressent's work shows traces of the prevailing taste.

The artist who perhaps had the greatest influence in producing the Louis XV. rocaille style was J. A. Meis-sonier (b. 1695), who by his contemporaries was abused for having broken up the straight line outrageously and pushed the curve to extreme limits. He was the abomination of all who held the angular and dry in reverence. A very able designer, Cochin, in 1754, issues an appeal to goldsmiths, chisellers, interior woodwork carvers, engravers, etc. He begs them "when carving an artichoke or celery head in natural size to be kind enough not to set beside it a hare as big as a man's finger, a lark of natural size, and a pheasant one-fourth or one-fifth size; children of the same size as a vine-leaf; or figures of a supposed natural size supported by a decorative flower that could scarcely support a little bird without bending; trees with trunks slimmer than one of their own leaves, and many other sensible things of the same order. We should also be infinitely obliged to them if they would be kind enough not to change the uses of things, but to remember, for instance, that a chandelier should be straight and perpendicular, in order to carry the light, and not twisted as if it had been wrenched; and that a socket-rim should be concave to receive the running wax and not convex to shed it back upon the chandelier; and a multitude of equally unreasonable details that would take too long to particularize.

Similarly, carvers of interior decorations of rooms are begged to be obliging enough, when executing their trophies, not to make a scythe smaller than an hour-glass, a hat or Basque drum larger than a bass-viol, a man's head smaller than a rose, nor a sickle as big as a rake."

In reply we have the following protest: "It was necessary to find another kind of architecture in which every worker could distinguish himself and bring that kind of skill within the reach of everybody; nevertheless, accepted tastes should not be rudely shocked by the sudden production of novelties too remote from the reigning taste, thereby risking a hissing. At first the famous Oppenord served us zealously . . . He made lavish use of our favourite ornaments and brought them into favour. Even now he is useful to us, and there are some of us who take him as a model. . . . We found a stronger support in the talents of the great Meissonier. It is true that the latter had studied in Italy, and consequently was not one of us, but as he had wisely preferred the taste of Boromini to the wearisome antique taste, he had thereby come closer to us; for Boromini rendered the same service to Italy that we have to France, by introducing there an architecture gay and independent of all those rules that anciently were called good taste.