[Illustration:  Design of a Room, in the Classic Style, by Thomas Hope, Architect, In 1807.]

Snell, of Albemarle Street, had been established early in the century, and obtained an excellent reputation; his specialite was well-made birch bedroom suites, but he also made furniture of a general description.  The predecessor of the present firm of Howard and Son, who commenced business in Whitechapel as early as 1800, and the first Morant, may all be mentioned as manufacturers of the first quarter of the century.

Somewhat later, Trollopes, of Parliament Street; Holland, who had succeeded Dowbiggin (Gillow’s apprentice), first in Great Pulteney Street, and subsequently at the firm’s present address; Wilkinson, of Ludgate Hill, founder of the present firm of upholsterers in Bond Street; Aspinwall, of Grosvenor Street; the second Morant, of whom the great Duke of Wellington made a personal friend; and Grace, a prominent decorator of great taste, who carried out many of Pugin’s Gothic designs, were all men of good reputation.  Miles and Edwards, of Oxford Street, whom Hindleys succeeded, were also well known for good middle-class furniture.  These are some of the best known manufacturers of the first half of the present century, and though until after the great Exhibition there was, as a rule, little in the designs to render their productions remarkable, the work of those named will be found sound in construction, and free from the faults which accompany the cheap and showy reproductions of more pretentious styles which mark so much of the furniture of the present day.  With regard to this, more will be said in the next chapter.

There was then a very limited market for any but the most commonplace furniture.  Our wealthy people bought the productions of French cabinet makers, either made in Paris or by Frenchmen who came over to England, and the middle classes were content with the most ordinary and useful articles.  If they had possessed the means they certainly had neither the taste nor the education to furnish more ambitiously.  The great extent of suburbs which now surround the Metropolis, and which include such numbers of expensive and extravagantly-fitted residences of merchants and tradesmen, did not then exist.  The latter lived over their shops or warehouses, and the former only aspired to a dull house in Bloomsbury, or, like David Copperfield’s father-in-law, Mr. Spenlow, a villa at Norwood, or perhaps a country residence at Hampstead or Highgate.

In 1808 a designer and maker of furniture, George Smith by name, who held the appointment of “Upholder extraordinary to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales,” and carried on business at “Princess” Street, Cavendish Square, produced a book of designs, 158 in number, published by “Wm. Taylor,” of Holborn.  These include cornices, window drapery, bedsteads, tables, chairs, bookcases, commodes, and other furniture, the titles of some of which occur for about the first time in our vocabularies, having