[Illustration:  “Drawing Room Chairs in Profile.”  From G. Smith’s Book, published 1808.]

Early Victorian.

In the work of the manufacturers just enumerated, may be traced the influence of the “Empire” style.  With the restoration, however, of the Monarchy in France came the inevitable change in fashions, and “Le style de l’Empire” was condemned.  In its place came a revival of the Louis Quinze scrolls and curves, but with less character and restraint, until the style we know as “baroque,” [19] or debased “rococo,” came in.  Ornament of a florid and incongruous character was lavished on decorative furniture, indicative of a taste for display rather than for appropriate enrichment.

It had been our English custom for some long period to take our fashions from France, and, therefore, about the time of William IV. and during the early part of the present Queen’s reign, the furniture for our best houses was designed and made in the French style.  In the “Music” Room at Chatsworth are some chairs and footstools used at the time of the Coronation of William IV. and Queen Adelaide, which have quite the appearance of French furniture.

The old fashion of lining rooms with oak panelling, which has been noticed in an earlier chapter, had undergone a change which is worth recording.  If the illustration of the Elizabethan oak panelling, as given in the English section of Chapter III., be referred to, it will be seen that the oak lining reaches from the floor to within about two or three feet of the cornice.  Subsequently this panelling was divided into an upper and a lower part, the former commencing about the height of the back of an ordinary chair, a moulding or chair-rail forming a capping to the lower part.  Then pictures came to be let into the panelling; and presently the upper part was discarded and the lower wainscoting remained, properly termed the Dado,[20] which we have seen revived both in wood and in various decorative materials of the present day.  During the period we are now discussing, this arrangement lost favour in the eyes of our grandfathers, and the lowest member only was retained, which is now termed the “skirting board.”

As we approach a period that our older contemporaries can remember, it is very interesting to turn over the leaves of the back numbers of such magazines and newspapers as treated of the Industrial Arts.  The Art Union, which changed its title to the Art Journal in 1849, had then been in existence for about ten years, and had done good work in promoting the encouragement of Art and manufactures.  The “Society of Arts” had been formed in London as long ago as 1756, and had given prizes for designs and methods of improving different processes of manufacture.  Exhibitions of the specimens sent in for competition for the awards were, and are still, held at their house in Adelphi Buildings.  Old volumes of “Transactions of the Society” are quaint works of reference with regard to these exhibitions.