About 1840, Mr., afterwards Sir, Charles Barry, R.A., had designed and commenced the present, or, as it was then called, the New Palace of Westminster, and, following the Gothic character of the building, the furniture and fittings were naturally of a design to harmonize with what was then quite a departure from the heavy architectural taste of the day.  Mr. Barry was the first in this present century to leave the beaten track, although the Reform and Travellers’ Clubs had already been designed by him on more classic lines.  The Speaker’s chair in the House of Commons is evidently designed after one of the fifteenth century “canopied seats,” which have been noticed and illustrated in the second chapter; and the “linen scroll pattern” panels can be counted by the thousand in the Houses of Parliament and the different official residences which form part of the Palace.  The character of the work is subdued and not flamboyant, is excellent in design and workmanship, and is highly creditable, when we take into consideration the very low state of Art in England fifty years ago.

This want of taste was very much discussed in the periodicals of the day, and, yielding to expressed public opinion, Government had in 1840-1 appointed a Select Committee to take into consideration the promotion of the fine Arts in the country, Mr. Charles Barry, Mr. Eastlake, and Sir Martin Shee, R.A., being amongst the witnesses examined.  The report of this Committee, in 1841, contained the opinion “That such an important and National work as the erection of the two Houses of Parliament affords an opportunity which ought not to be neglected of encouraging, not only the higher, but every subordinate branch of fine Art in this country.”

Mr. Augustus Welby Pugin was a well-known designer of the Gothic style of furniture of this time.  Born in 1811, he had published in 1835 his “Designs for Gothic Furniture,” and later his “Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume”; and by skilful application of his knowledge to the decorations of the different ecclesiastical buildings he designed, his reputation became established.  One of his designs is here reproduced.  Pugin’s work and reputation have survived, notwithstanding the furious opposition he met with at the time.  In a review of one of his books, in the Art Union of 1839, the following sentence completes the criticism:—­“As it is a common occurrence in life to find genius mistaken for madness, so does it sometimes happen that a madman is mistaken for a genius.  Mr. Welby Pugin has oftentimes appeared to us to be a case in point.”

[Illustration:  Prie-dieu, In Carved Oak, enriched with Painting and Gilding.  Designed by Mr. Pugin, and manufactured by Mr. Crace, London.]

At this time furniture design and manufacture, as an Industrial Art in England, seems to have attracted no attention whatever.  There are but few allusions to the design of decorative woodwork in the periodicals of the day; and the auctioneers’ advertisements—­with a few notable exceptions, like that of the Strawberry Hill Collection of Horace Walpole, gave no descriptions; no particular interest in the subject appears to have been manifested, save by a very limited number of the dilettanti, who, like Walpole, collected the curios and cabinets of two or three hundred years ago.