The best designers of modern painted furniture are partly responsible for the revived interest in both Empire and Directoire.  From their reproductions of the beautiful simple outlines, we, as a people, are once more beginning to feel line and to recognise it as an intrinsic part of beauty.

PLATE XXI

A Victorian group in a small portion of a very large parlour, 70 x 40 feet, one of the few remaining, if not the last, of the old Victorian mansions in New York City, very interesting as a specimen of the most elegant style of furnishing in the first half of the nineteenth century.

We would call attention to the heavy moulding of ceilings, the walls painted in panels (painted panels or wall paper to represent panels, is a Victorian hallmark), beautifully hand-carved woodwork, elaboration of design and colon carpet, woven in one piece for the room; in fact the characteristic richness of elaboration everywhere:  Pictures in gilded carved frames, hung on double silk cords with tassels, heavily carved furniture made in England, showing fruits, flowers and medallion heads, and a similar elaboration and combination of flora and figures on bronze gas fixtures.

     Heavy curtains of satin damask hung at the windows, held back by
     great cords and tassels, from enormous brass cornices in the form
     of gigantic flowers.

Also of the period is an immense glass case of stuffed birds, standing in the corner of the large dining-room.  This interior was at the height of its glory at the time of the Civil War, and one is told of wonderful parties when the uniforms of the Northern officers decorated the stately rooms and large shaded gardens adjoining the house.

     As things go in New York it may be but a matter of months before
     this picturesque landmark is swept away by relentless Progress.

[Illustration:  Part of a Victorian Parlour in One of the Few Remaining New York Victorian Mansions]

CHAPTER XXIV

THE VICTORIAN PERIOD

Gradually architecture and interior decoration drew apart, becoming two distinct professions, until during the Victorian era the two were unrelated with the result that the period of Victorian furniture is one of the worst on record.

There were two reasons for this divorce of the arts, which for centuries had been one in origin and spirit; first, the application of steam to machinery (1815) leading to machine-made furniture, and second, the invention of wall-paper which gradually took the place of wood panelling and shut off the architects from all jurisdiction over the decoration of the home.

With the advent of machine-made furniture came cheap imitations of antiques and the rapid decadence of this art.  Hand-made reproductions are quite another thing.  Sir Richard Wallace (of the Wallace Collection, London) is said to have given $40,000 for a reproduction of the bureau du Louvre.