being strictly confined to the windows,
they never dreamed of displaying themselves in front of a door. No
golden serpents then twisted their voluminous folds across the entire
breadth of the room; nor did richly-carved cods' heads and shoulders,
under the denomination of dolphins, or glittering spread eagles, with a
brass ring in their mouths, support fenestral draperies, which rival the
display of a Waterloo-house calico-vender. Thus far, I admit, the change
is an improvement. Nay, I could away with ladders to go to bed withal,
though many a time and oft they have broken my shins. I would not either
object to sofas and ottomans, in any reasonable proportion; but protest
I must, and in the strongest terms too, against such a multiplication
and variety of easy chairs, as effectually exclude the possibility of
easy sitting; and against the overweening increase of spider-tables,
that interferes with rectilinear progression. An harp mounted on a
sounding-board, which is a stumbling-block to the feet of the
short-sighted, is, I concede, an absolute necessity; and a piano-forte,
like a coffin, should occupy the centre even of the smallest given
drawing-room--"the court awards it, and the law doth give it,"--but why
multiply footstools, till there is no taking a single step in safety? An
Indian cabinet also, or a buhl armoire, are, either, or both of them,
very fit and becoming; but it cannot be right to make a broker's shop of
your best apartment. An ink-stand, as large as a show twelfth-cake, is
just and lawful; ditto, an ornamental escrutoire; and a _necessaire_ for
the work-table is, if there be meaning in language, perfectly necessary.
These, with an adequate contingent of musical snuff-boxes, _or molu_
clocks, China figures, alabaster vases and flower-pots, together with a
discreet superfluity of cut-paper nondescripts, albums, screens, toys,
prints, caricatures, duodecimo classics, new novels and souvenirs, to
cut a dash, and litter the tables, must be allowed to the taste and
refinement of the times. But surely some space should be left for
depositing a coffee-cup, or laying down a useful volume, when the hand
may require to be relieved from its weight, or when it is proper to take
a pinch of snuff, or agreeable to wipe one's forehead. Josses, beakers,
and Sevres' vases have unquestionably the _entree_ into a genteel
apartment; but they are not entitled to a monopoly of the _locale_; nor
are Roman antiquities, or statu