lt-bronze and preserved in the Louvre, at
Paris. Any knowledge beyond this one piece, as to what Carlovingian
furniture was like (the eighth century) we get only from old
manuscripts which show it to have been the pseudo-classic, that is,
the classic modified by Byzantine influence, and very like the Empire
style of Napoleon I. Here is the reason for the type. Constantinople
was the capital of the Eastern Empire, when in 726 A.D., Emperor Leo
III prohibited image worship, and the artists and artisans of his part
of the world, in order to earn a livelihood, scattered over Europe,
settling in the various capitals, where they were eagerly welcomed and
employed.

Even so late as the tenth to fourteenth centuries the knowledge we
have of Gothic furniture still comes from illustrated manuscripts and
missals preserved in museums or in the national libraries.

Rome fell as an empire in the fifth century. In the eighth century,
Venice asserted herself, later becoming the great, wealthy, Merchant
City of Eastern Europe, the golden gate between Byzantium and the West
(eleventh to fifteenth centuries). Her merchants visiting every
country naturally carried home all art expressions, but, so far as we
know, her own chief artistic output in very early days, was in the
nature of richly carved wooden furniture, no specimens of which
remain.

CHAPTER XVI

THE GOTHIC PERIOD

The Gothic Period is the pointed period, and dominated the art of
Europe from about the tenth to the fifteenth century. Its origin was
Teutonic, its development and perfection French.

At first, the house of a feudal lord meant one large hall with a
raised dais, curtained off for him and his immediate family, and
subdivided into sleeping apartments for the women. On this dais a
table ran crossways, at which the lord and his family with their
guests, ate, while a few steps lower, at a long table running
lengthwise of the hall, sat the retainers. The hall was, also, the
living-room for all within the walls of the castle. Sand was strewn on
the stone floor and the dogs of the knights ate what was thrown to
them, gnawing the bones at their leisure. This rude scene was
surrounded by wonderful tapestries hung from the walls:--woman's
record of man's deeds.

Later, we read of stairs and of another room known as the _Parloir_ or
talking-room, and here begins the sub-division of homes, which in
democratic America has arrived at a point where more than 200 roo