d, high-backed
Dutch chairs of the seventeenth century; there was a sculptured carved
buffet of the sixteenth; there was a sideboard robbed out of the carved
work of a church in the Low Countries, and a large brass cathedral lamp
over the round oak table; there were old family portraits from Wardour
Street and tapestry from France, bits of armour, double-handed swords
and battle-axes made of carton-pierre, looking-glasses, statuettes of
saints, and Dresden china--nothing, in a word, could be chaster. Behind
the dining-room was the library, fitted with busts and books all of
a size, and wonderful easy-chairs, and solemn bronzes in the severe
classic style. Here it was that, guarded by double doors, Sir Francis
smoked cigars, and read Bell's Life in London, and went to sleep after
dinner, when he was not smoking over the billiard-table at his clubs, or
punting at the gambling-houses in Saint James's.

But what could equal the chaste splendour of the drawing-rooms?--the
carpets were so magnificently fluffy that your foot made no more noise
on them than your shadow: on their white ground bloomed roses and tulips
as big as warming-pans: about the room were high chairs and low chairs,
bandy-legged chairs, chairs so attenuated that it was a wonder any but
a sylph could sit upon them, marquetterie-tables covered with marvellous
gimcracks, china ornaments of all ages and countries, bronzes, gilt
daggers, Books of Beauty, yataghans, Turkish papooshes and boxes of
Parisian bonbons. Wherever you sate down there were Dresden shepherds
and shepherdesses convenient at your elbow; there were, moreover, light
blue poodles and ducks and cocks and hens in porcelain; there were
nymphs by Boucher, and shepherdesses by Greuze, very chaste indeed;
there were muslin curtains and brocade curtains, gilt cages with
parroquets and love-birds, two squealing cockatoos, each out-squealing
and out-chattering the other; a clock singing tunes on a console-table,
and another booming the hours like Great Tom, on the mantelpiece--there
was, in a word, everything that comfort could desire, and the most
elegant taste devise. A London drawing-room, fitted up without regard
to expense, is surely one of the noblest and most curious sights of the
present day. The Romans of the Lower Empire, the dear Marchionesses and
Countesses of Louis XV., could scarcely have had a finer taste than our
modern folks exhibit; and everybody who saw Lady Clavering's reception
room