The history of furniture in a country of a civilisation so old and so brilliant as that of France is a very different thing from a technical review of archaeology or art. It is the history of the very soul of a people, with its alternations of grandeur and of degradation, of achievement and of failure; in a word, it is the history of the inner life of a nation, a life that is too often overlooked in studying the glorious or tragic episodes in which kings and nobles overshadow their subjects. Yet those subjects are as important as dynasties in the annals of history. Turn, for instance, for a moment from the accounts of the victories of this or that conqueror to the home of some one of the men whose destinies he controls. How sudden is the change to gloom ! The furniture is of the very simplest description, ready for immediate flight or exile, and its owners poverty proves that art and industry are alike paralysed. Some other ruler who has left behind him a great reputation for luxury and generosity, if judged by the unbridled extravagance indulged in in every household during his reign, will appear in the novel character of a disorganiser of domestic economy.

The intellect, the conscience, the vital force of a race is often concealed behind the deceptive personalities of its chiefs, and it is really in studying the condition of the people that an insight can be obtained into their moral history. For this reason, it is desirable to bring something more than a mere artistic curiosity to bear upon the changes which in the course of centuries have taken place in such furniture as tables, seats, and beds, for these humble objects have been the inseparable companions of many owners through many vicissitudes.

To these general considerations, applicable to the study of domestic art in every country, we must add one which has special reference to the genius of France, and will be to some extent the guiding principle of this book. The sons of the soil in that country were never, strictly speaking, inventors, they never evolved the primary germ of a new style; but they had a marvellous gift for assimilating the foreign ideas with which they were brought in contact, and, as it were, recasting in the powerful crucible of their brain enfeebled, incomplete, or decadent exotic conceptions issuing them anew to the world in the form of works instinct with vigour and vitality, and stamped with the grace and truth of proportion that are the distinctive characteristics of French taste. The great events, whether of peace or war, which brought the French into communication with other nations were therefore, it is evident - as will be proved in the course of our narrative - the natural causes of the succession of different styles which arose in France during the course of some two thousand years.

We take up our story at the birth of the French national character - the result of a happy fusion of Romano and Celtic elements; we lay it down on the threshold of the nineteenth century, for in our opinion the modern period is essentially one of transition, during which popular taste is unconsciously and, as it were, secretly adapting the home of the day to the requirements and theories that are the outcome of an age of unparalleled scientific progress. It is indeed always somewhat rash to criticise work without making allowance for the natural recoil of time, and contemporaneous opinion is ever ready to recognise the decadence of its own epoch. The laudator temporis acti does not date from the time of Horace only, and we should hesitate long before we lose confidence in a people such as the French, who have proved themselves able during so many centuries to give birth to great revivals at the very moment when their creative vigour appeared to be finally exhausted.

Andre Saglio.