It is common to regard, and speak of, the temperament of the French people as one to which perpetual change and excitement are essential; and when the Gallic disposition, so instinct with vivacity, so full of verve, is contrasted with our own, something more than a slender foundation for that view may perhaps appear to exist. Proud as we may be, and unquestionably are, of our national characteristics, it is useless to deny the fact that the attitude of mind which we present under certain circumstances, and our actions, when compared with those of the French, must appear to the people of other nations sluggish and phlegmatic in the extreme; though which traits are the more desirable to cultivate is quite another matter, and one which does not call for discussion here.

Yet, in some respects our neighbours across the Channel have displayed, from time to time, a conservatism altogether unlooked for in a people possessed of such rare versatility; this was especially the case in the attitude which they assumed towards all matters appertaining to the arts of house furnishing and decoration as practised by them during nearly the whole of the nineteenth century. I would not, for one moment, suggest that there was not much admirable work done during that period by the designers and craftsmen of France, who were determined to sustain the old, and respected, traditions of their land. That task they accomplished without difficulty; they easily succeeded, moreover, in retaining their supremacy in the particular walks with which long acquaintance had made them familiar - a supremacy that has not by any means been wrested from them yet. It is true that they sustained old traditions; but, up to within a few years of the close of the last century, that was all that they attempted to do, or, at any rate, it was all that they succeeded in doing. Independently of this, they accomplished practically nothing worth recording; to all appearance they were absolutely barren of originality of any kind or description.

So far as progress was concerned, the "full stop" came in France with the final development of the "Empire," in as full measure, and in exactly the same way, as the fount of inspiration appeared to run dry, and a period of deadly dulness, almost without a single redeeming feature, came over the furnishing of our own homes when the pencil dropped for ever from the hand of Sheraton. It yet remains to be proved whether a new, and really serious, chapter has actually been commenced, or whether the few hesitant and fragmentary lines that have recently been added to the old story are simply expressions of transient thoughts, which lack the power and virility essential to arrest and hold the attention for any appreciable length of time.

What, then, were the French cabinet makers and designers doing during this lapse of so many years? A study of their published works, and of the records of the displays which they organised at their great Expositions Universelles, and for those held in other countries, will furnish a conclusive answer to that question; an answer, moreover, that will fully bear out the observations with which this chapter commences. Those records will show that, for many a long year, indeed from the fall of Napoleon to within the last decade of the century in which that event occurred, the French designer remained perfectly content to study the work of those who had gone before; "rescuing" every piece that had survived the depredations consequent upon many political upheavals; treasuring them carefully, and holding them in such veneration that any attempt to improve upon, or depart from, them would probably have been regarded as sacrilege. Every "Department" of the country was ransacked for authentic examples. Such as were brought to light, and could be acquired by the nation to supplement the incomparable store already possessed, were eagerly seized upon, and conveyed to places of honour in the national palaces, chateaux, and museums, where students, for generation after generation, were taken in order that they might imbibe, and put into practice to the best of their ability, the lessons which these relics of bygone days had to teach.

More than that even was done. In no country in the world have the names, and histories, of artists and art-craftsmen been handed down to posterity, and the beauty of their masterpieces placed on permanent record, so that he who runs may read, as in France. Volumes upon volumes - many of them truly monumental works, produced without any regard to the question of the expenditure of time, labour, or money - have come from the press, to tell the world of the glories of French furniture and decoration throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The services of the most gifted artists have been retained to reproduce those glories, so far as possible, by means of pen, pencil, and brush; and, with modern developments in photography and photographic reproduction, the camera has been set to work to render yet more perfect this ever-growing chronicle of the great things done for the beautification of the home by those furniture designers and makers whom even kings delighted to honour.

It is hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that, with the French, admiration of the "Francois-Premier," and "Henri-Deux"; of the "Louis-Quatorze," "Louis-Quinze," "Louis-Seize," and "Empire," developed almost into a creed, amongst the numerous adherents of which, for over half a century, there was not the slightest indication of heresy. Old models were studied and copied until it would seem that the idea of any serious departure from them was not within the bounds of possibility; and so it came about that the styles I have named, but more particularly the "Henri-Deux," "Louis-Quinze," "Louis-Seize," and "Empire," were "served up," so to express it, year after year, and decade after decade, until people became so accustomed to their apparently inevitable re-appearances that nothing else was seriously looked for in the land of their origin.