The point to which I allude, and I beg the patience of the
reader, is the vast increase of superfluities, which of late years have
become primary necessaries in the appointment of a well-furnished house.
Here, indeed, is a revolution; a revolution more formidable than the
French and the American emancipation put together. We all remember the
time when one tea-table, two or three card-tables, a pier glass, a small
detachment of chairs, with two armed corporals to command them, on
either side the fire-place, with a square piece of carpet in the centre
of the floor, made a very decent display in the drawing, or (as it was
then preposterously called) the dining-room. As yet, rugs for the hearth
were not; and twice a day did Betty go upon her knees to scour the
marble and uncovered slab. In the bedrooms of those days, a narrow slip
of carpet round the bed was the maximum of woollen integument allowed
for protecting the feet of the midnight wanderer from his couch; and, in
the staircases of the fairest mansions, a like slip meandered down the
centre of the flight of steps. At that time, curtains rose and fell in a
line parallel to the horizon, after the simple plan of the green
siparium of our theatres; and, being strictly confined to the windows,
they never dreamed of displaying themselves in front of a door.
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