The insides of these houses were scarcely less like the "Queen Anne revival" of our time than the outsides. The rooms were, as a rule, sparingly furnished. There would be a centre-table, some chairs, a settee, a few pictures, a mirror, possibly a spinet or musical instrument of some kind, some shelves, perhaps, for displaying the Chinese and Japanese porcelain which every one loved, and, of course, heavy window-curtains. Smaller tables were used for the incessant tea-drinking. Large screens kept off the too frequent draughts. Handsomely wrought stoves and andirons stood in the wide fireplaces. The rooms themselves were lofty; the walls of the better kind wainscoted and carved, and the ceilings painted in allegorical designs. Wall-papers had only begun to come into use within the last few years of Anne's reign; windows were long and narrow, and small panes were a necessity, as glass-makers had not yet attained the art of casting large sheets of glass. The stairs were exceedingly straight; it was mentioned as a recommendation to new houses that two persons could go up-stairs abreast. The rents would seem curiously low to Londoners of our time; houses could be got in Pall Mall for two hundred a year, and in good parts of the town for thirty, forty, and {70} fifty pounds a year. Lady Wentworth, in 1705, describes a house in Golden Square, with gardens, stables, and coach-house, the rent of which was only threescore pounds a year. Pretty riverside houses let at from five to ten pounds a year. Lodgings would seem cheap now, though they were not held so then, for Swift complains of paying eight shillings a week, when he lodged in Bury Street, for a dining-room and bedroom on the first floor. [Sidenote: 1714--"Not without danger walk these streets"] There was no general numbering of houses in 1714; that movement of civilization did not take place until 1764. Places were known by their signs, or their vicinity to a sign. "Blue Boars," "Black Swans," and "Red Lions" were in every street, and people lived at the "Red Bodice," or over against the "Pestle." The _Tatler_ tells a story of a young man seeking a house in Barbican for a whole day through a mistake in a sign, whose legend read, "This is the Beer," instead of "This is the Bear." Another tried to get into a house at Stocks Market, under the impression that he was at his own lodgings at Charing Cross, being misled by the fact that there was a statue of the King on horseback in each place. Signs were usually very large, and jutted so far out from the houses that in narrow streets they frequently touched one another. As it was the fashion to have them carefully painted, carved, gilded, and supported by branches of wrought iron, they were often very costly, some being estimated as worth more than a hundred guineas.