We may here revert to an important addition to room furniture, which became European during this century. Mirrors had been made from the earliest times in polished metal, but were first made of glass at Venice. In 1507 Andrea and Dominico, two glass workers of Murano, declared before the Council of ten that they had found a method of making "good and perfect mirrors of crystal glass." A monopoly of the right of manufacture was granted to the two inventors for twenty years. In 1564, the mirror makers became a distinct guild of glass workers. The plates were not large: from four to five feet are the largest dimensions met with till late in the eighteenth century. They were commonly bevilled on the edges. The frames in soft wood (as in the woodcut, p. 100) are specimens of free carving during the seventeenth century. Both in Venice and in Florence soft woods, such as willow or lime, were used. The mirror-plates were, at first, square or oblong. Towards the end of the century we find them shaped at the top. In the eighteenth century they were generally shaped at the top and bottom. Figures were sunk in the style of intaglio or gem cutting on the back of the glass and left with a dead surface, the silver surface of the mercury showing through as the mirror is seen from the front. The looking-glasses made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by colonies of Venetian workmen in England and France had the plates finished by an edge gently bevilled of an inch in width, following the form of the frame, whether square or shaped in curves. This gives preciousness and prismatic light to the whole glass. It is of great difficulty in execution, the plate being held by the workman over his head and the edge cut by grinding. The feats of skill of this kind in the form of interrupted curves and short lines and angles are rarely accomplished by modern workmen, and the angle of the bevil itself is generally too acute, whereby the prismatic light produced by this portion of the mirror is in violent and too showy contrast to the remainder. [Illustration] In England, looking-glasses came into general use soon after the Restoration. "Sir Samuel Morland built a fine room at Vauxhall in 1667, the inside all of looking-glass, and fountains, very pleasant to behold. It stands in the middle of the garden covered with Cornish slate, on the point whereof he placed a Punchinello." At about the same period the house of Nell Gwynne, "the first good one as we enter St. James' Square from Pall Mall, had the back room on the ground floor entirely lined with looking-glass within memory," writes Pennant, "as was said to have been the ceiling." "La rue St. André-des-arts," says Savarin, speaking of Paris in the seventeenth century, "eut le premier café _orne de glaces_ et de tables de marbre à peu près comme on les voit de nos jours." [Illustration]