It is nevertheless in the turnery and the fret-cutting machinery, that a furniture artist must find the elements of a style. The man of genius, the poet and maker, who can throw himself into these elements, will do wonders with them. The lathe is as old as history. During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, turned wood furniture was made in considerable quantities in this country, in Italy, and in the Indian possessions of the Portuguese. All the furniture of Arabs, Moors, and Turks springs from the lathe and the moulding plane; the tables and stools, the ingenious reticulation of Cairene geometrical panelling, the screens of woodwork so effective in the queen of Arab cities and in Damascus are derived from these humble sources. To surface ornament of marquetry, occasional carved insertions can be added. But light, neat, and elegant woodwork, panelling, bookcases, cabinets, dressers, chairs, and tables, can be turned out without these additions, and the variety might be endless. Carved acanthus foliage, bulging legs and surfaces, artistic carving and marquetry, and chiselled metal-mountings must be the work of trained sculptors. The engine gives them no real help. To design, that is invent (not to copy), carving and marquetry that will bear comparison with the products of Riesener, and of the school of Gibbons, is not to be done by command of appliances or skilful workmanship _only_. The artist who is thoroughly at home in designs of this kind, is the pupil or descendant of masters whose traditions are well established: "Fortes creantur fortibus." But neat furniture, unornamented by hand-work, ought to be turned out of the engine-room, the perfection of lightness, convenience, and strength. And here the buyer will look for the advantage of _cheapness_. We do not find that our large makers supply well-made machine furniture _cheap_. As a broad rule, prices seem to be calculated on _what a man would do_, and work done in the machine is priced, as if a man had made it by hand. In point of fact, five or six men's work is done in the same time, and the cost of wages charged on articles so made, will leave a disproportioned profit, notwithstanding the expense of setting up and maintaining the steam plant. Decorative furniture can never be had at a cheap rate. A word, in conclusion, as to the arts which are necessarily pressed into the service of furniture, and their prospects of the future. These "sumptuary" arts have been spoken of in these pages as a revival in furniture and _style_, as dead. The disorders that culminated in the French revolution cut off our present European thoughts, or at least our manners and customs, from the past. We are now trying to revivify past traditions. The furniture makers have made extraordinary exertions in this direction. How will it be in the coming years?