By this time, however, many changes in the chairs had taken place. They seem to have been introduced into Paris in 1617 by M. de Montbrun, though unfortunately from whence this gentleman brought them we are nowhere informed. They were called _chaises à porteurs_. Possibly English and French chairs were at first quite similar to each other in appearance—square boxes with a pent-house—but in the middle of the century—in Paris, at any rate, they became far more elegant in form, and began to be ornamented and richly upholstered. Some of them resembled, in shape, the body of the modern hansom-cab. This was particularly the case with a new carriage, introduced about 1668, called the _brouette_ (wheelbarrow), _roulette_, or _vanaigrette_, which was merely a sedan upon two wheels. It was drawn in the usual way by a man, and was an early form of that vehicle which still survives in the East as the jin-rick-shaw. The brouette held but one person, its wheels were large, and its two poles projected some way in front. One Dupin was apparently the only person to manufacture them, and after his first experiments he applied “two elbow-springs beneath the front, and attached them to the axle-tree by long shackles, the axle-tree working up and down in a groove beneath the inside-seat.” This improvement is of more than ordinary interest in so far as it is the first mention of steel springs to carriages. In the ordinary coaches these steel springs were first applied beneath the bottom of the body. They were probably formed out of a single piece of metal. In the case of the brouette there was the usual opposition—this time from the proprietors of the ordinary sedans—but although a temporary prohibition was made, the brouette triumphed, and in 1671 was a common sight in the streets of Paris. It was not very suitable for decoration. As one French writer remarks, it was enough if the machine were solidly constructed. The brouette had windows at the sides and a small support in front of the wheels to allow the carriage to maintain its proper position when not held up by an attendant. The brouette does not seem to have come immediately to England, though in the eighteenth century there was a _sedan cart_, similar in appearance to it, to be seen in London. On the other hand, the ordinary sedans were rapidly gaining in popularity, and maintained that popularity right through the reigns of the first three Georges. [Illustration: _Neapolitan Sedan Chair_ _Early Sixteenth Century_ (_At South Kensington_)]