In order to deal exhaustively with the evolution of the chair from its earliest forms to the latest developments in sumptuous upholstery, it would be necessary to make an extended survey of furniture, dating back to early classic days. To enumerate the manifold varieties belonging to various countries and to trace the gradual progress in form, which kept pace with the advance in civilisation, would be of sufficient interest to occupy a whole volume. Man, as a sitting or lounging animal, has grown to require more elaborate forms of chair, or settee, or sofa, and the modern tendency has been towards comfort and luxury. In regard to English furniture the intense contrast between the days of Elizabeth and those of Victoria is at once noticeable. According to Lord Macaulay in his comparison between the manners of his day and those of the past, the furniture of a middle-class dwelling-house of the nineteenth century was equal to that of a rich merchant in the time of Elizabeth. In general this may be true, though not as regards the spacious structure and the massive grandeur of the Tudor house. In many details the differences are most noteworthy. The wide gulf dividing the modern world from the days of the Armada may be realised by reflecting on such an astounding fact that Queen Elizabeth possessed at one time the only pair of silk stockings in her realm, which were presented to her by Mistress Montague, "which pleased her so well that she would never wear any cloth hose afterwards." The sturdy character of the yeomen of the days of the Tudors is exhibited in their furniture. The illustrations of this chapter in regard to the chair and its structural development indicate the slowly acquired tastes, running some decades behind the fashionable furniture, strong with foreign influences, which had come into more or less general use. "England no longer sent her fleeces to be woven in Flanders and to be dyed in Florence. The spinning of yarn, the weaving, fulling, and dyeing of cloth, was spreading rapidly from the towns to the country-side. The worsted trade, of which Norwich was the centre, extended over the whole of the Eastern Counties. Farmers' wives everywhere began to spin their wool from their own sheep's backs into a coarse homespun."