=The Incongruities of Marquetry.=--To those who have handled a good many examples of marquetry furniture in which panelling is predominant, such as clock-cases, there is one feature which always strikes the practised eye. The question arises, How did the marquetry panel come there? It is another way of expressing the view that the proportion is radically wrong. A glance at a poor panel of a clock-case, or a faked panel, or a stupidly wrought panel, is enough. To the collector of old books nothing is more annoying than to find that the binder with all his fine tooling has trimmed off the margins of the printed matter and the illustrations. It is an edition with the space expurgated. It is the binder _versus_ the printer, and similarly in the clock-case it is too often the cabinet-maker _versus_ the designer of the marquetry panel. This is the sentiment one has on looking at many of the marquetry clock-cases. The persons who received them from Holland did not always know how to use them correctly. They either cut off their edges or left so little space as to convey the idea of a curtailed edition of the original. In the case of the panelled period, when there were three panels, two of them had more often than not to be cut off in the middle to make room for the circular aperture in the door showing the swinging pendulum. When the case-maker received his panels according to order from the Continent, one would have thought he would have done away with the hole in the case. But perhaps the clockmaker insisted otherwise. At any rate, it is a point showing the absence of intimate relationship between clockmaker and case-maker. Holland seems to be the answer, in spite of all experts to the contrary. On the "all-over" marquetry clock-cases there is a decided inclination to follow the designs found on contemporary delft ware. As to repetition, however well joined they are, the glue and the wax cannot hide the poverty of design. Twice or thrice in one case are patterns repeated. It is the wall-paper artist at work in a smaller area. In this connection one recalls the decadence of the wood-engravers, where three or four artists worked on portions of one picture cut into sections and screwed together as one block. The old journals, the _Illustrated London News_, and the _Graphic_ and others of the early 'eighties, tell of this decadence. The thin white lines, as long as ink and paper last, record this subterfuge. It was the last note of wood-engraving. Similarly, in marquetry, when we find the almost invisible lines denoting several hands, or the piecing together of the same design cunningly to deceive the persons at the period, we at a later stage read this as the note determining the end, and the end soon came. CHAPTER IV THE LONG-CASE CLOCK--THE PERIOD OF LACQUER