“The evil genius that so presides over cabinet-makers as to direct them to persevere in such a pertinacious and stupid manner that the rules of architecture, from whence all beautiful proportions are deduced, are unworthy of their regard, I am at a loss to discover; except Murcea, the Goddess of Sloth, acts that part and has thus influenced them to conceal their dronish, lowlife incapacities and prompt them, with the fox in the fable, to pronounce grapes sour that ripen out of their reach. “Cabinet-makers originally were no more than spurious indocile chips, expelled by joiners for the superfluity of their sap, and also, by instilling stupid notions and prejudice to architecture into the minds of youth educated under them has been the cause that at this time ’tis a very great difficulty to find one in fifty of them that can make a book-case, etc., indispensably true after any of the Five Orders without being obliged to go to a joiner for to set out the work and make his templets to work by. “But if these gentlemen persist much longer thus to despise the study of this noble art, the very basis and soul of their trade, which now to many joiners is well understood, they will soon find the bad consequences of so doing and have time enough on their hands to repent of their folly—and more especially since that our nobility and gentry delight themselves now more than ever in the study of architecture, which enables them to distinguish good work and workmen from assuming pretenders.” On Plate XXV. are three of his eight designs of bookcases, which, “if executed by a good joiner, and with beautiful materials, will have good effects, or even if by a cabinet-maker, provided that he understands how to proportion and work the Five Orders, which at this time, to the shame of that trade be it spoken, there is not one in a hundred that ever employed a moment’s thought thereon, or knows the Tuscan from the Doric, or the Corinthian from the Composite Order, and more especially if the Doric freeze hath its triglyphs and mutules omitted. In short, the ultimate knowledge of these sort of workmen is generally seen to finish with a monstrous Cove, on an Astragal, crowned with a Cima Reversa, in an open pediment of stupid height. [Illustration: PLATE XXVI]