“The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book” is largely taken up with drawings and remarks upon perspective, which are hopelessly unintelligible. His instructions for making the pieces designed are most minute, and it is probably due to this circumstantial care that Sheraton’s furniture, light as it looks, has lasted in good condition for a hundred years or more. Sheraton’s chairs differ from Hepplewhite’s, which they resemble in many respects, in the construction of the backs, which are usually square, with the back legs extending to the top rail, and the lower rail joining the posts a few inches above the seat. The backs were ornamented with carving, inlaying, painting, gilding, and brass. The lyre was a favorite design, and it appears in his chair-backs and in the supports for tables, often with the strings made of brass wire. Sheraton’s sideboards are similar to those of Shearer and Hepplewhite, but are constructed with more attention to the utilitarian side, with sundry conveniences, and with the fluted legs which Sheraton generally uses. His designs show sideboards also with ornamental brass rails at the back, holding candelabra. His desks and writing-tables are carefully and minutely described, so that the manifold combinations and contrivances can be accurately made. Sheraton’s later furniture was heavy and generally ugly, following the Empire fashions, and his fame rests upon the designs in his first book. He was the last of the great English cabinet-makers, although he had many followers in England and in America. After the early years of the nineteenth century, the fashionable furniture was in the heavy, clumsy styles which were introduced with the Empire, until the period of ugly black walnut furniture which is familiar to us all. While there have always been a few who collected antique furniture, the general taste for collecting began with the interest kindled by the Centennial Exposition in 1876. Not many years ago the collector of old furniture and china was jeered at, and one who would, even twenty years since, buy an old “high-boy” rather than a new black walnut chiffonier, was looked upon as “queer.” All that is now changed. The chiffonier is banished for the high-boy, when the belated collector can secure one, and the influence of antique furniture may be seen in the immense quantity of new furniture modelled after the antique designs, but not made, alas, with the care and thought for durability which were bestowed upon furniture by the old cabinet-makers. Heaton says: “It appears to require about a century for the wheel of fashion to make one complete revolution. What our great-grandfather bought and valued (1750-1790); what our grandfathers despised and neglected (1790-1820); what our fathers utterly forgot (1820-1850), we value, restore, and copy!”