About the early part of the nineteenth century, the custom of employing architects to design the interior fittings and the furniture of their buildings, so as to harmonize, appears to have been abandoned; this was probably due, partly to some indifference to this subsidiary portion of their work, but also to the change of taste which led people to prefer the cheapness of painted and artificially grained pine-wood, with decorative effects produced by wall-papers, to the more solid but expensive though less showy wood-panelling, architectural mouldings, well-made panelled doors and chimney pieces, which one finds, down to quite the end of the previous century, even in houses of moderate rentals. Furniture therefore became independent, and, "beginning to account herself an Art, trangressed her limits" ... and "grew to the conceit that it could stand by itself, and, as well as its betters, went a way of its own."[26] The effect of this is to be seen in "interiors" of our own time which are handed over from the builder, as it were, in blank, to be filled up from the upholsterer's store, the curiosity shop, and the auction room, while a large contribution from the conservatory or the nearest florist, gives a finishing touch to a mixture, which characterises the present taste for furnishing a boudoir or a drawing room. [Illustration: THE SALOON AT SANDRINGHAM HOUSE. (_From a Photo by Bedford Lemére & Co., by permission of H.M. The King._)] [Illustration: THE DRAWING ROOM AT SANDRINGHAM HOUSE. (_From a Photo by Bedford Lemére & Co., by permission of H.M. The King._)] There is, of course, in very many cases, an individuality gained by the "omnium gatherum" of such a mode of furnishing. The cabinet which reminds its owner of a tour in Italy, the quaint stool from Tangier, and the embroidered piano-cover from Spain, are to those who are in the habit of travelling, pleasant souvenirs; as are also the presents from friends (when they have taste and judgment), the screens and flower-stands and the photographs, which are reminiscences of the forms and faces separated from us by distance or removed by death. The test of the whole question of such an arrangement of furniture in our living rooms, is the amount of judgment and discretion displayed. Two favourable examples of the present fashion, representing the interior of the Saloon and Drawing Room at Sandringham House, are here reproduced.