Knobs were needed as drawers appeared, and these were conveniently and logically made of wood, and were cut in facets like a diamond. But the prevailing metal mount for the rest of the century was the little drop handle that resembles nothing so much as a lady's long earring. It is found on old Jacobean cabinets, side-tables, and all pieces having drawers and cupboards. Its origin is old Spanish, and that smacks always of Moorish. With unusual fidelity this little drop handle clung until under Queen Anne (1703) the fashion changed to the wide ornamental plate with looplike handle, and _that_ in turn served, with but slight variations, throughout the century. [Illustration: QUEEN ANNE SINGLE CHAIR Made of walnut with carved motives gilded. This type of chair shows the strong effect of Chinese motifs, especially on the legs.] [Illustration: QUEEN ANNE ARM CHAIR Upholstered in gros point with splat black and Dutch shell on curved legs. _Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York_] [Illustration: WALNUT QUEEN ANNE CHAIRS With cabriole leg and claw and ball foot adapted from Chinese Spanish leather set on with innumerable nails elegantly covers the taller. These chairs foreshadow the Georgian styles. Plate XXX] [Illustration: Plate XXXI--QUEEN ANNE CHAIR With marquetry back and carved cabriole leg with hoof and serpentine stretcher _Courtesy of P. W. French_] In summing up the seventeenth century as a whole, it seems to show a British and insular attempt to form its own styles, to dress its homes and palaces in a British way, regardless of what the world else-where was doing. Bits of outside product came drifting across the Channel, but these were not treated with too great seriousness. They were never adopted intact with all the feeling of foreign thought shining from their elegant surfaces, but rather were cut apart and certain bits were used to tack onto the more British work. And it is just here that is found the secret of the charm which lies in old English furniture. It is the endeavour of England to tell her own story, and her story is necessarily different from that of France, Portugal, Spain, Holland, the East. So, although she borrows motifs from foreign lands, it is only to indicate her historical connection with them and not to make a witless copy of their wares. This holds true even at the time when two great artists dominated the decorative arts in Europe, Rubens and Le Brun, and that decorative monarch, Louis XIV, ruled art as well as politics. Yet the insularity of England kept her, happily, from realising the fine flowering of French art to imitate it, and, instead, she expressed her own sturdy characteristic development.