The walnut period is rich in cabinets, which were used for the storage of papers and valuables--structures quite distinct from the writing-desks of the period. Some types will be found in the illustrations to the chapter on lacquered furniture. It must be borne in mind that the lacquering was often but an afterthought decoration. Scrape away the pseudo-Chinese decoration and we shall probably find the beautiful old walnut veneer. CHAPTER VI: SECRETAIRES, BUREAUX, AND WRITING-TABLES One would naturally suppose that the writing-desk is as old as the art of writing. So far as this country is concerned, the writing-desk of a sort was known in very early times. In the art library of the Victoria and Albert Museum are illuminated MSS. of about 1440-1450 showing scribes working at sloping desks of simple construction. Coming to Elizabethan and early Jacobean times, we find desks of small dimensions mounted on table-stands, but it is fairly certain that the ordinary tables of the house were more often used for writing purposes. The composite article--secretaire, escritoire, or bureau (interchangeable terms)--for writing and storage of writing materials is the product of the end of the seventeenth century. The connection between the writer or secretary (_secretus_, early Latin; _secretarius_, late Latin) and his desk, the secretaire, is obvious. Escritoire is but another form of the word; sometimes scrutoire or scruetoire in corrupt English. Bureau in the French was originally a russet cloth which covered the desk (from the Latin _burrus_, red), but came to mean the desk itself, and also the office in which the business was transacted. We look back upon the Elizabethan times as the Renaissance period of English literature, but even then the lettered were in the minority. By the end of the seventeenth century literature had spread to the middle classes, and we find the Press pouring out countless ponderous volumes on every imaginable subject. It is the age of the diarists, conspicuous amongst whom were Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, whose gossipy daily journals bring us so intimately in touch with the political and social life of the times. It is the age of the pamphleteers and essayists whose effusions led up to the semi-satirical periodicals of the early eighteenth century--chief amongst them being the _Spectator_, started by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele in 1710. This vast outpouring of literature called for more commodious writing-desks, and the escritoire or bureau is the natural result. Like the other furniture of the period, the desks were solid and dignified. In the main they were severe in outline, but generally reflected the prevailing architecture of the period, which was derived from the Italian Renaissance. We find the desks often surmounted by finely moulded, boldly carved cornices and broken pediments. As the Dutch influence grew we find the lower portions, containing commodious long drawers, with rounded or _bombé_ fronts.