The houses of the wealthy were furnished with great magnificence and luxuriousness in a gaudy and ultra-decorative fashion. Restraint is the last quality to be found. Judging however from the many simple and charming specimens of walnut furniture surviving, the standard of comfort and good taste amongst the middle classes was high. Table glass was now manufactured in England; carpets were made at Kidderminster; chairs grew to be comfortably shaped; domestic conveniences in the way of chests of drawers, writing bureaux, and mirrors were all in general use in many middle-class houses. Mr. Pollen, whose handbook on the Victoria and Albert collection is so much appreciated, writes of the Queen Anne furniture as being of a "genuine English style marked by great purity and beauty." Anne, the second daughter of James II., was the last of the Stuarts, with whom, however, she had little in common, and indeed it is with something of an effort that we think of her as a Stuart at all. Personally she had no more influence upon the period which bears her name than the Goths had upon Gothic architecture. The term "Queen Anne" has grown to be a conveniently descriptive term for anything quaint and pretty. We are all familiar with the Queen Anne house of the modern architect, with its gables and sharply pitched roof. This, however, is probably suggested by various rambles in picturesque country districts in England and Holland; but it has nothing in common with the actual houses of the period under review. The bulk of the genuine furniture which has come down to us was probably from the houses of the merchant classes, the period being one of great commercial activity. The condition of the poor, however, was such that they could not concern themselves with furniture. Mr. Justin McCarthy, in his book on these times, estimates that one-fifth of the population were paupers. A few rude tables and chairs, a chest, truckle-beds, and possibly a settle, would have made up the possessions of the working-class house; and it is probable that not until the nineteenth century was there any material improvement in their household surroundings.